Duke Snider is Dead at 84

[67thAve]

Duke Snider, the Hall of Fame center fielder renowned for his home run drives and superb defensive play in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ glory years, died Sunday in Escondido, Calif. He was 84.

 

In the 1950s, the golden age of New York baseball, the World Series almost always meant red, white and blue bunting at Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium or the Polo Grounds. October afternoons provided a national showcase for baseball’s premier center fielders — Snider of the Dodgers, Mickey Mantle of the Yankees and Willie Mays of the Giants.

 

“They used to run a box in the New York papers comparing me to Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays,” Snider recalled on the eve of his 1980 induction into the Hall of Fame. “It was a great time for baseball.”

 

Snider starred at the plate and in the field on teams that won six National League pennants — and finished second on the final day twice — in his 11 seasons with Brooklyn. He also hit the last home run at Ebbets Field before the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

 

But he could be moody when unable to achieve the perfection he expected of himself.

 

“I had to learn that every day wasn’t a bed of roses, and that took some time,” he said. “I would sulk. I’d have a pity party for myself.”

 

As pitcher Carl Erskine, his Dodgers roommate, recalled in “Bums” (Putnam, 1984) by Peter Golenbock: “Every place he went, no matter how good he was, they’d say, ‘His potential is so great, he can do even better.’ And this was a real frustration for Duke. He saw himself as not measuring up.”

 

Usually the only left-handed batter and the prime slugger in a lineup also boasting Gil Hodges, Roy Campanella and Jackie Robinson, the silver-haired Snider propelled deliveries from all those right-handed pitchers high over the right-field screen at Ebbets Field and onto Bedford Avenue.

 

Snider hit at least 40 homers in five consecutive seasons, 1953 to 1957, matching a National League record held by Ralph Kiner. He was the only player to hit four homers twice in a World Series — against the Yankees in 1952 and in 1955, when Brooklyn won its only World Series championship. And he captured the National League home run title in 1956, hitting 43 homers.

 

Playing for 18 seasons, he had 407 home runs, 2,116 hits, batted at least .300 seven times, had a lifetime batting average of .295 and was generally among the league leaders in runs batted in and runs scored.

 

Snider shined in center field, although Ebbets Field denied him the outfield expanse enjoyed by Mays at the Polo Grounds and Mantle at Yankee Stadium. He moved back on the ball brilliantly, unleashed powerful throws and never — to his recollection — collided with right fielder Carl Furillo.

 

Edwin Donald Snider was born on Sept. 19, 1926, in Los Angeles and was brought up in nearby Compton. His father, Ward, seeing him return proudly from his first day at school, at age 5, called him the Duke.

 

Snider signed with the Dodgers’ minor league system out of Compton Junior College in 1944 for a $750 bonus and debuted in Brooklyn on opening day 1947 with a pinch-hit single against the Boston Braves. But his arrival was hardly noticed. That was the day Robinson broke the major league color barrier.

 

Snider was envisioned as the successor in center field to Pete Reiser, but he was overanxious at the plate and frustrated by the curveball. Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ general manager, and his aide George Sisler, once a great hitter with the St. Louis Browns, worked with Snider in spring training in 1948 to teach him the strike zone. Snider credited Rickey’s guidance for making him a Hall of Famer.

 

Snider flourished in 1949, his first full season with the Dodgers, when he batted .292 with 23 home runs and 92 R.B.I. The following year, a Duke Snider Fan Club was born.

 

But Snider’s moodiness affected his relationship with the fans. When he was booed by Dodgers fans in midsummer 1955 after a prolonged slump, he fumed. As he recalled in “The Duke of Flatbush” (Zebra Books, 1988), written with Bill Gilbert, he told the sportswriters: “The Brooklyn fans are the worst in the league. They don’t deserve a pennant.” The complaint made headlines.

 

Pee Wee Reese, the Dodgers’ captain and Hall of Fame shortstop, teased Snider over his outbursts, and Snider later reflected how “Pee Wee taught me to control my emotions more.”

 

But a year after the tirade against the fans, Snider was chided by some sportswriters as being ungrateful for his good fortune when he collaborated with Roger Kahn — later the chronicler of those Dodgers teams in “The Boys of Summer” — for a May 1956 article in Collier’s titled “I Play Baseball for Money — Not Fun.”

 

On Sunday afternoon, Sept. 22, 1957, Snider hit two home runs off the Philadelphia Phillies’ Robin Roberts. The second drive was the last homer at Ebbets Field. The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the Giants went to San Francisco the next season.

 

Snider was 31 by then, hampered by a sore knee and frustrated by the bizarre dimensions at the Los Angeles Coliseum, where the fence in right-center field was 440 feet away. His production declined in the Dodgers’ four seasons there, and in 1962, when the team moved to Dodger Stadium, he got into only 80 games and hit just five home runs.

 

After 11 years in Brooklyn and five in Los Angeles, Snider was sold before the 1963 season to the Mets for $40,000, joining a dreadful ball club in its second season that was collecting former Dodgers, Giants and Yankees to boost attendance.

 

Snider was reunited with his Brooklyn teammates Hodges, Roger Craig and Charlie Neal and played for Casey Stengel, the Yankees’ manager in all those World Series games against the Dodgers teams of the 1950s and once a Brooklyn outfielder.

 

Snider hit his 400th homer and got his 2,000th hit as a Met, but batted only .243 on a team that lost 111 games.

 

Just before the 1964 season, the Mets accommodated Snider’s desire to play for a contender and return to the West Coast by selling him to the San Francisco Giants. Now Snider was not only a member of the Dodgers’ archrivals, but he did not even have his celebrated No. 4 anymore. The Giants had retired it — to honor their slugger Mel Ott — so he was given No. 28. He batted .210 in 91 games, then retired at age 38.

 

Snider later managed in the Dodgers’ and San Diego Padres’ farm systems and served as a broadcaster for the Padres and the Montreal Expos.

 

He is survived by his wife, Beverly; two sons, Kevin and Kurt; and and two daughters, Pam and Dawna.

 

Snider returned to Brooklyn on a sad note on July 20, 1995, when he appeared in federal court, a couple of miles from where Ebbets Field once stood, as a criminal defendant.

 

Snider and another Hall of Famer, the former Giants first baseman Willie McCovey, pleaded guilty to tax fraud for failing to report thousands of dollars earned by signing autographs and participating in sports memorabilia shows. “We have choices to make in our lives,” Snider said. “I made the wrong choice.”

 

The following Dec. 1, he was sentenced to two years’ probation and fined $5,000.

 

Although he made his home in California, Snider retained emotional ties to Brooklyn.

 

He made that clear on Sept. 12, 1963, when the Mets gave him a “night” at their home in the Polo Grounds, where the Brooklyn Dodgers had long been the hated foe. Snider’s former Brooklyn teammates were introduced — Robinson, Campanella, Erskine, Furillo, Don Newcombe and Ralph Branca. And then Snider moved to the microphone.

 

“I look up into the stands and it looks like Ebbets Field,” he said. “The Mets are wonderful, but you can’t take the Dodger out of Brooklyn.”

[Shortline Bus]

:cry:RIP to the Duke.

 

 

Here a tribute to him with this classic song/video.

 

 

 

 

[EE Broadway Local]

Da Dook has left us at 84?