"I see the boys of summer in their ruin," Dylan Thomas had written in a poem that would forever become linked to the Dodgers. Roger Kahn's masterpiece was still in the future in 1956, but the great Dodger team that had dominated the National League for a decade was clearly approaching the end of the line. Age and injuries were taking their toll on men like Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Carl Erskine and Pee Wee Reese. Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax were on hand, but were still untested youngsters, not the dominant pitchers they would become on the west coast.
Shapiro interweaves an account of the 1956 season with the story of Brooklyn's transformation in the postwar years. Yes, many whites were fleeing to the suburbs, but Ebbets Field was still filled with fans. In fact, he suggests, it was a wonderful, if brief period when black, brown and white fans came together for a common purpose.
What seems abundantly clear from the archives Shapiro has mined is that far from looking for a quick exit, O'Malley was seeking every opportunity to stay (although on his terms.) All he wanted--reasonably enough, in his view--was the city's help in securing the site for a new stadium. Here, though, he came up against the most powerful man in New York--Robert Moses. It was a battle he was destined to lose. Interestingly enough, while Shapiro refuses to condemn O'Malley as a carpetbagger, he does conclude he never should have owned a baseball team. Why? He simply didn't understand the game, or its true meaning to its fans. O'Malley was the kind of owner who could maximize the bottom line, and knew how to successfully market his product--but that's all it ever was to him. A product. As Shapiro's book makes clear, for millions of fans, the Brooklyn Dodgers represented so much more.--William C. Hall