Boy, It’s Good to See Duke

It has been more than 40 years since he stepped regally across the fields of Flatbush, more than 40 summers since he could be reasonably be called a boy.

Yet when the grandmother from West Hills placed her photo on his table and reverently backed away, those tears were fresh.

“Thank you Duke,” Dee Sabino said. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

And so it happened that the last remaining regular from one of baseball’s most legendary teams came home Tuesday, precisely one month after the death of Pee Wee Reese, into the embrace of fans who need him now more than ever.

Duke Snider returned to Dodger Stadium.

And it is any wonder that as the game was beginning between the Dodgers and Montreal Expos, there were perhaps more fans in line for his autograph than sitting in the stands?

“It’s been a long, hard season around here,” said Jessica Jae of Glendale, in the middle of a line of 300 that snaked through a concourse. “It kind of makes you want to go back to the tradition.”

Snider, who at 73 still has the smooth gait of royalty and endearing smile of a commoner, is the last public jewel of that tradition.

While he and Sandy Koufax are the only two living Hall of Famers from the “Boys of Summer” Dodger teams of the 1950s, Koufax is quiet and reclusive.

With each passing day, Snider increasingly loves being seen.

“Little did we realize in those years that we would be remembered as long as we have,” he said during only his second visit to Dodger Stadium this year. “It’s so amazing. It’s so touching.”

While Snider signed 300 photographs Tuesday for free, he admitted he does several card shows and paid public appearances each year to make the sort of money never available to him as a player.

But he said that once he shows up, it inevitably becomes about more than the money.

“The things I hear,” he said, shaking his head. “The things I see.”

There was the 50-year-old man who openly wept while Snider signed his autograph.

“People always tell you about a game they remembered, when you went four for four or hit a home run,” Snider recalled. “In these people’s minds, you never struck out. You never had a bad day.”

Then there was the young woman who approached him while he was signing his autobiography to ask a favor.

She and her father had not been speaking for four years. She wanted to reach out to him. She knew this book, about his favorite player and favorite team, would be the only way.

“She started crying, then I got tears in my eyes,” Snider said. “I told her, I will sign exactly what you want me to sign. Just tell me.”

It was like that Tuesday, people waiting in line for more than hour, many wearing faded Dodger shirts and wrinkled blue caps and paying no attention to the game.

At the end of Snider’s table, there was a large cutout photograph of five smiling young men with their hands joined at the end of one bat.

Duke, Jackie, Campy, Pee Wee and Gil.

It was impossible not to notice that Duke is the only one left, and that the Dodgers might never have five players like that again.

“This is about when the Dodgers were the common folks team,” said John Ciulik of Irvine. “When they were like family.”

Ciulik, first in line, learned a bit about the new Dodger family when their memorabilia contractors allowed those who had purchased expensive Snider items to jump to the front of the line.

All of those who received autographs were also exposed to this new attitude when they were asked to give their name and addresses to the promoters upon receiving a “free” picture and a place in that line.

No doubt, they will be receiving junk mail from those promoters any day now.

Snider seemed separate from all that, though, gracious to everyone, sharing memories with a former high school opponent, talking about his golf game with another old-timer, tightening his lips when somebody brought up Pee Wee Reese.

How bad did Snider want to attend Reese’s funeral? He took a seven-hour bus ride from his remote Northern California summer home to the San Francisco airport to make a flight.

It is hard to imagine a current player going to such extremes for a teammate.

It is hard to imagine a player keeping a 44-year-old team photo in his house, glancing up at it to remind himself who is still around.

“Thirty-eight guys from the 1955 Dodgers, and only 11 are still left,” he said. “I can look up there and point out guys and go, ‘Dead, dead, dead . . . ‘ “

You ask, even though you know it has been asked a dozen times before.

What was so different about that team?

“We had a good balance, and I’m not just talking about ability,” he said. “We were a bunch of individuals who loved each other. The fans sense this, and it became family.”

He paused, winced.

“The idea of family is overrated in sports,” he said. “It’s like, if you win, then you are automatically a family. But we were a family.”

He doesn’t watch the Dodgers much anymore, seeing as he usually leaves his Fallbrook home for Northern California during the summer.

But he says that what he knows, he doesn’t much applaud.

“I would like to see them put a little more emphasis on team than individual numbers,” he said. “The loyalty isn’t there like it used to be; loyalty between players and management and each other.”

He is asked if he ever met Rupert Murdoch.

The good news is, he met him during Murdoch’s visit on his first opening day last year.

The bad news?

“I sat behind him in Peter O’Malley’s box and listened to Peter try to explain the game to him,” Snider said. “And the Dodgers have always been so solid.”

That’s how Snider, who is in good health after recent heart surgeries, hopes people will remember him.

As a Dodger. As solid.

“I hope when I die, the bottom paragraph of my obituary doesn’t say that he was indicted for tax evasion,” he said.

Oh yeah, that. In 1995, Snider plead guilty to conspiracy to commit tax fraud for not reporting $97,400 in cash from memorabilia shows.

The plea was entered in a Brooklyn courtroom. Afterward, he and Willie McCovey, who plead guilty to different tax evasion charge, were met by reporters on the courthouse steps.

McCovey walked past. Snider stopped.

“I told my lawyer, I have to say something about this,” he recalled.

So he did, announcing, “I got caught. I’m very sorry about it. I hope to get a second chance from a lot of my fans.”

Apology accepted. You could see that Tuesday night.

Those faded Dodger shirts and wrinkled blue caps reveled in him, this last glimpse of summer before the fall.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com