Brooklynites Want Their Pennant Returned

Is there no end of outrage that the fair borough of Brooklyn must suffer? Will insults to the burgh that had the Brooklyn Dodgers stolen from it never end?

The latest tale of woe concerns the only world-championship pennant the Dodgers of Brooklyn ever won, The 1955 flag that flew atop the right-center field fence in Ebbets Field during all of 1956. It’s back in the news now because the Baseball Hall of Fame is celebrating its 50th anniversary. And therein lies the injustice.

The Flag won in Brooklyn was taken to Los Angeles with the rest of the spoils when Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley stretched his elastic roots to the West Coast. It surfaced in public again in 1959, when the Dodgers won another pennant. It decorated a long wall above the buffet table in the Los Angeles hospitality headquarters during the World Series.

To four stout-hearts with Brooklyn passions, it was as if O’Malley was flaunting The Flag in our faces. A daring plan was hatched, and before the evening was out, four of the noblest-purposed desperados in the annals of U.S. skulduggery pulled off “The Case of the Purloined Pennant,” spiriting The Flag back to Brooklyn.

It should be pointed out that the heat that burned in the rebels was devotion to justice and not the fire of free liquor. It was agreed by Charley Sutton of the Long Beach Independent, Steve Weller of the Buffalo Evening News, and Newsday’s Jack Mann and me that The Flag deserved some final resting place in Brooklyn. At the time there didn’t seem any worthy site in the depressed County of Kings, so The Flag rested in a Roslyn Heights basement.

In a few years, the banditos decided The Flag should at least be seen by the public, so it was presented to the Hall of Fame. Ken Smith of the Hall, an honorable former baseball writer, gratefully accepted the gift with the proviso that if ever a worthy spot opened up in Brooklyn, The Flag would go back to the borough of its roots.

An irony: In the more than two decades The Flag has been at Cooperstown, it hasn’t seen any more light than it did in Roslyn Heights. It is so long--about the distance from home plate to the pitcher’s mound--that the Hall never had a location large enough to display it. It has been relegated to storage in the cellar with many other items.

Of late there has been a new development. Out of the ashes has arisen a Brooklyn Dodgers Baseball Hall of Fame spearheaded by Marty Adler, an assistant principal at Jackie Robinson Jr. High School, which is across the street from the former site of Ebbets Field. And now, this October, the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame, which has inducted 43 members--Dodgers, key opposing players, officials and writers--will gain official quarters in the Brooklyn Historical Society on Pierrepont Street. It will be there along with wings dedicated to the Brooklyn Bridge, minorities and Coney Island.

It is obvious that this is the long-awaited place for The Flag. It would move out of the Coopers-town cellar and be available for Brooklynites and the world to see. Right?

Wrong! When I called the Hall of Fame people and told them we would like to put it on display in the Brooklyn Hall of Fame, I got “ers” and “wells.” Bill Guilfoile, an associate director who I remembered as a lovely man from his days as a Yankees assistant publicity director, was full of hesitation.

He stunned me with this: Did I have a paper to attest to my agreement with Mr. Smith? Hell, no, I don’t have any stinkin’ paper. I knew Mr. Smith, who is now aged and ailing and unable to attest to anything, as a man of honor. I shook hands on it--the Brooklyn way--with Mr. Smith.

Not only did Guilfoile express the Hall’s reluctance to give up our prize, but he even got his facts wrong. He told a Sports Illustrated reporter that “Isaacs had stolen the flag off a pole as a prank when he was a kid.” He defamed our noble purpose. SI then wrote that I stole it from the press box, which also is wrong, but that’s not the issue.

Guilfoile mentioned that the Hall was opening a new wing and had plans to display it there. Well, the wing has just opened, and WNBC’s Len Berman, one of my scouts, was up at Cooperstown to do a report this week, and he reported that The Flag isn’t in the new wing, either.

The Flag belongs in Brooklyn. We want it. We will fight for it. Some media heavies already have advised they will back the return of The Flag to Brooklyn. Lawyers have volunteered their services. We will, if necessary, present petitions to Cooperstown, to Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti or whomever.

And even if we are not successful through gentlemanly channels, there are other methods. Ed Krinsky of Westbury, a man active in the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame, says he and Irving Rudd, the former Dodgers publicity man, are prepared to stage a commando raid to rescue The Flag again.

If they are not successful, there are any number of justice seekers among Brooklyn’s millions who might set their sights on a mission to retrieve The Flag. The Hall of Fame will know no rest until The Flag rests in the Brooklyn Dodgers Hall of Fame on Pierrepont Street.

Give us our flag.