Customer Reviews

The Brooklyn Dodgers (NY) (Images of Sports)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I expected THE BROOKLYN DODGERS: IMAGES OF SPORT to be a coffee table- sized edition. It's actually a rather slim trade paperback. Regardless of my deflated expectations, this little book by Mark Rucker is a great addition to any Brooklyn Dodger fan's library.

The book is crammed with photographs, most of very high quality, and associated commentaries on Brooklyn Dodger (and proto-Dodger) teams dating back to the 1840s, when Brooklyn appeared in a semi-pro national championship. To judge from the photos and woodcuts of the early era, baseball, if not yet the National Pastime, was Brooklyn's Pastime.

Legends about Abner Doubleday aside, baseball was born in Brooklyn. Brooklyn sold the first tickets to games, invented the batting helmet, the warning track, the box score, the curve ball, the wrist snap, had the first televised games, and a host of other innovations. To be fair, some of these innovations, like yellow baseballs and games on ice (!) didn't exactly catch on.

It had some of the greatest talent the game has ever seen. If Brooklyn's team struggled along in many seasons, it was only because players like Dazzy Vance or Zack Wheat stood alone as gifted stars on otherwise moderately talented or simply mediocre teams. (Rucker doesn't say whether he is related to the great Dodger pitcher of the Thirties, Nap Rucker.) It would be left to the Yankees to develop their pool of talent into an overwhelming juggernaut of perennially winning teams, at least until the Dodgers' best years in the 1950s.

Rucker introduces us to a veritable army of Dodger players, some of who are memorable, like Wee Willie "Hit 'em where they ain't" Keeler, Jim Creighton, Dave Foutz, John Ward Montgomery, and Frenchy Bordagaray; some of whom are forgotten, like Jigger Staatz, H.B Polhemus, and Frank Kitson; some of whom are world-class talents, like Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella and Gil Hodges; and some of whom are better known for their association with other teams, like Casey Stengel and Babe Ruth. Each captioned photograph gives us a snippet of information on the represented player, his record, and his fate. Team photos are revealing as to the evolution and professionalization of the sport. The earliest antebellum tintypes might have been taken by Matthew Brady. The mustachio'd Gay Nineties players all fit the 'Casey At The Bat' stereotype. The Dodgers went through a bewildering array of changes of name and livery until settling on the blue on white script so closely identified with the Borough of Brooklyn (and still used by the Los Angeles club today).

Many earlier photos have not survived the years. As a result, the bulk of photographs in the book concern the latter-day Dodgers of the Forties and Fifties. Some of the pictures are familiar, but many are not. All are priceless.

Each page of this book is a small gift, to be treasured for its pleasure.

There are many better books out there about the Dodgers. This one, despite some great photos, contains some factual errors, and the text is sparse particularly as it relates to almost everybody's favorite Dodger teams of the early 50s until they split for LA. Ahh...the Duke, Gil, PeeWee, Campy, the Redding Rifle, Newk, Jackie...it was nice to "see" them again.