Wait Till Next Year: A Memoir (15 page)

A
BLACK DELIVERY VAN
pulled up to the front entrance of the house next door. My parents and I watched from the window as a uniformed driver dismounted, opened the gate of the van, and wheeled a large wooden crate toward the visibly excited assemblage of the Goldschmidt family standing at the front door.

Television had come to the neighborhood.

That night, the parents and children of Southard Avenue crowded into the Goldschmidts’ living room, and watched as vaguely defined, snowy figures cavorted across the seven-inch black-and-white screen embedded in an odd block of furniture. “A marvel,” the adults assured one another, as Mr. Goldschmidt continually adjusted the metal rod of the antenna. But to me and my playmates, it was only another wonder in a world of constantly unfolding wonders, like the stories my mother told me, the first book I read, or my first trip to Ebbets Field.

When the Goldschmidts bought their television in 1946, there were only seven thousand sets in use in the entire country, and theirs was the only one on our block. Within months, the number doubled when the Lubars’ living room became the home of a nine-inch set with a slightly better picture, which became an irresistible attraction for all the children on the block. Almost every afternoon we would congregate on the Lubars’ front stoop, waiting expectantly, and often vocally, for the invitation to enter, so we could sit cross-legged on the floor and watch the amazing parade of puppets, comedians, and cowboys which marched across their tiny screen.

It was only a matter of time, spurred by embarrassment at our imposition on the Lubars, before every family on our block had a set. And the pattern in our neighborhood, where desire begot what seemed like necessity, was repeated across America. By 1950, there were sets in three million homes; from then on, sales grew at a rate of five million a year, until, by the end of the decade, more than fifty million families would own a television.

When our own ten-inch table console finally arrived, my parents invited everyone on the block to come over for a Sunday-afternoon showing of
The Super Circus
. That morning, my mother set out hot dog rolls and hamburger buns, prepared a salad, put extra chairs in the living room for the grown-ups, and laid a blanket on the floor for the children. The entrance of the handsome ringmaster into the center ring, dressed in a sequined costume, was greeted by a low, admiring whistle from Elaine’s grandmother, and the circus began. We giggled at the antics of the clowns, marveled at the sight of the stately lions, and gasped at the daring of the high-wire artists.

To me, the afternoon was more memorable and exciting than my trip to see the actual Ringling Brothers Circus
in Madison Square Garden. But not because of television. As a result of my mother’s illness, I almost never had a group of friends at my home, to say nothing of the entire neighborhood. On this Sunday, however, I was a hostess, bringing someone a second hot dog, refilling the bowl of potato chips, constantly looking around to see what needs I could fill. Even though everyone was looking at the television set, I felt as if I were on stage, playing a role I thoroughly enjoyed. As soon as the show was over, and the guests departed, I asked my mother if we could do this every week, making our house the center of Sunday activity. “I’m sorry,” my mother said, “but I simply can’t do it. Even now, I am so exhausted just from having everyone here that I’ve got to lie down for a little while. But I’ll tell you what, if you’d like to pick one show each week and have all the kids over to see it, I think that would be fine.”

I picked
Howdy Doody
, my favorite show, featuring a freckled puppet in a plaid shirt, dungarees, and cowboy boots; an affable ventriloquist, Buffalo Bob, in fringed buckskin; and a “Peanut Gallery,” composed of the luckiest kids in the world. At 5:25 p.m., we gathered before the set, staring at NBC’s test pattern for five minutes before Buffalo Bob’s booming voice opened the show: “Say, kids, what time is it?” “It’s Howdy Doody Time,” we shrieked in reply. The pitch of excitement continued as Clarabell the clown sneaked up behind Buffalo Bob to shoot water in his face, and we laughed so hard our stomachs hurt. Only when Buffalo Bob said good night and the kids in the Peanut Gallery waved goodbye did we finally calm down, and my friends disperse for dinner.

When the Friedles bought their thirteen-inch console, we flocked to their house on Tuesday evenings to watch Milton Berle; the Lubars’ house became our scheduled stop for the Saturday-morning cartoons. We gathered to watch
TV’s first interplanetary heroes: Tom Corbett, Captain Video, and Superman. I was visiting Eileen Rust when their television set arrived. The box was unimpressive, and Eileen began to cry, fearing that her set would have the smallest screen in the neighborhood. We watched as the carton was opened to reveal a giant eighteen-inch set, the largest on the block. Eileen gasped and the rest of us began to clap. Suddenly, Eileen’s house became the most desirable place to gather.

Television entered our lives robed as the bearer of communal bonds, providing a new set of common experiences, block parties, and festive gatherings shared by children and adults alike. The fantasies of television slowly infiltrated our own. After the first soap operas,
Search for Tomorrow
and
Love of Life
, appeared on the air in the fall of 1951, our mothers could be found in spirited conversation discussing the behavior of their favorite characters and debating the likely outcome of their latest difficulties as if they were another family on the block. For days, our parents discussed the dramatic reaction of Elaine’s seventyfive-year-old great-grandmother, Amelia, to the kidnapping of the little girl, Patti, on
Search for Tomorrow
. Patti was the six-year-old daughter of Joanne Barren, a young widow whose rich in-laws had kidnapped the child after losing a custody battle. A desperate week-long chase ended as police helped Joanne pursue the child’s kidnappers through woods, which, in the early days of live television, consisted simply of a dark area filled with a maze of music stands affixed with branches to represent trees. Finding Patti’s shoes near a pond, the searchers feared she had drowned, though viewers knew she was still alive in the hands of her evil grandmother.

At this point in the drama, Amelia, her print housedress flapping, her white hair disheveled, came rushing
into the street, alarm in her voice. She demanded that we call the police and tell them where Patti was. By doing nothing, she insisted, we were endangering the life of this lovely child. Futilely, our mothers tried to explain that the show was a fictional drama, that Joanne and her daughter were actresses following a script. But Amelia refused to believe it, and we could do nothing to assuage her anxiety until the next episode, when Patti was found and returned to her mother.

The confusion of television with reality was not limited to the very old. One evening, my television screen revealed Joan of Arc being burned at the stake. There, before my eyes, the young woman stood, lashed to a piling atop a pyre in the old marketplace in Rouen, France. A male voice denounced her as a heretic who must pay for her sins with her life. She was, he said, like a rotten branch that must be severed to preserve the tree. “It is not true,” Joan cried. “I am a good Christian.” Her words went unheeded. The fire crackled and the flames consumed her. Stunned by this violence taking place in front of me, I raced into the kitchen to find my mother. She reassured me that no one was being hurt, that the program was simply one of a series of historical dramatizations, called
You Are There
, narrated by Walter Cronkite. Through re-enactments and “eyewitness” accounts, the series endeavored to provide viewers with a sense that they were actually present at important moments in history. My anxiety was replaced by embarrassment at my naïveté, and I returned to the screen. In the weeks that followed, I watched the capture of John Wilkes Booth, the siege of the Alamo, the fall of Fort Sumter, the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox, and the duel between Hamilton and Burr.

For me, however, the flow of drama and entertainment
was of small consequence beside the glorious opportunity to watch my Dodgers on the screen. In 1951, for the first time, I could follow the Dodgers for a full season on television. I watched Gil Hodges stretch to snag a skidding grounder and throw to the pitcher covering first; saw Carl Furillo as he barehanded a ball that bounced off the rightfield wall and then fired to second to catch a runner trying to extend a single into a double; and glimpsed the smile flicker across Robinson’s face as he crossed home plate with the winning run.

T
HE BASEBALL SEASON
of 1951 would be seared into the memory of every Dodger fan, its scar carried across the years as the progress of lives took old New Yorkers to different parts of the country. Not long ago, I was talking about the last game of the ’51 season with friends in the lounge of a San Francisco hotel. A man seated at the adjoining table—tall, distinguished, a prosperous executive from the miracle factories of Silicon Valley—leaned over, a mournful tone in his voice. “I remember,” he said. “I was there.” I knew immediately what he meant.

The rivalry between the Dodgers and the Giants was unlike any other in baseball. Even in years when the two teams were not contending for the pennant, every meeting was regarded as a separate war, to be fought with implacable hostility. For twenty or thirty hours before the first pitch, thousands of fans would line up in front of Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds in hopes of buying a ticket before the game sold out. After the last inning, the arguments overflowed to the streets and bars of Brooklyn and New York. But in 1951, this historic rivalry entered a new dimension, reached a level of intensity never before attained and never to be surpassed.

Over family dinners, and in our daily encounters, children and parents alike discussed and analyzed the reports from spring training which carried the first hints that this would be no ordinary season. Although every manager is publicly optimistic before a season starts, the braggadocio of Giant manager Leo Durocher was both irritating and ominous, heightened by my father’s belief that Durocher was a great manager. Durocher had managed the Dodgers for six years in the forties, when he was beloved in Brooklyn and despised in New York. Then, in one of the more grotesque twists of baseball history, he left the Dodgers to manage the Giants, becoming their champion and our nemesis.

During spring training, Durocher, now known to us as “Leo the Lip,” proclaimed that the ’51 Giants would have the best pitching in the National League, with Sal Maglie, Larry Jansen, Jim Hearn, and Dave Koslo. To me, even the thought of the scowling, bearded Maglie was a kind of nightmare, his face the one I would most dread if it appeared in my window. He was called “the Barber,” because, when he saw fit, his high, tight fastballs nearly shaved hitters’ chins. To make things worse, Giant slugger Bobby Thomson was ripping the ball in spring training with the authority he had shown in 1949, when he had driven in over one hundred runs and paced the Giants’ attack. “We have the pitching, the power, and the speed,” Durocher said; “what else can any manager ask?”

The Dodgers, by contrast, had floundered all spring: Newcombe and Campanella were overweight; Hodges began camp late because his wife had given birth to their second baby. The team seemed to lack focus. Its play was shoddy. I agonized over the box score of every defeat as if it were the World Series. My father tried to explain that Dodger manager Chuck Dressen was more concerned with
evaluating players and selecting a lineup than with winning preseason ball games. “Except for the pitching,” he explained, “we’ve got the best team in the National League, hands down. Just say the names.” He smiled. “Campanella, Hodges, Robinson, Reese; Snider, the best center fielder in either league right now; Furillo, the best arm in baseball. Just say the names, honey, and relax.”

But I couldn’t stop worrying, my own anxiety fed by the smiling, confident boasts of my friends and rivals in the butcher shop. “It’s going to be our year, Ragmop,” they told me, while choosing a cut of meat for my mother. “But don’t worry, your time will come.” To me at the age of eight, however, no appeal to the future could possibly compensate for the prospect of failure in the present.
This
was my time.

Durocher’s widely circulated claim that he had the “best pitching staff in baseball,” along with my father’s insistence that pitching was our only weakness, forced me to shift my attention away from Robinson, Snider, and Campanella, our titans of hitting, to the bizarre figure of Dodger pitcher Rex Barney, whose problems with control threatened to end his once-promising career. When Barney had first come up in 1943, he’d been compared with Bob Feller and Walter Johnson. With the best fastball in the league, he had pitched a no-hitter against the Giants and had struck out Joe DiMaggio with bases loaded in the World Series. But on the final day of the ’48 season, he broke his leg sliding into second base, and ever after he seemed to have lost both his rhythm and his control. Even after a good start, if he threw a few bad pitches in a row, he would suddenly fall apart, unable to find the plate, throwing well above and behind the batter into the screen, bouncing the ball into the dirt, hitting three or four batters in a row. Branch Rickey had taken Barney to a psychiatrist,
put him on a special diet, and made him memorize pages of Charles Dickens every night to improve his concentration. Nothing worked. Barney became so desperate, he later admitted, that he contemplated jumping off buildings and bridges.

Now, Dressen announced, under the new regime, Barney would be treated like any other pitcher, rather than like a freak. No more psychiatrists, no more Dickens, no more pitching between two clotheslines for two extra hours every day. With this new approach, Dressen believed, Barney would recover the form that had promised to place him among the premier pitchers in baseball and strengthen our problematic rotation of Newcombe, Erskine, Roe, and Branca. But we all knew that this year was Rex Barney’s last chance.