As the Dodgers play the Series, thinking back to their tolerant glory days

The Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees are squaring off once again in the Fall Classic, the first time the league and one-time city rivals face off in the World Series since the strike season of 1981. It’s their 12th meeting.

Interestingly, the Yankees and Dodgers matchups have had some historical meaning. In 1947, Jackie Robinson became not just the first African American to break the color barrier in the National League for the then-Brooklyn Dodgers but became the first to play in the World Series.

Robinson handled the pressure, stress, and anxiety with professionalism, tact, and class. Then-Dodger’s manager Branch Rickey’s choice in his pursuit of integrating baseball was a deliberate “social engineering,” a strategy that paid off with more and more black players moving from the Negro Leagues to Major League Baseball over the course of the late 1940s and 1950s.

Robinson’s persona and pioneering sense were not the only things he brought to the Dodgers. He could play at an All-Star elite level. He was named Rookie of the Year for the Dodgers in 1947. For all you trivia buffs, he played first base to avoid any “incidental” contact by opposing players at second base like covering the base on steal attempts or turning the double play.

Public domain images.

Robinson would lead the Brooklyn Dodgers to the World Series for seven years from 1947 to 1956, winning Dem Bums their only championship in Flatbush in 1955. Perhaps his most famous play in his Hall of Fame career happened in the first game of that Fall Classic when he stole home, just barely getting underneath the tag from Yankees catcher and baseball “quotester” Yogi Berra, who vociferously maintained on his figurative deathbed that Jackie was out.

In 1956, the Dodgers met the Yankees in their final Subway Series. This time, the Yanks got the better of the Dodgers, besting them in seven games, winning the final game 9-0 with Robinson striking out to end the Series.

The strikeout symbolized the end of the Robinson era in Dodgers history. His 1956 season of limited production, age, diminished baseball skills, and the early onset of diabetes resulted in Robinson being dealt to the Giants, their National League rival in New York. Unbeknownst to the Dodgers front office and due, perhaps, to his own loyalty to the Dodgers, the team’s loving unbridled fans, and the burdens of being “The First,” Jackie retired before the deal could be completed and became an executive for Chock Full o’ Nuts coffee.

Robinson did much in his quiet ways in the locker room to forge relationships with teammates and, thanks to his aggressive, superb play on the diamond, earned his opponents’ respect, many of whom had originally ridiculed, denigrated, and, in some cases, tried to maim him.

Quietly and with class, Robinson helped bring Americans toward a more colorblind society. Baseball owes much to the pioneering Robinson, thanks to the Dodgers’ foresight.

When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, they continued their winning ways with four National League pennants and three World Championships from 1959 to 1966. They were led to those titles by the greatest lefty in the decade, Sandy Koufax, a pitcher who was as devoted to his faith as he was to his craft. During the 1965 World Series with the Minnesota Twins, Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar, occurred during his scheduled start.

As an observant Jew, Koufax asked not to pitch. Walter O’Malley, the team’s owner, fully supported him. “I won’t let Sandy pitch on Yom Kippur under any circumstances. I can’t let the boy do that to himself.” O’Malley joked that despite his comfort with Koufax’s decision, he would be “[asking] the Pope what he can do about rain on that day.”

Others on the team agreed:

“Sandy was such a star on our club, we said: ‘If this is Sandy’s decision then it’s OK,’” Claude Osteen, the starting pitcher during the Dodgers’ vital win in Game 3 told the Guardian. “I think it was more a respect for his beliefs and religion and the guys just kind of took it with a grain of salt.”

The Dodgers lost the game Koufax was supposed to pitch, then lost the game Koufax threw. No matter. Koufax would rally his teammates and win Game Seven in Bloomington, Minnesota, to take home the trophy.

Today, when thinking of the Dodgers, many baseball fans cannot help but think of the incident last season when the Dodgers hosted an Anti-Catholic group, “The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” to their stadium. In that one brief inglorious moment, LA management forgot its past tolerance.

The Dodgers invited a group that blasphemed the tenets, beliefs and protocols of a religion and people that have had a bond with the franchise since its days in Brooklyn. This would never have occurred under the leadership of owner Walter O’Malley, the same man who respected Koufax’s faith.

According to The Angelus, the Catholic newspaper of Los Angeles, Walter O’Malley credited his Catholic faith for his success. Named “Brooklyn’s Catholic Man of the Year” in 1952, O’Malley was a daily Mass attender.

Nor would this have occurred until the leadership of Branch Rickey or Tommy Lasorda.

True, the Dodgers retreated, performed a “corporate mea culpa,” and engaged its Christian fans with “their own night” to celebrate a “Faith and Family Night” in Chavez Ravine. Still, for a franchise long held in esteem for its “progressive and social justice ways,” the damage has been done. Their hypocrisy is just another sad reflection on the state of sports.

A franchise that portrayed itself as pristine, pure and perfect in all manners, methods and machinations forgot its roots not just logistical but culturally.

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