Time flies

MY DAUGHTER already a somewhat smug--but adoringly so--Yankee fan at the tender age of four (she's now 11), is fond of putting the same question to me every summer: "Daddy," she asks, her face plastered with that irrepressibly knowing grin, "are the Giants ever going to win the World Series in your lifetime?" My answer remains unwavering: "Only if I live long enough."

This year, though, I got a jolt of reality concerning just how old I am as well as how long I've pledged allegiance to the Giants--it is the 50th anniversary of the New York Giants' and Brooklyn Dodgers' last season in Gotham City before moving to the West Coast. Yikes! The math isn't nearly as tough as the reality. Since I was born in December of 1957--the Giants last won the Series in '54, by the way--I must have started life during spring training of that final campaign. Of course, there are worse things than pushing 50. After all, what if I was some poor 99-year-old Chicago Cubs fan still waiting for my first World Series title. (Actually, I once tried to sway my daughter into the Cubbie camp. That ill-fated move--hey, misery loves company--resulted in her pledging loyalty to the Bronx Bombers. "Wait a minute," she said, eyeballing me suspiciously. "Let me get this straight: The Cubs never win and the Yankees win almost every year--and you want me to be a Cubs fan?!" Even as a preschooler, this girl knew what was what.)

The Giants-Dodgers rivalry--at one time the bitterest in all of sports--runs in my blood. Both my grandfathers were Dodger fans. My maternal grandfather, until the day he died, always referred to his favorite baseball team as "Brooklyn." No bitterness or sense of betrayal in his voice; to him, the Dodgers simply were "Brooklyn," even if they had relocated to Los Angeles. I remember watching Game 4 of the 1966 World Series with him on television--the Dodgers were swept by the Baltimore Orioles, three via shutouts. He turned to me when the end was near and said matter-of-factly: "Brooklyn's in trouble." No hidden or special significance here--just another memory.

My paternal grandfather also loved "Dem Burns," a fact gleefully exploited by his son (my dad). When the Dodgers visited the Polo Grounds to play the hated Giants, my father--whose favorite player was Ralph Kiner, so he rooted for the then-perennially last-place Pittsburgh Pirates-would go with my grandfather and dutifully root for the Dodgers. However, when the Giants ventured across the river to face their arch-rivals, my dad cheered on the visitors, just to irk his pop. It got so bad, my father once told me, that he and his mother sat in one section of Ebbets Field while his father sat by himself in another section.

Then there is the tale of the second "Shot Heard 'Round the World"--the first, of course, in keeping with the patriotic theme of this issue, started the Revolutionary War--when Bobby Thomson's ninth-inning home run stole the 1951 pennant from Brooklyn; my grandfather, upon hearing the call on the radio, immediately walked off his job and went on a three-day bender. He went on to explain that he didn't get fired since his boss went on a five-day bender. Of course, Russ Hodges' famous call of that home run--"The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!! The Giants win the pennant!!!! ... And they're going crazy.... Wooooooooaaaaa!!!!!!!!"--has been heard a million times, yet two images on the film clip of that historic moment always catch my eye: Eddie Stanky cutting across the infield before Thomson even had finished circling the bases and tackling Giants manager Leo Durocher in the third base coaches box, and Dodger second baseman Jackie Robinson trailing Thomson around the bases to make sure he touched them all. (Imagine such heads-up play by any current-day player.)

Moreover, it is Robinson, whose legacy is being celebrated this season (60 years since he broke major league baseball's color barrier), who provides the perfect example of just how deep the Giants-Dodger rivalry used to run. After 10 years as a Brooklyn Dodger, he was traded to the Giants. Yet, he refused to change addresses, and retired rather than play for Brooklyn's arch enemies. I only wish Giants' ace Juan Marichal had shown the same resolve. The Dominican Dandy--he of the famous high-leg-kick motion--was winding down his Hall-of-Fame career when he signed as a free agent with the Dodgers. Although he only appeared in two games for Los Angeles (with an ERA over 13), it absolutely killed me to see my favorite all-time pitcher in a Dodger uniform. It was, after all, those same Dodger threads that may have proved to be Marichal's undoing, as he never completely was forgiven for the clubbing (with his bat while at bat) he gave L.A. catcher Johnny Rosboro during one of those fever-pitch confrontations that marked this rivalry (even the West Coast's tamer version of it). Although enjoying a number of brilliant seasons that can compare with any on record, Marichal never was voted the Cy Young Award by the nation's sportswriters, although going head-to-head against the likes of Cardinal righthander Bob Gibson and Dodger southpaw Sandy Koufax might have had something to do with it. That trio formed the backbone of the N.L. All-Star pitching staff during the 1960s. This season's Mid-Summer Classic, as if to remind us of those halcyon days, is in San Francisco.