Duke Snider was in the style of my house on Sunday to run home on a slope between the Brooklyn Dodgers and Milwaukee Braves in 1955, my father introduced me to the Baseball Strat-o-Matic. Half an hour later, I learned that Snider, the great Dodgers, was dead.
To me, Duke Snider patrolled the greatest center fielder of the three major New York was in 1950. Of course, Mickey Mantle favorite player was Billy Crystal. And Willie Mays was the player of Everybody's favorite. But Duke Snider was my favorite player of parents in the middle of the myths that have grown up listening to.There was something so near and yet so far apart on the Brooklyn Dodgers. He had worked in New York, the Yankees, who fought so famous, but the son of Yankees fans have the opportunity to be Yankees fans. I grew up with the Mets, an evolution or devolution, depending on the year, but certainly different.
Jackie Robinson broke the color of the wall, inspired Gil Hodges applause, even though he went 0-for-the-world-series, but both had their greatest success, and he died before my birth. Duke Snider was a test in the flesh, great teams that once played in Brooklyn.
My father decided in 1988 that it was important for me, Willie, Mickey and the Duke met. Manto was the first in a friendly, sufficient in Atlantic City. He was polite, professional, and as the Yankee surface. Mays and Snider have crawled into a broadcast of the baseball card of Philadelphia.
Mays has not lifted his eyes as he signed an autograph on a copy of his autobiography. My father asked if he had signed with Howard, but the driver assured us he would not. Experience with Snider but could hardly be greater. I felt as if they were children who suffered from Greek mythology, Zeus, or take on the unaccustomed taste Goldilocks finally, that third bowl of porridge. Snider spoke kindly of what seemed like 15 minutes. Recalled, or at least wanted to remember my parents first set at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City.
In short, the rules of the hero, too. He dominates me, the great silver hair give him the right direction of a god. Only later to learn more about self-doubt plagued him throughout his career, and that the question does not. Snider has always been the player of my father's saw and the man I met that day.
In the following years saw my father and I at ways to the fiction that a baseball team can not consist of mere mortals live forever, be the first to enjoy the love of his care. A computer game, Micro League Baseball, Snider extended playing career by studying carefully printed the card systems in 1952 and 1953 Topps. A project was launched by eBay to collect all the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1955, Bowman team a way to celebrate my father's not me pass through memory and history, could hit video fuzzy Jackie Robinson Stealing Home, and Sandy Amoros his right to a gloved hand on the left corner of the field.
Not come to mind that could Duke Snider deadly than the possibility that Vin Scully never give up. At the appointed time, my father and I would just like Duke Snider, again, this time to continue with my daughter, and the history.
Somehow, my father and I had to play 31 years without a Strat-o-Matic. He was 15 when the game was released in 1961. After the game, a demo of the game last year all went in, I bought the last issue. 1.990 I bought the card players, the Id of the earliest opportunity, my beloved daughter to identify the stars present: Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden, and even Dave Magadan. And I bought in 1955, knowing that soon there would come a time where my father and I got together and experience the power team of his childhood.
That day came on Sunday. Of course, he loved the game Snider homered, while Carl Erskine held the Braves off balance all afternoon. The Dodgers had a 6-1 lead in the sixth inning when we had to suspend the game for the adults for various reasons, I can not play Strat-O-Matic, and get married, etc..
My mother and my father, and shortly after I read the news: The Dodgers announced that Duke Snider had died. But the Duke of Flatbush, he will forever live with my daughter's illness and their children.
