inning 7: the capital of baseball 1950 1960 by doris kearns goodwin my continuing love of baseball is inseparably linked to memories of my father. On summer nights, when he came home from work, the two of us would sit together on our porch, reliving that day's brooklyn dodger game, which i had permanently preserved in the large red scorebook he'd given me for my seventh birthday. I can still remember how proud i was when i first mastered all the miniature symbols that allowed me to record every movement, play by play, of our favorite players, jackie robinson and duke snider, pee wee reese and gil hodges. With the scorebook spread between us, my dad would ask me questions about different plays, whether a strikeout was called for swinging, and if i'd been careful in my scoring, i would know the answers. At such moments, when he smiled at me, i could not help but smile too, for he had one of those contagious smiles that started in his eyes and traveled across his face, leaving laugh lines on either side of his mouth. Sometimes a particular play would trigger in my dad a memory of a similar situation, framed forever in his mind, and suddenly we were back in time recalling the dodgers of his childhood 151 casey stengel, zack wheat, and jimmy johnston. Mingling together the present and the past, our conversations nurtured within me an irresistible fascination with history, which has remained to this day.

It fell to me to be the family scorekeeper not only because i was the third daughter and youngest child, but because my idea of a perfect afternoon was lying in front of our ten inch screen television, watching baseball. For all through my early childhood, my father kept from me the knowledge that the daily papers printed daily box scores, permitting me to imagine that without my symbolic renderings of all the games he had missed while he was at work, he would never have been able to follow the dodgers in the only proper way a team should be followed, day by day, inning by inning. In our neighborhood in rockville center, new york, allegiance was equally divided among dodger, yankee and giant fans. As families emigrated from different parts of the city to the suburbs of long island, the old loyalties remained intact, creating rival enclaves on every street. Born and bred in brooklyn, my father would always love the dodgers, fear the giants, and hate the abominable yankees. The butcher shop in our neighborhood was owned by a father and son, old joe and young joe schmidt.

They were both rabid giant fans, as was max, the man in charge of the vegetables. They called me ragmop, in honor of my unruly hair, and they constantly made fun of my dodgers. I'd pretend to be angry, but the truth was that i loved going into their shop i loved the sawdust on the floor, the sides of beef hanging from the ceiling, the enormous walk in freezer behind the counter. During the glorious summer of 1951, when i was eight years old and the dodgers seemed invincible, i visited my friends in the butcher shop every day. Jackie robinson was awesome that year, hitting.338 roy campanella was the mvp gil hodges hit 40 homers. But then, in the third week of august, the giants began an astonishing stretch that whittled the dodger lead away until the season ended in a tie. When the deciding play off began, i was so nervous i couldn't sit by the television.

Each time the giants came to bat in the early innings, i left the room, returning only when i knew they were out and the dodgers were up. I began to relax slightly as the dodgers pulled ahead 4 1, but when the giants came to bat in the last of the ninth, i could hear the beating of my heart. Then, as bobby thomson stepped up to the plate, with one run in and two men on base, my sister charlotte predicted that he would hit a home run and win the game for the giants. When thomson did precisely that, crushing ralph branca's pitch into the left field stand, i thought for a moment my sister had made it happen and i hated her with all my heart.

In the days that followed, i refused to go into the butcher shop, unable to face the mocking laughter that i imagined would accompany my first steps into the store. Wait till next year, my father consoled, repeating a refrain that would become all too familiar in the years ahead. But at eight years of age, it was easy to gamble in expectation, to believe that as soon as winter gave way to spring, a splendid new season would begin. This indomitable belief in the future was vitally important to me when i was a child, for my mother's life was slowly ebbing away. The rheumatic fever she had when she was young had left her heart permanently damaged every year, it seemed, she suffered another heart attack, which sent her to the hospital for day or weeks at a time. I was never made privy to the full extent of her illness on the contrary, i took great comfort from the ritual of knowing that each time she went away, she came back.

It's only a matter of time, i kept telling myself, as the ambulance carried her away, until she'll walk through the door again and everything will be all right. Believing that each prayer was worth a certain number of days off my inevitable sentence to purgatory, i dedicated the first set of prayers to my account in heaven. At the end of the week i would add up my nightly prayers and fold the total into a note.

My second set of prayers was directed toward more earthly desires, chief among them the wish for the dodgers to win the world series at least once before i died. It took tense of thousands of hail marys and our fathers, but finally on october 4, 1955, the dodgers won their first ever world championship. It was one of the happiest moments of my life, made all the more special because this time, i predicted the outcome. It the sixth inning, sandy amoros made a spectacular catch in left field of a wicked fly ball that would have tied the score with two yankee runs. I knew then that the dodgers would win, just as, on other occasions, a failed sacrifice or a double play signaled an inevitable loss.

Everything happened quickly after that until, stunningly, it was the bottom of the ninth with the dodgers up 2 0. And this time there was no bobby thomson to destroy the cherished dreams of delirious brooklyn fans. When my father came home that night, we celebrated by re creating the entire game, play by play, and there was more.

When the newspapers arrived on the lawn the next morning with the fabulous headline this is next year, we relished every word as if we were hearing about the game for the first time. When i first heard the rumor that brooklyn owner walter o'malley was contemplating taking the dodgers to los angeles, i refused to believe it, assuming he was simply jockeying for a new stadium. When they said ebbets field was too small, too dilapidated, i took it as a personal insult. I dreamed one night i was being ushered into o'malley's office to make the case for brooklyn. He was standing behind his desk, a diabolic look on his face that chilled my heart. But as i started to talk, his face softened and when i finished, he threw his arms around me and promised to stay at ebbets field.

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I had saved the dodgers for brooklyn! in reality, of course, neither i nor anyone else could prevent the unforgivable o'malley form completing his invidious act of betrayal. When the move was officially announced in the fall of 1957, i felt as if i, too, were being uprooted. Never again to sit in the stands at ebbets field, never again to watch the papers for the first news out of spring training, it was impossible to imagine. As the 1958 season got under way, a weird, empty season with neither the dodgers nor the giants in new york, my mother suffered another heart attack. Suddenly, my feelings for baseball seemed an aspect of my departing youth, to be discarded along with my childhood freckles and my collection of archie comics. I didn't entirely forget about baseball during those last years in high school, but without a team to root for, my emotions became detached my heart wasn't in it anymore. There it was again the cozy ball field scaled to human dimensions so that every word of encouragement and every scornful yell could be heard on the field the fervent crowd that could, with equal passion, curse a player for today's failures after cheering his heroics the day before the team that always seemed to break your heart in the last weeks of the season.