An Original Boy of Summer, The Duke Ruled in Brooklyn

Gone are all but the memories of those majestic homers that cleared the right field wall at old Ebbets Field as the fans on Bedford Avenue scrambled for the ball.

“The Duke’s up,” those in the upper deck would yell to the street denizens, who took up positions in front of Young Motors. The management of the DeSoto dealership didn’t mind. Who needed another broken window?

That seems a lifetime ago for Edwin Donald Snider, erstwhile center fielder--The Duke of Flatbush. In reality, it was.

An era ended for The Duke, along with Pee Wee and Moonie and Campy and Skoonj, on Oct. 8, 1957. That’s when a terse statement from Walter O’Malley--the obituary of the Brooklyn Dodgers--was quietly tacked on a bulletin board as the New York Yankees played the Milwaukee Braves in the World Series.

“I was born in Los Angeles,” Snider said last week when asked how he felt about the move to the left coast. “Baseball-wise, I was born in Brooklyn.”

Yes, the Duke was dead, replaced by something Californians called the Silver Fox.

“I was finished as a ballplayer at 31.” Snider said. “I had hurt my knee three times. I was never the same.”

Perhaps Snider, who played seven more years, was being hard on himself. But the numbers between 1953 and 1957 were historic. En route to a Hall of Fame career built on 407 home runs, Snider went deep 40 or more times in five consecutive seasons.

Only fellow Cooperstown enshrinees Babe Ruth and Ralph Kiner had done that. No one has matched the feat 37 years later.

“We loved Brooklyn, and nobody wanted the leave except Mr. O’Malley,” Snider said.

O’Malley took the team to Los Angeles, but left its soul in Brooklyn.

“I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything,” Snider said. “You just can’t buy that.”

Gone are Hilda Chester, the leather-lunged fan with the annoying cowbell.

Gone is the Dodgers Sym-Phony, a so-called band that harassed umpires with “Three Blind Mice” and the opposition with “The Worms Crawl In.”

Gone are the days when “Cookie played hooky to go and see The Duke,” as Terry Cashman insists of a friend in “Talkin’ Baseball (Willie, Mickey and The Duke).”

“It was different because the fans were right on top of you,” Snider said. “You got to know them, even some of their names.

“We all lived in Brooklyn. We all died with Brooklyn.”

Not that there weren’t difficult times.

Snider once was quoted as calling inhabitants of the colorful old ballpark that was to meet a wrecker’s ball in 1960 the worst fans in the game. He came to the park after the quote was published and was booed with a passion generally reserved for a Giant.

Snider soon silenced them with a few rainbow shots over the 38-foot-high screen.

The Dodgers were beaten in the World Series by the Yankees in 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953. This intensified the Brooklyn battle cry of “Wait Till Next Year.”

When it arrived, in 1955, Snider starred with four home runs--he also had hit four in 1952, and to this day holds the National League record for most World Series homers with 11.

Twice in his career, he nearly hit four homers in a game--a feat accomplished only 12 times in history.

“I could just as easily have had four homers that day, except for the fact that I hit the ball so hard it went on a line into the screen, no more than a couple of feet from the top,” Snider once said of a three-homer day in 1955.

It duplicated a feat of five years earlier, also at Ebbets Field.

Snider, who over 18 seasons compiled a lifetime batting average of .295, was a disciple of Branch Rickey. A wild swinger when he came up in 1947, Snider was harnessed by Rickey, who made him practice standing at home plate with a bat on his shoulder calling balls and strikes, but forbade him to swing.

In addition to leading the NL in homers with 43 in 1956, Snider led in runs scored from 1953 to 1955. He drove in 100 or more runs six times, including a league-leading 136 in 1955, and scored 100 or more on six occasions. Between 1953 and 1957, Snider scored 581 runs, drove in 585 and batted a composite .321.

Snider played on two World Series championship teams, the second being the 1959 Los Angeles Dodgers. But it was never the same.

Today, the 67-year-old Snider lives in retirement in Fallbrook, Calif. He is among the dwindling number of survivors from a group author Roger Kahn anointed “The Boys of Summer.”

Gone are Hall of Famers Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella; and Billy Cox, Junior Gilliam, Carl (Skoonj) Furillo and Gil (Moonie) Hodges.

Snider says he discusses them with fellow Hall of Famer Pee Wee Reese.

“I remind Pee Wee that we are the only survivors of the regular position players,” Snider said. “And he says, ‘Duke . . . shut up.’ ”