A Nice Spring Night for a Boy of Summer

The old Dodger walked slowly. He will be 80 in September and has an arthritic leg, so rushing wasn’t a consideration. Nor would it have served any purpose.

This was another quiet homecoming for Duke Snider.

He lives in Fallbrook and says he comes back once or twice a year. To be sure, it wasn’t Ebbets Field, but a Dodger in Dodger Stadium knows he is home. If he needed more assurance, Snider needed only to recall that his single to center field was the first Dodger hit in Dodger Stadium.

That was opening day, 1962, the only year Snider played there. It was his last of 16 years as a Dodger, followed by unproductive, phase-out years with the New York Mets in ’63 and the San Francisco Giants in ’64.

“By then, I couldn’t play,” he says. “But I had four kids to feed.”

The elevator opened to a tunnel leading to the field. Along the walls were huge pictures of star players, some whose numbers have been retired, some who are in the Hall of Fame. There were Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese, Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella -- many others. And there, where it belonged, was No. 4, a number retired in 1980, the same year its owner was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame.

The Duke of Flatbush, the center fielder of the Boys of Summer, now stood among them.

There was a giant mural that stopped him. It showed the World Series champion Dodgers of 1959, sitting on the steps of Los Angeles City Hall, in the midst of adoring fans and raining confetti. It was the year he batted .308, hit 23 home runs, drove in 88 runs and hit the last of his 11 homers in World Series play.

He hit four home runs in the 1952 World Series and four more in 1955, the Dodgers’ first championship season, when they still were in Brooklyn.

In that memorable season, he hit .309 with 42 homers and a league-leading 136 RBIs. A season like that today is worth $20 million and a life of limos.

The symbolism of the evening was easy to miss.

On a night when the greatest home-run hitter in the history of the Dodgers had come back to visit, shake some hands, see old friends and sign copies of a new book he has written, the eyes of Dodger Stadium, and all of baseball, were looking to the north, where the giant Giant was trying to match and pass Babe Ruth’s 714 home run total.

In the press box, writers were in frequent phone contact with colleagues on the scene in the Bay Area, there to chronicle the moment when the Babe would be matched. In the broadcast booth, another legendary Dodger, Vin Scully, gave his listeners updates every time the giant Giant came to the plate.

Snider, handsome in a blue sweater that was accented by his striking white hair, did interviews in the dugout, waved to fans and had his picture flashed on the big screen in center field.

It has been 44 years since he hit the last of his team-record 389 home runs. It has been argued that that number, achieved in an age of tougher travel, fewer games, worse lighting and robust pitching staffs, can stand proud against the fatter numbers of the giant Giant, and others of his era. More directly, it has been argued that alleged use of performance-enhancing drugs by the likes of the giant Giant have skewed all the numbers in baseball, a sport that exists because of them.

Snider, who certainly enhanced his own performance over the years with a couple of extra aspirins after doubleheaders, took the high road on this issue.

“I love watching him hit, watching how hard he has worked to become a better hitter,” Snider says. “On the steroid thing, I have no comment.”

On the field, the Dodgers breezed early against the Houston Astros, behind Brett Tomko’s sharp pitching. Later, with a 9-0 lead and the junior varsity in, it became a little dicey.

Inside, in a hallway, fans lined up to get Snider’s autograph on his book, “Few and Chosen: Defining Dodger Greatness Across the Eras.” There were 200 to sign and they went quickly.

The younger people were courteous, the older ones in awe. One man told Snider he’d seen him play when he was 9 years old and remembered that Johnny Antonelli and Don Newcombe were the pitchers in that game.

A father brought his son, who had Down’s syndrome, for an autograph, and the young man smiled widely in the presence of Snider.

A woman in a tight green top with the word “lucky” written across the front asked for a picture with Snider, then asked whether he’d mind if she posed with her arm around him. Snider smiled widely.

Soon, the books were all signed. As the Dodger jayvees held off the Astros, Snider made his way slowly back through tunnels and up elevators to depart. It had been a good night, a nice return. People had noticed, had paid attention.

Undoubtedly, somewhere on his ride home, there was news that the giant Giant had not yet done the inevitable, that he had gone 0 for 4 and popped up in his last at-bat. For at least one more day, the Babe was safe, the sanctity of the game’s good old days intact.

Best guess is that, at the news, the old Dodger allowed himself a quick grin and a nod.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. Dwyre, who was sports editor of The Times for 25 years until last month, will write columns for Tuesdays and Saturdays. Today’s is his first.