2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Willie, Mickey, and The Ed.", October 20, 2008
Having read more than my share of books and seen more than my share of videos about the Brooklyn Dodgers, and having heard how "temperamental" Edwin Donald Snider is, I expected THE DUKE OF FLATBUSH to be a study in ego. I misjudged The Duke completely.
Duke Snider was and still is my father's favorite Brooklyn Dodger. Even today, suffering from Alzheimer's, my Dad can recognize Snider in an old group photograph. For my Dad, there is something memorable and likeable about the man. After reading THE DUKE OF FLATBUSH, I'd have to agree.
Snider is a consummate raconteur on these pages, sharing baseball stories and a lifetime's worth of insights about the game with his readers. THE DUKE OF FLATBUSH is never an exercise in character assassination masquerading as memoir. Rather, this is a genuine Hall of Fame player's reminiscence of the game in the good old fashioned sense of the word. Duke never snipes at anyone, and is rarely, and then only mildly, critical of others. He does say that Roger Kahn (
The Boys of Summer) makes several errors in that book and paints too bleak a picture of most former Dodgers' post-baseball lives. He also calls sportswriters to task for selling papers through lurid misquotes and invention---though he admits, ruefully, that sometimes they were TOO accurate.
Duke seems less temperamental than simply impulsive at times. His stories of being fined $25.00 for complaining about a $1.00 meal allowance, or getting into an argument with a Manager over a $0.75 dish of creamed cauliflower, point up the fact that he often couldn't shut his yap when yap-shutting was warranted, and also underscore the starvation wages that many ballplayers earned in his time ($5,000.00 per season was the rookie minimum in 1947).
The Duke says that the money is infinitely better nowadays (which it is), but that ballplayers lack the sense of fun, the camaraderie, and the sense of bond with their teams and teammates that came from traveling on trains with and playing with most of the same men on the same team for sixteen years each summer, developing an almost psychic sense of rhythm and timing with them, a sense that propelled the Dodgers to the top of the league every year.
Duke had a host of friends on the field and in the stands, or so it seems. The California native has an easygoing quality, but he describes himself as an "overworrier," and that indeed does seem to be the case. Surprisingly, Snider, a noted power hitter and topnotch center fielder, considered one of the best ever in either category, seems to have obsessed on his strikeout record, and flagellated himself unmercifully over a poor showing in the 1947 World Series (his first).
The Duke has nothing but love for the intimate and shabby Brooklyn home of the Dodgers, and nothing but love for the army of characters that populated the place both on the field and in the stands. His best stories always involve his fellow Dodgers and their insanely dedicated fans, who would sometimes fistfight with their own fathers over disputes about who was a better player, Snider or Mickey Mantle. Brooklyn fans were fickle. They loved to cheer their Bums, but booed them just as often. With the insouciance of proprietors, Brooklyn fans might criticize the Dodgers, but let an outsider do so and he just might taste shoe leather.
Duke tells stories of a world steeped in male friendship, both in its finest aspect, such as his relationship with Carl Erskine, and in its sophomoric aspect, a string of silly practical jokes between members of the Dodger team.
There is the joyous World Series win in 1955, and the glorious contests of 1952 and 1953, when the Dodgers fielded what may have been the finest teams in baseball history. There is the heartbreak of 1951, when Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round The World" caused the Dodgers to lose the NL pennant to the despised New York Giants in the bottom of the Ninth with two out. There are the seemingly-endless annual near wins of the World Series, going to seven squeak games, always against the Yankees.
He regales us with the tale of a smart-aleck exchange between Roy Campanella (the Dodgers' catcher), Big Don Newcombe (the Dodgers' pitcher), and Willie Mays, (at bat for the Giants), all three men of color. After two pitches that practically scraped his cheek, Mays asked Campy to ask Newcombe to stop throwing at him. Campy hustled out to the mound, only to come back with the explanation that Newcombe "didn't care for black people." All three men were good friends off the field.
Or, listen to the Duke's story about umpire Jocko Conlon, who once threw a rude couple out of a restaurant by paying their dinner check and bellowing, "Yer outta here!"
Or, on a more serious note, the fact that the famously stoic Gil Hodges' hands trembled sometimes so violently that he couldn't light his own cigarette.
Duke was plainly unhappy to leave Brooklyn, where he lived in the neighborhood of Bay Ridge, knew his fans personally, and had many good friends. Even after the move to Los Angeles, Duke Snider keeps bringing the story back to Brooklyn, which is where it belongs.
When he wrote THE DUKE OF FLATBUSH in 1986, Duke Snider was only just beginning to grasp the visceral relationship had between the Borough of Brooklyn and their beloved baseball team. There are verbal snapshots---a man, met at random in the 1980s, who was carrying a 1950s Duke Snider baseball card in his wallet, and asked his childhood hero to sign it. An old woman in Los Angeles who bent his ear remembering Ebbets Field. Yelling and stomping fans who greeted the Duke when he came back to New York in his swansong days to play for the Mets.
This is Duke's book and yours, guys, a conversation had propped on barstools, beer nuts and brews at your fingertips. Maybe it wasn't really always the case, but it seems The Duke had very few rainy days in Flatbush. Read this book. Enjoy a sunshiny day with my father's favorite ballplayer.
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