For Reinsdorf, Brooklyn memories remain strong

Last of 3 parts

The Brooklyn Dodgers may have moved to Los Angeles, but the team left an indelible imprint on the psyche of fans like Jerry Reinsdorf.

It testifies to the team's strong bond with the community - the fans were in many cases neighbors to the players.

"I knew Duke Snider," Reinsdorf said. "Duke Snider lived on my block a couple years. He actually lived in a rooming house. They were all day games in those days. After the games were over, he would play stick ball with us."

He explained, "In those days, the players lived in the city," mostly in apartment buildings. "They were part of the neighborhoods. They would have cookouts with their neighbors. The wives would get together when the players were on the road.

"Gil Hodges, once he came to Brooklyn, never left. He lived there all year round."

Seasons took on a special significance, with certain years hallowed in memory and others tarnished with infamy.

In 1951, the Dodgers held a seemingly insurmountable lead over the New York Giants, only to see it vanish, along with their pennant hopes, with one swing of the bat by Bobby Thomson on a pitch from Ralph Branca.

"I haven't gotten over that one yet," Reinsdorf said.

In 2002, when the All-Star Game was played in Milwaukee, he remembered running into Thomson and Branca at the Pfister Hotel, where the two were holding a conversation.

"I had met Ralph before. I walked over to Ralph and I said hello. And I turned to Bobby Thomson and I said, 'It's been 51 years and I still hate you.' "

The feeling transcended even the Hippocratic oath.

"I had a friend who became a doctor in New Jersey," Reinsdorf recalled. "And his partner was out of town and he had to cover. And Bobby Thomson came in as a patient. He was his partner's patient. And he said to him, 'I can't treat you. You ruined my life.'"

The Dodgers won one World Series in Brooklyn, defeating the Yankees in 1955.

By that time, Reinsdorf was studying at George Washington University in Washington, D.C.

"I remember calling my mother. She said, 'They've gone crazy here.' She said, 'People are pouring out onto the streets.' It was like the end of World War II, she said."

He said, "I was so proud. I was so happy. It was just a wonderful feeling, because we all thought that the Dodgers were doing it for us."

But the joy would soon turn to grief. Reinsdorf was at law school at Northwestern University in September 1957, the month the Dodgers left Brooklyn.

Dodgers President Walter O'Malley was angling for a new domed stadium for the Dodgers in Brooklyn.

But as that plan withered and O'Malley began laying the groundwork for the move to the West Coast, an alternative solution was floated by New York City's construction coordinator, Robert Moses, who proposed a new location in Queens, the eventual home of the New York Mets.

Reinsdorf said, "O'Malley, I'll never forget, said that, 'If we're in Queens, we can't be the Brooklyn Dodgers.' And I thought, well, if you're someplace else, you can't be the Brooklyn Dodgers either.

"Moses was really right, because there was a tremendous flight to Queens and to the rest of Long Island, and that's where the Dodger fans all moved. They would have been very successful if they had gone where Shea Stadium was, because that was proven by the fact the Mets were successful out there.

"I think O'Malley in his own mind, he saw that Los Angeles is a gold mine, and that's what it turned out to be."

Reinsdorf said baseball needed to expand, since the only major league city west of the Mississippi was St. Louis.

"They could have added teams out there. They didn't have to allow an iconic franchise like the Brooklyn Dodgers to move. It never should have happened, and O'Malley should have gone to where Moses wanted. But that didn't happen, and I was very bitter at the time, and I'm still bitter."

Reinsdorf said he couldn't root against the Dodgers in the 1959 World Series against the White Sox, because players from Brooklyn were still on the roster. But as the personnel turned over, the estrangement was sealed.

In the early 1970s, his son Michael became a White Sox fan, and Reinsdorf shifted his allegiance to the South Side.

Over the years, he kept in contact with Brooklyn Dodgers fans, including the late CNN host Larry King, who became a staunch Los Angeles Dodgers fan.

"We always reminisced about Brooklyn, even though I told him it wasn't right that he still rooted for them."

He also forged a close friendship with former Brooklyn pitcher Joe Black.

When Black was an executive with Greyhound, Greyhound's Chicago office was in the same building where Reinsdorf worked as a lawyer. Reinsdorf said he was too shy to approach him.

When Black moved with Greyhound to Phoenix, where Reinsdorf spent his winters, Black found out Reinsdorf was from Brooklyn and asked someone for an introduction.

"We became instant friends," Reinsdorf said. "We spent a lot of time together. We used to go to lunch. He would regale me with stories about the Dodgers, about (Jackie) Robinson and (Pee Wee) Reese and all those guys."

He also found out "everybody knew Joe Black. Michael Jordan's mother bought a house in Arizona, in Paradise Valley, and started spending a lot of time there.

"So I wanted to introduce her to people. I said to Michael, 'I have a friend I would like to introduce your mother to. His name is Joe Black. And Michael Jordan said, 'Joe Black? I love Joe Black.' I didn't even know he knew him."