The Mets act is af if they won the 1955 World Series.
The members of the New York Baseball
Giants Nostalgia Society know this: Their team’s history is just as rich as that of the Brooklyn Dodgers.
Their Giants won more pennants and World Series titles than the Dodgers did.
They had Christy Mathewson, John J. McGraw and
Willie Mays.
Yet these 60 or 70 Ottophiles, nearly all men — and mostly of a certain demographic that saw those Giants play — cannot stir a revolution.
They cannot alter this irrefutable fact: They long ago lost the nostalgia battle to Pee Wee and the Duke, as well as to
Jackie Robinson’s civil rights breakthrough, and to the deep connection between the Dodgers and their borough and the Dodgers’ 1955 World Series victory.
For half a century, the Dodgers have bathed in waves of wistfulness denied the Giants, who have no match for the Boys of Summer sobriquet created by Roger Kahn in his elegiac 1971 memoir.
“Very few are standing up for Buck Ewing and Amos Rusie,†said the historian John Thorn, referring to a couple of antique Giants Hall of Famers.
Consider this outrage: The
Mets used Ebbets Field, particularly its rotunda (named for Robinson), as an architectural model for their new Citi Field.
No recognition has yet been accorded the quirky home of the Giants. “They didn’t incorporate any of the Polo Grounds in the design,†Steven Rappaport, a member of the society, who grew up among Dodgers fans in Flatbush, said during the nostalgia society’s meeting last Thursday.
A nice enjoyable 5-2 win last night with my favorite (current) Met on the mound, John Maine.
