John Baiata Senior Editor

My father, John Baiata, was born in East New York, Brooklyn. His parents were Sicilian, off the boat, and they chose East New York for its growing Italian-American community. 

The area shared another important heritage – the Brooklyn Dodgers.  By the time my father was born in 1933, the youngest of three surviving boys, the Dodgers had already been around for 43 years, and had a following that earned them equal status with mothers (in general) and popes (Pius XI, specifically) in Italian neighborhoods everywhere.

That same year, after a disappointing sixth place finish, Casey Stengel was installed as the Dodgers new manager. Stengel lasted three (losing) seasons, and was replaced by legendary Dodgers pitcher Burleigh Grimes. But Grimes could not apply the same wizardry to his squad as he had to his spitball, and two more losing seasons followed. 

By 1941, with Leo (the Lip) Durocher now at the helm, the Dodgers were competitive again. They captured their first pennant in 21 years, and the imaginations of young boys like my father everywhere. Led by National League MVP (and Italian-American) Dolf Camilli, they squared off against the cross-town rival New York Yankees, who dispatched them in five games.

“Resourceful” would be a kind way to describe my father and his two older brothers.

They had to be. The family depended on the income from my grandfather’s barber shop,

or what was left of it after the frequent card games he would run at the back of the shop.

They lived behind the shop, the boys sleeping three to a bed.     

My father learned early that developing a rapport with the local construction workers would earn him their redeemable lunchtime soda bottles. The brothers would forage for coal that fell from the passing freight trains running along Atlantic Avenue. 

During World War II, ten pounds of scrap metal earned you entry into the bleachers to the Dodgers’ Ebbetts Field. The three boys became salvage experts, and once went so far as to strip down a serviceable piano for its metal, so they could go to a ballgame. My grandparents were not amused.

A long road to victory
The war sapped another precious resource – baseball players. The war-depleted Dodgers struggled, and in 1945 new Dodgers President Branch Rickey began to scour the Negro Leagues for someone to break baseball’s color barrier.

By the time Jackie Robinson took the field on Opening Day in 1947, my father was already a veteran of the neighborhood’s marathon stickball games. They were not for the meek. Failure to slide on the concrete for a decisive play earned you a reputation you did not want following you around the streets of East New York.

He boxed in the Police Athletic League, and by 1949 – when the Dodgers would lose yet again to the Yankees in the World Series, he had quit school. He joined the Navy the following year, but his trouble with authority figures was not a good match for his sailor’s blues. He did time in the brig for being absent without leave, and by 1951 was back on the streets of Brooklyn.

That year, he was witness to arguably the greatest pennant race in baseball history. By then the Dodgers roster was loaded:  Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Carl Furillo, Don Newcombe, Preacher Roe. They were running away with the pennant, holding a 13 game lead in August over their other hated rivals, the New York Giants. 

The Giants, however, came roaring back, and forced a three-game playoff with the Dodgers at season’s end. The teams split the first two games. For the decisive final game, my father and anyone else with allegiance to the Dodgers gathered at the local soda shop, whose crusty owner was famous for running off any “loiterers” not spending money in his shop. 

They were hanging on radio broadcaster Red Barber’s every word when the Dodgers took a two-run lead into the bottom of the 9^th inning. When the Giants’ Bobby Thompson ended the Dodgers season with a three-run blast off of Ralph Branca, the stunned Dodger faithful heard something they’d never had from the owner. “Ice-cream sodas for everyone. On the house.”

Two more World Series losses to the Yankees in 1952 and 1953 tested the resolve of even the most die-hard Dodgers fan. “Wait ‘Till Next Year” became their mantra. Then, in 1955, two momentous events occurred in my father’s life: he met my mother, and the Brooklyn Dodgers finally beat the Yankees in a thrilling, seven game World Series.  There would be no more waiting. All of Brooklyn celebrated, like never before.

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