It’s Los Angeles vs. New York. They meet once again in a World Series Classic for the first time since 1981. On the first day of the start of the series, my former college roomie —born and bred in Brooklyn— and I had the following exchange:
Me: “Go Dodgers!!!”
Roomie: “Damn the Dodgers.!!! We supported them through all the bad years. And then they finally win the World Series and they pack up and move to California. The hell with them and their progeny!!!”
Me: “Sorry, but those dammed Yankees and their barrels of money have always stuck in my craw. A plague to baseball.”
Roomie: “Dodgers have the highest-paid player in history, and he is a foreigner.”
Me: “Amazing! So many players are foreigners!”
Roomie: “Most are from the Americas!”
Me: “Thank you, Mexico for Fernando.”
Roomie: “It would have been great if the whole thing could have been a Subway Series.”
Me: “I love the Mets cuz they’re not the Yankees.”
We say goodbye and wait for another day when we can happily disagree again. We’ve been doing that for close to six decades. If I’m black, he’s white; if he’s black, I’m white. And so our series goes on.
Experiencing some type of Jungian inclination after our exchange, I considered why the Yanks singularly stick in my craw, and why today’s Dodgers stick in that of my roomie. I spent a lot of time visiting my father’s office in the Bronx, so close to The Cathedral of Baseball that I never had to take the subway to see a game. By proximity and neighborhood osmosis, I should be a Yankees fan, and yet, I’ve been a Dodger’s fan through and through even though I wasn’t born and bred in Brooklyn like my roomie. Why is that?
In the meantime, while I’m unconsciously mulling over the Bronx Bombers vs. the Dodgers somewhere in the interstices of my mind, I hear that Fernando Valenzuela has passed, and I think I see some significance —Fernandomania!
Fernando’s journey as a humble boy from a small farming village in Sonora, Mexico to glitzy Los Angeles by helping the Dodgers on their own journey to defeat the New York Yankees in the World Series of 1981 could have been another Ragged Dick narrative of the type penned by Horatio Alger. But with a caveat: At that time Los Angeles’s Hispanic community was grappling with the tensions created when the Dodgers built their stadium. Needless to say, Fernando was a Mexican immigrant of the type often maligned in our culture.
After pitching a 146-pitch-complete game to win Game 3 of the 1981 World Series, Vin Scully said, “This was not the best Fernando game. It was his finest"; referring to Fernando’s achievements Scully offers “It is the most puzzling, wonderful, rewarding thing I think we’ve seen in baseball in many, many years”; at a later date and time, Vin Scully said, “Fernando Valenzuela has pitched a no-hitter at 10:17 in the evening of June 29, 1990. If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky.”
Do these comments by a legendary broadcaster express the “puzzling,” dichotomous thinking of that era? Of ours? Perhaps, but they also highlight the truth that an immigrant’s life in the USA —no matter his status— is messy and complicated.
On the other hand, a Mexican-oriented blog suggests that Fernando Valenzuela can be seen as the epitome of everything that a Mexican can dream of when migrating to the United States in search of the “American way of life” [Fernando Valenzuela, la historia de todo lo que un mexicano puede soñar al llegar a EU | La Silla Rota ].
My fanatical attachment to the Dodgers began in 1953, mainly because of aesthetic reasons. I preferred their Topps baseball cards above any other team’s. The Dodger’s vibrant images were second to none. Then my family moved from Miami to Havana in 1955, and my mother wouldn’t let me take my Dodgers card collection along. Losing those cards created a strong yearning within me. But I kept up with baseball, and specifically with the Dodgers and their irrepressible nemesis, the Yanks.
Baseball had shown up in Cuba in 1864. The Dodgers showed up in Brooklyn twenty years later. Nineteen fifty-five was a year of Firsts for me. I received my polio vaccine; I heard Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock”; I returned to Havana after having lived in Miami Beach for almost two years; my father brought along with us a 1955 Coupe de Ville with shark fins; and the Dodgers beat the Yankees in the World Series. Oh, Happy Days!
Hemingway met the Dodgers when they visited Cuba in 1942. He invited a group of Dodgers to Finca Vigía for drinks and cards one evening. Well-known for his revelry, Hemingway challenged Hugh Casey a relief pitcher, to a boxing match —so the story goes. Both were physically imposing men, each at least six feet tall and about 200 pounds, but Casey was 28 and Hemingway 42 years old. Initially, Casey resisted Hemingway’s challenge, but then he relented, as drunk boys would. According to Billy Herman, Casey’s teammate, the Dodger’s pitcher then proceeded to pound the Nobel Laureate into the ground. Bonding with Casey after the battle, as drunk men would, Hemingway invited the young pitcher to stay the night at his home, and so Casey did. Casey would finish the 1942 season with a 6-3 record and a 2.25 ERA in 112 innings in 1942. And yet, despite his camaraderie with the Doggers when they visited Cuba, Hemingway placed the Yankees and Joe DiMaggio right smack in the middle of his 1953 book, The Old Man and the Sea. Both the Yankees and the “Yankee Clipper” have achieved symbolic status in Hemingway’s Pulitzer Prize novel.
In the 1967 movie The Graduate, Simon and Garfunkel also elevate “Joltin’ Joe” to a symbolic level within their lyrics:
“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you
Woo, woo, woo….”
It’s 1955. I’m glued to my grandfather’s RCA radio listening to the World Series, together with the rest of the males in my family. The volume is set beyond its fidelity. I don’t know why some people believe loud words are necessary to understand the English language. We are listening to the voice of Vin Scully coming from Ebbets Field. The Dodgers are leading the Yankees 2-0 in the bottom of the sixth during Game 7 when Sandy Amorós, the Cuban left fielder born in Matanzas Province, is sent into left field because of his great speed. The Yankees have runners on first and second ready to score as Yogi Berra walks up to bat. He’s a left-handed hitter so the outfield shifts right. Yogi hits a high line drive to the corner of the left field that makes me hold my breath for what seems to be a long time, but Sandy reacts lightning fast across the field and snatches it with his extended right hand then skids to a halt and throws it left-handed it to relay player Pee Wee Reese who in turn shoots it fast as a bullet to first base, thus doubling off two Yank players and keeping New York from tying the game. Pandemonium is happening right in front of my eyes and on our radio. The Dodgers carry their lead to the game’s end. The seventh is the turning point that gives the Dodgers their first world title, mostly because of that astonishing catch by a 5 feet 7 inches tall Dodger who weighed 170 pounds. Vivan los Dodgers! Viva Amorós!
Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda! Had Simon and Garfunkel been in harmony with our Cuban culture of 1955, their song’s lyrics might have said:
“Where have you gone, Sandy Amorós?
Cuba turns its desperate pleas to you.
Woo, woo, woo.”
What Fernando “El Toro” Valenzuela did for Mexican-Americans in Los Angeles and the USA in 1981 is what Sandy Amorós may have done for Cubans in 1955: Provided the unalterable belief that the American Dream is open to all, no matter their color or ethnicity. And that is a transcending legacy!
Whenever the Yankees have played for a Pennant, I have prepped by watching one of my favorite movies, Damn Yankees. Its plot is simple. An old man who is tired of the Yankees’ winning ways, strikes a Faustian deal with the devil so that his beloved team will be able to beat those Damn Yankees. After experiencing many loops and turns, the hero’s team wins the league’s pennant. However, the World Series is still around the corner, so after numerous temptations by a femme fatale, played by Gwen Verdon, whose siren song (“What Lola wants, Lola gets….”) almost drags the hero (Tab Hunter) into Hell…. The film ends with an enjoyable twist at the end. Go Dodgers!!!
This year’s World Series is East Coast vs. West Coast in another showdown between two of baseball’s elite teams, and to me, certainly the twain have met.
Playing for the Dodgers is Shohei Ohtani who was born in Japan in 1994. Nicknamed “Shotime,” his 2021–2024 seasons are already considered among the greatest in baseball history, with some talking heads already comparing them favorably to the early career of the Yankees’ famous “Bambino” George Herman Ruth.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, a pitcher from Japan, shut down the Yankees in game 2, thus giving the Dodgers a 2-0 World Series lead. Exhibiting an eastern, understated celebratory style, he walked back to the dugout and gave a hardly noticeable tip of his cap to cheering fans. “Arigatou gozaimasu.” West meets East, and that’s three down, and one to go, and maybe a four-game sweep. “What Lola wants, Lola gets….”
It’s well known that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball on April 15, 1947, when he first appeared with the Brooklyn Dodgers. However, that day was the second time Robinson broke baseball’s color barrier. The first time occurred on March 17, 1946, when he played second base for the Montreal Royals (a minor league branch of the Dodgers at that time) in a spring training game at City Island Ball Park in Daytona Beach, Florida (NAID 77841845).
Elston C. Howard broke the color barrier with the Yankees on April 15, 1955. Howard helped the Yankees win four World Series titles, and he became the first African American to win the American League MVP Award in 1963.
The Dodgers offered DiMaggio a managerial job in 1953, but he turned it down, even though he had retired in 1951. He mighta, coulda, woulda been part of the Dodgers 1955 Championship Team. Go figure!
Although I’ve tried to categorize as many of the reasons as I can to understand why I’m an unapologetic Dodgers fan, I’m as baffled as I was when I started thinking about that question. No concept, property, relationship, or definition in my field of knowledge has offered me any insight as to why. Perhaps the whys of life can never be answered, and that’s why I’m watching Damn Yankees again before the prime-time event tonight. However, I have learned one thing: The Dodgers have certainly played a part in breaking baseball’s color barrier. Like democracy, baseball is a great equalizer.
The Professor