HOT CORNER

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What: “Dem Bums” DVD.

Producer: North Shore Entertainment.

Distributor: Red Ball Group.

Price: $14.98.

It can be frustrating being a Dodger fan. But it used to be worse. Before moving to Los Angeles from Brooklyn in 1958, the Dodgers were a study in futility. They didn’t win a World Series until 1955.

This compelling, newly released DVD, originally a PBS documentary that aired in 2001, chronicles that frustration.

The claim is made that the Dodgers were “America’s Team” before the term was invented. And maybe they were.

As viewers will learn, they started out in 1884 as the Brooklyn Bride Grooms of the American Assn. They became the Dodgers in the early 1900s, so named because there were so many trolley tracks in Brooklyn that residents, seeking to avoid being hit by a trolley car, were called “Trolley Dodgers.”

The Dodgers won the National League pennant in 1916, but lost the World Series to the Boston Red Sox, who were led by a pitcher named Babe Ruth.

Things were so bad in the 1920s that the Dodgers became known as the “Daffiness Boys.” During the Depression years, when one particular fan behind home plate kept yelling, “Ya bum, ya,” the Dodgers became known as “Dem Bums.”

The Dodgers lost the NL pennant on the last day of the season in 1946 and ‘50, and lost a three-game playoff in 1951 to the New York Giants on Bobby Thomson’s ninth-inning home run in Game 3.

But this documentary, narrated by David Hartman, overall isn’t a downer for Dodger fans. There’s plenty about their victory over the Yankees in the 1955 World Series and plenty about the significance of Jackie Robinson crossing the color barrier in 1947.

A highlight is the old newsreel footage. The show also includes a number of interviews, although it’s obvious many of them are dated, because the late Roy Campanella and Don Drysdale are among those featured.

At the end, five players who became known as the “Boys of Summer” are profiled. They are Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Campanella, Duke Snider and Robinson.

Campanella, who died in 1994 at 73 after being confined to a wheelchair following an auto accident in 1957, is asked if he is bitter. Campanella says that he is not bitter, that he thanks God for saving his mind. “I have a lot to be thankful for,” he says.