Gary C on The Duke

One of my good friends, Gary Columbo is a baseball machine. He still plays baseball in an old guy's league...even older than the league I play in.
We can talk baseball for hours and we have on many occasions.
Gary has also been a guest on the radio show several times. Originally from Brooklyn, Gary sent me the following in an e-mail and is allowing me to post it here.

As a small boy in New York, I well remember Willie, Mickey, and the Duke from my visits to Yankee Stadium, The Polo Grounds, and Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. Even though I was a great Yankee fan, like my Italian father, I still enjoyed the games at Ebbets Field, since our family had settled in Brooklyn from our ancestral home in Syracusa, Sicily. I remember well the intense and enjoyable days of the subway world series games between the Yankees and Dodgers. The powerful and colorful Dodger lineup was always a threat, especially when The Duke would smash one of his patented home run shots onto Bedford Avenue over the fence in right field.

The Dodgers also had several powerful right-handed hitters like Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, and Carl (Skoonj) Furillo, but The Duke was different. Not only was he a left-handed hitter, he had that certain "air" or "class" that he took with him everywhere he went. He, like Furillo, had a good arm in the outfield, and had mastered the strange asymetrical shape of the outfield fences. In fact, the right-field fence was concave, featuring a combination of concrete, wood, and screen, just 297 feet down the line from home plate. In contrast, the right-field fence at Yankee Stadium was just 296 feet down the foul line. That short distance in both parks made for some interesting games, but the Polo Grounds was only 258 feet down the line in right, and 483 to the Eddie Grant Memorial in center - shaped like a bathtub because of the property in Coogan's Bluff where it stood.

The Duke took advantage of those short distances (as did Stan Musial who once hit 5 homers in a double-header at Ebbets), and really should have won the MVP in 1955, the only year Brooklyn won the series. Of course Campanella won it that year, as he did in '51 and '53, but The Duke hit 42 homers in '55 and actually led the Dodgers to the championship. Rumor has it that a baseball writer who voted, inadvertantly left The Duke off the MVP ballot that year, and Campy won it by a whisker.

The Duke tailed off considerably in Los Angeles, when the Dodgers moved there in 1958, the shape of the L.A. football stadium where they played having a real disadvantage for lefty hitters with its exceedingly long distance in right field. Even so, the Dodgers repeated in 1959, defeating the Go-Go Chicago White Sox, with their slugger Ted Kluszewski. Big Klu hit two homers in the opening game when the Sox scored 11 runs, but the Bums came back and won the series anyway. It was The Duke's last championship.

A few years later, when he was traded to the San Francisco Giants, The Duke had designs on retiring, but didn't because he had a kid in college and needed the money. On opening day of spring training, The Duke looked down at his jersey, and with a grimace on his face exclaimed, "...oh no, it's the Giants!" To him, it was almost unthinkable that could happen to him, very much like Jackie Robinson, who, unlike The Duke, retired after the 1956 season rather than accept a trade to the Giants. The rivalry and hatred between the two teams was so intense, it was a personal thing as well as professional. Such was the last season for The Duke, who did retire afterward.

So now The Duke is gone, at age 84, and a wonderful and vibrant piece of baseball history is ended and all we have left is the records and the memories of those wonderful days in the 1950's. There will never be another time like that one, and maybe now folks will recognize that The Duke was every bit a great center fielder like Willie and Mickey. Rest in peace, Duke. We'll miss you!!

Thanks Gary. Well done.