Reese Remembered as Man Among ‘Boys’

Brooklyn Dodger teammates attending Pee Wee Reese’s funeral Wednesday remembered the Hall of Fame shortstop as a man among the “Boys of Summer.”

“He was the tradition, he was the greatest Dodger of them all,” center fielder Duke Snider said.

Snider recalled a trip to Hawaii with Reese and Don Zimmer to attend the baseball winter meetings. “They had a big chair there that was called the ‘Kahuna chair,’ ” he said. “Zimmer said to him, ‘Captain, that’s your chair.’ ”

About 2,000 people attended Reese’s funeral at Southeast Christian Church. The nine-time all-star, who played on seven pennant winners and one World Series champion in Brooklyn, died Saturday at 81 after a two-year fight with lung cancer.

Among the mourners were nearly all the surviving regulars from the Brooklyn glory years of the 1940s and ‘50s: Joe Black, Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, Ralph Branca, Clyde King, Snider, Zimmer (who took a temporary leave from his post as coach of the New York Yankees) and even the deeply private Sandy Koufax.

“He was a teammate for four years, a friend for 40,” Koufax said. “What is there to say?”

Southeast minister Bob Russell eulogized Reese, who followed his playing career with one in broadcasting, in a 45-minute service that included video clips and a rendition of “Amazing Grace.”

“There have been a lot of great baseball players, a lot of well-known announcers,” Russell said. “Pee Wee Reese is more remembered for being a good man, a gentleman, a leader, a competitor, a courageous person.”

Russell noted that “Teammates,” a book about Reese and Jackie Robinson and the friendship that grew between them, is now used to teach racial tolerance in some elementary schools.

Former Dodger owner Peter O’Malley, whose father moved the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, was impressed as a teenager by the esteem in which Reese’s teammates held their captain.

“Pee Wee had something, today you’d call it people skills,” O’Malley said. “He knew how to communicate. I think he would have been an extraordinary manager.”