2024 The Game Broke My Heart

⚾ The Game Broke My Heart

Steven B. Zwickel

February, 2024

Now that the Super Bowl is over, you might have expected me to start getting excited about Spring Training. But, I have a confession to make; I no longer follow baseball.

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York, so you might guess that my first love was the Dodgers, and you’d be wrong. My first love was Willie Mays, the Say Hey Kid. On our black and white TV, he caught baseballs without looking. {See “The Catch”} 

I couldn’t believe it when my dad told me he played for the New York Giants. “Pop, are you sure he doesn’t play for the Dodgers?” “I think he must play for the Dodgers, Pop.” “Are you absolutely positive Willie Mays isn’t a Dodger??” 

Broke my heart, but peer pressure in first grade was too powerful and I became a Dodgers fan.

The photo shows me and my dad at Ebbetts Field on Sept. 21, 1957 at one of the last Brooklyn Dodger games played in that wonderful old ballpark. That Saturday 5,120 fans watched the game. The Phillies won, 3 to 2. 

We got to see the game because my dad worked with makers of mechanical pencils and the new ball-point pens. Companies like Venus courted him and tried to get him to buy their products. In 1957, Venus sponsored the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball pre-game TV show “Happy Felton's Knothole Gang” on WOR‐TV, [Channel 9]. They gave Pop tickets to the show and Pop and I made our first appearance on television, live from Ebbetts Field. The show was 25 minutes long and ran before home games at Ebbetts Field. We had our 15 seconds of fame when we were interviewed by Happy Felton.  I was so excited that, when I was asked how old I was, I had to pause before I could remember to say “7.”

1957 Topps Baseball Card #400 Brooklyn Dodgers' Sluggers: Carl Furillo, Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider

I got a program that showed the Dodgers as “Dem Bums.” They were originally called “Trolleydodgers” because it was dangerous for fans to cross streets like Bedford Avenue in Crown Heights. I also got a baseball autographed by all the 1957 Dodgers, which I still have. My grandparents lived so close to the stadium that you could hear the fans cheering (sometimes booing) from their apartment windows.

The guys on that team were immortalized in books like The Boys of Summer, a 1972 book by Roger Kahn and Confessions of a Trolley Dodger From Brooklyn by Stan Fischler. 

I watched Johnny Podres and Ed Roebuck pitch; disappointing because I really, really wanted to see Brooklyn’s own Sandy Koufax pitch. Gil Hodges was at first base and Duke Snider was out playing center field.

 The following spring, the Dodgers left town and broke my heart. But I fell in love with the game. Ebbetts Field was demolished in 1960.

That left me with the Yankees and the Giants. Games were almost all played during the day and occasionally there was a twi-light double header or a night game. Baseball was on the radio or TV just about every day of the week. On any night in the summer you could hear Mel Allen or Red Barber calling balls and strikes through the open windows; this was before air-conditioning shut us all off from the world. Then the Giants left town.

I was a teenager when we got another team worth watching. The New York Mets arrived with the World’s Fair in 1964. They were absolutely awful and a lot of fun to watch. We used to sneak out of school early and catch the train to Flushing, Queens to watch the Mets (attempt to) play baseball in Shea Stadium. 

I grew to love the game. I would develop an unexplainable "sore throat" in the fall and have to go home early, usually when there were World Series games on TV. 

When I moved to Wisconsin in 1976, I still considered myself a fan. I followed the successes of the Yankees and the ??? of the Mets for a few years. I never really cared for the local MLB team; the Milwaukee Brewers. I went to a Brewers game in June and nearly froze. The team didn’t seem to make any effort to hit or field the ball—they looked bored, or lazy. I didn’t enjoy it.

The last major league game I saw was in Minneapolis in 1992, when we took our granddaughter to watch the Twins play. That was fun.

Meanwhile, back in Madison in 1982, one of my friends got it into his head that Madison could have its own professional baseball team. He persuaded the Oakland As to bring a farm club to Madison and the Madison Muskies quickly became "my team.” 

The games were fun and for ten years, I went to several Muskie games every summer and did the "fish clap" and cheered, "Go, fish, go!" I got to see Jose Canseco play! Then the A’s shut down the franchise and broke my heart. 

A year or so went by without baseball, until they brought in another farm club, this one for the St. Louis Cards. Their mascot was a cute little mouse and they were called the "Mad Hatters". I went to a dozen games that summer and had a great time. After one season, St. Louis moved the franchise to Illinois and broke my heart.

Another team, this one in the Northern League, came to Madison in 1996. The Madison Black Wolf team was terrific. They brought up some great players, including a left-handed woman pitcher, Ila Borders, and they put on a great show. They lasted until 2000, when the owners moved the team to Michigan and they broke my heart.

In 2001 a new minor league team came to town, the Madison Mallards. I wasn’t all that interested in going, but my granddaughter wanted to see a real baseball game, so I got us tickets to a double header. I was thinking she’d get bored after the first game and we would leave. 

I absolutely hated it. The crowd was more interested in buying food and drinks {lots of drinks} than in watching the game. Most of them spent the whole time staring at their phones or watching the game on the big-screen scoreboard. After every pitch, loud music blasted and didn’t stop until the next pitch. It felt like artificial fun; the way I imagine baseball would be if Disney was producing it.

I stood up to yell at the ump about a bad call and found I was pretty much alone in the crowd. No one cheered. No one booed. No one clapped. I don’t think anyone sang “Take Me Out…” during the seventh-inning stretch. My granddaughter insisted we say for the bottom half. For me it was torture.

That was the last time. I stopped watching baseball cold turkey. I stopped reading the sports pages altogether (when the Packers aren't playing). I watched a movie called “Moneyball” and it made me nauseous. 

I tuned out baseball completely. 

I miss it, but I don't think it misses me. I'd like to break its heart.

1912 Brooklyn Dodgers cap {replica}