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Remembering Brooklyn The Dodgers are gone, but memories linger
By Tom Rinaldi, CNNSI.com BROOKLYN, N.Y. -- They can't take away your memories. But they can turn them into apartment houses. And they did if you were a baseball fan on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn. "Where Ebbets Field stood, there are now high rise buildings," says Roger Kahn author of "The Boys of Summer" which chronicles the 1952-53 seasons of the Brooklyn Dodgers. "They're not notably uglier than other high rise buildings, but the fabric of one's youth, the right field wall, the unique qualities of Ebbets Field, that's all gone. And there isn't any evidence anywhere except in your mind's eye, that it was ever there." In 1956, the average salary in the major leagues was $15,000. A Coke was 15 cents. And so was the token that brought you to the World Series at Ebbets Field. Now, the Series is New York against New York again. But here, it seems a world away. Didn't you used to be Brooklyn? Here's to the gallery of memories. And among the many who still have those memories is Brooklyn resident Sylvester Norris. "To my left here, that should be your first base," says Norris who stands with a walking cane, baseball cap and baseball jacket, scanning the property of what was once the site of the ballpark. "Back down there was home plate. Over to your right would be second, short and third. Then right field, center and left. That, I'm pretty sure about that." Another Brooklyn resident, Steve Tyler says people will never be able the feel what he calls the "legend," until they stand on what used to be Ebbets Field. "That's the whole point of it, this is where it was" he said. "You might could build something on the ground but you can never take the history from what it was."
The home team may be gone, but many remain. And they remember. Like Alan Rosen. "If you were from Brooklyn, you were from Brooklyn," he said. "You didn't say, 'I'm from New York.' You say, 'I'm from Brooklyn." Rosen owns Junior's Restaurant on Flatbush and DeKalb that is still Brooklyn's institution of digestion. For 50 years it was the place where the cheesecake makes tough men swoon. But once it was where the men on the team used to come by all the time. "Dodgers came in here," Rosen said. "These guys were part of everyday life. Duke Snyder, I've seen him here and in the past. I don't know if they're as accessible today as they were back then." These days, the flavor is still sweet, but somehow life tastes different. Gil Fershtman remembers. "When you were a kid, you had the dream all the time. I was pretty good as a kid." Fershtman played for Erasmus Hall High School, for the Scorpions summer team, for stickball dreams ten blocks away from where his heroes walked. "Sometimes we'd be out playing stickball after supper and if somebody hit a homerun, we could hear the cheers. We were 10 blocks away. I don't think there was ever a ballpark like Ebbets Field. I know Wrigley's great and Fenway's great, I've been there. But Ebbets Field was like so special. "In those days the players came to the games by subway. So we'd stand by the BMT stop by Prospect Park and guys would come out. We'd walk the block to Ebbets Field. Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter, Ted Kluszewski -- these guys were our heroes."
And then, impossibly, Ebbets Field was gone, and so were the Dodgers, moved to Los Angeles by their owner Walter O'Malley. And the fans don't forget, or forgive. "First of all, we've got to say the name O'Malley," says Fershtman who then pretends to spit as he says, "tooey! For what he did, I know it was business what he did but, he ripped the heart out of Brooklyn." The D, Q, and S trains will stop here over the next week. It's the Subway Series that won't. Brooklyn, the city's biggest borough, and for many its most historic, is left only with history when it comes to baseball. The Dodgers are long gone and seemingly so is a time when Brooklyn was the world. Now, it's not even part of the World Series. "In my eyes, I don't think Brooklyn was ever the same after the Dodgers left," Fershtman says. "There was some esprit de corps. We were proud. I was a Yankee fan, but I was proud to be from Brooklyn." Historian Kahn agrees. "When the Dodgers left, I think there was shock. There was disbelief. You thought the Pyramids were in Egypt, the Coliseum was in Rome, and the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, and that could never end. It was a tremendous blow to the psyche and spirit of Brooklyn, and perhaps something from which Brooklyn has never recovered." There is a difference between history and nostalgia. History is the way it was. Nostalgia, the way we wanted it to be. You'll find both on Bedford Avenue this October. What you won't find is the game.
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