With the Yankees and the Dodgers both moving on in the playoffs, and perhaps headed for collision, I finally gave in and started reading Joe Torre's 2009 memoir, The Yankee Years. It was a book I had been avoiding with a vengeance. I am a Brooklyn boy, born and bred. The first baseball game I ever attended was at Ebbets Field. I cried when the Philly Whiz Kids took the pennant away from Brooklyn. I challenged any jerk who thought the Scooter could hold a candle to Pee Wee. My heroes were 'Oisk' and Preacher, The Duke and Campy, and of course, No. 42. The last thing I wanted to read was some gloating Yankee manager's account of what a great team they were.
The Yankees were the enemy, the hated enemy. The Yankees were a collection of pinstriped harpies who made it their mission to tear the hearts out of young Brooklyn boys. There may have been some who found Yogi's 'Berraisms' endearing. There may have been those who reveled in the exploits of Whitey and the Mick, but I was never likely to be one of them. Yankee Stadium was the hell that swallowed up Dodger stalwarts, and the New York Yankees were the punishment for whatever original sin those of us in Flatbush, Bensonhurst, and Sheepshead Bay had committed.
And when the Dodgers betrayed us and turned tail to the West Coast taking Koufax and Drysdale along with them, we Brooklyn faithful were left with a void that most of us thought could never be filled. Eventually there were the Mets, and they tried. That first year there was Gil Hodges and Don Zimmer. There was Roger Craig. But they were the Mets and for god's sake the guy up front was Casey Stengel. It was some kind of cosmic joke on all kinds of levels. Years pass and the Mets become respectable. The Yankees come back down to earth. The West Coast betrayal begins to lose some of its sting. Time wounds all heels. But not the Yankees, the Yankees are still the devils. That never changes.
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