Hang it up!

This one is a bit of a stretch, wait... I said that before, I might have lost my touch. But honestly, I’m very happy with this item. Let’s make it interesting. I posted a picture of it below, now... let me know if you get how it’s tied to the Dodgers.

Hit sign, win suit
For those of you who got it: you know your Dodgers history, well done! Abe Stark was a tailor and got famous in Brooklyn because of his advertisment on the right field wall. Players who hit the sign got a free suit. In 1931 the sign moved under the famous Ebbets Field scoreboard and was way more difficult to hit. Partly because of great fielding by the likes of Furillo and Walker. One player, Mel Ott, hit it twice, though.

Abe Stark
Stark became so famous he even got himself elected as president of the New York Council, twice. During his time as president (1954-1961) he had two alternatives to the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn. First he suggested building the new stadium in Prospect Park, later he pitched the idea of the city of New York to become stockholders of the Giants and Dodgers to keep the teams in town. After his stint as president he was elected borough president of Brooklyn three times!

The Hanger
It’s not much to look at, but it breathes that film noir kinda vibe. The name Abe Stark is near the top twice. The left arm says ‘Brooklyn’s finest clothes shop’. The right arm ‘opp. Loew’s Pitkin Theatre’. The arms are connected by a horizontal rod for some trousers, fancy! It sure feels special to hang my Dodgers jersey on this hanger.

Licence Plate Topper

Topper

Licence Plate toppers, you don’t see those a lot nowadays. In their heydays during the 40s, 50s and 60s they were mostly used as mobile billboards. Advertising companies, events or places you should visit.

Vernon Co.
One of the companies that produced toppers was the Vernon Company based in Newton, Iowa. The branding company was founded in 1902 and still operates from Newton today.
Apparently the borough of Brooklyn found it necessary to advertise its potential as a holiday destination, sometime before 1958. Vernon delivered!

Visit Brooklyn
A brightly colored topper tries to lure people with some of Brooklyn’s mayor attractions. In a circle in the upper left corner, made to look like a baseball we see, starting at the bottom, Brooklyn Bridge. The middle part is for Brooklyn’s team: the Dodgers. There’s the logo, an umpire and a ballplayer. At the top the words Coney Island and the, now defunct, parachute jump. The attraction was created for the 1939 World’s Fair and ceased operations in the 1960s.

All in all it’s a meager Dodgers related item, but it looks amazing, even after rougly six decades. It’s a stretch, but I had to have it.

Pafko at the Wall: Review

Imagine having a drone at the Polo Grounds at game three of the 1951 National League play offs, flying from one vantage point to the next. Catching dialogues, seeing the crowd in a partly empty stadium that still is filled with electricity and hope. You might get something like ‘Pafko at the wall’, a novella that reads like a 90 page poem.
Don DeLillo, famous author and multiple Pulitzer winner, sketches scenes of that faithful day, like no one else. If you want to feel, smell, see and be in the stands on that October 3rd 1951, read this piece.

Jackie Gleason, Frank Sinatra and others take center stage in a cast of extras. Among showers op ripped up pieces of paper and one boy who jumped the turnstiles, defeated the ushers and stadium cops to leave the game with a piece of history.
Then a dance commences between boy and man, focussing in a nine inch circumference red stiched sphere.

The whole thing is a shakespearean play, where the underdogs had to put across the message ‘it’s over, only when the fat lady sings’. And she sung her heart out.
More than 70 years later, a Dodger fan can still feel the pain, but it was never brought so painfully beautiful as in DeLillo’s novella.

If you want more from the lead actors of this play... read ‘The Echoing Green: the untold story of Bobby Thomson, Ralph Branca and the shot heard around the world’. Reviewed here.

1916 World Series on paper

Some numbers
In 2017, the Dodgers reached the World Series for the first time in 29 years and lost. 101 years earlier, they reached the World Series for the first time and lost as well. In 2017 it was against a cheating team from Houston. In 1916 against the Boston Red Sox. Champions in 1915 who would repeat and two years later would win their last title for 89 years. It was against that same Boston team the Dodgers lost their last World Series in 2018.

1916, It was a different time. No television, no radio, a war going on. The Dodgers were the Robins, they played in Brooklyn and Ebbets Field was only three years old. The New York Yankees were seven years away from their first World Series title of the 27 to come. The Brooklyn baseball team, the Robins, named after their manager Wilbert Robinson, reached the World Series with a 94-60 record in the National League.

Dive into the past
All the information about the series is available on Wikipedia, but I got my hands on some newspapers from 1916 and seeing the report in a document from that period is kinda cool.

The York Dispatch, celebrating its 40 year anniversary in 1916, is still in publication to this day. It serves York County, Pennsylvania but found the Brooklyn vs. Boston match up interesting enough to dedicate a quarter of the front page on the World Series.

The Robins lost 4 games to one. Only being able to win game 3. Game 2 was the longest World Series game in innings until game 3 of the 2018 World Series. Yes, the one between the Red Sox and the Dodgers! Game 2 saw 14 innings of pitching by Babe Ruth. Another interesting name... Casey Stengel, outfielder for Brooklyn.

Below are the five headlines in The York Dispatch.