Why I hate the #@&#! stinking Dodgers

Many people who know I am from Brooklyn assume I am rooting for the Dodgers.

That’s why some say when you assume you make an “ass” out of you and “me.”

Well, you.

If you follow the World Series at all, you know the last time the Yankees played the Dodgers was 1981.

I remember, dimly, the Yankees playing the Dodgers in 1947 and 1949, and more clearly in ‘52, ‘53, ‘57.

Growing up in The Bronx in the 1940s as a Yankees fan was as sweet as a cherry Coke. The Yankees beat the Dodgers in 1941, the Cardinals in 1943, the Dodgers in 1947, the Dodgers in 1949, the Phillies in 1950, the Giants in 1951, the Dodgers in 1952, 1953, 1956…. I mean, it got boring after a while.

What a wonderful time to be a boy Yankee baseball fan, if all that mattered was winning.

For me, that changed over time. I came to understand  there were things more important than winning. I didn’t like the way the Yankees treated their players, or their fans. I don’t think they ever had a fan appreciation day. The same, well, arrogance that prohibited players’ name from appearing on their jerseys, spilled over to taking their fans for granted. 

Back then, there were only 16 teams — eight each in the National and American leagues — and there was no such thing as the designated shitter hitter.

That was one of the rule changes to “improve” baseball, in order to drive up scoring, something neither hockey nor soccer ever did.

So I fell out of love with the Yankees, after have seen both Joe Dimaggio and Mickey Mantle in center field. (Willie May, too, at the Polo Grounds. Ebbets Field was too far away, in scary Brooklyn.)

And then — my South Bronx family was thrown a lifeline by the New York City Housing Authority and we were accepted into a new housing project, Marlboro, that had just opened in the colorfully-named Gravesend neighborhood, just one subway stop outside of world-famous Coney Island.

I eagerly looked forward to joining the Bums — as the Dodgers were playfully known — family, the first team to play a Black man, the incomparable Jackie Robinson. 

The love affair was brief. It never ignited, actually. Just as I landed in Brooklyn, the Dodgers split for L.A., leaving behind the most loyal fan base there has ever been, or will be.

The Brooklyn Dodgers had become sunglass-wearing, cocaine-sniffing, sportscar-driving, actress-dating, alfalfa-sprout eating, manscaped Los Angeles Dodgers, dirty backstabbing, ingrate Benedict Arnolds. 

I have written about this before and some people feel I have been carrying a grudge for more than 60 years. You’re goddamn right, I have. 

Forsaken Brooklyn Dodger fans could never root for the American League  Yankees, and the Giants had left for San Francisco.

Losing two teams at once tore the beating heart out of most New Yorkers, who regard their city as the center of the universe.

For four years, cuckolded Dodgers’ fans wandered in darkness and despair. 

And then — in 1962 the Mets were born! The Mets stank like dog shit on ice but they were instantly adopted by the forlorn Dodgers’ fans, who became the Mets’ brain-addled fan base. The craziest of the Mets’ fans were reflagged Dodger fans. 

(While the Mets took the place of the Dodgers, the true Brooklyn legacy team is the minor-league Brooklyn Cyclones, using the name of the famous roller coaster a few blocks from the ballpark. The last time I was in Coney Island, I saw a game and bought a Cyclones cap.)

The Mets were the team that couldn’t figure out how to play the game. The team that said you gotta believe. The team of lovable losers that made belief come true, improbably, when they won the 1969 World Series, led by Tug McGraw.

By then, I had moved to Philadelphia and been converted to another group of lovable losers, the Philadelphia Phillies, which two years earlier suffered a catastrophic meltdown that kept them from the World Series.

Over time, I have had almost as many MLB ball clubs (3), as  wives (4).

In my defense, I didn’t have much choice about switching. Ball clubs, I mean. This was before cable and living in Philly, you’d never see the Mets play, and my kids were into the teams that had their new city on the front of their uniforms. So I slowly morphed into following the lousy Phillies’ teams of those times. 

Not so my friend Howard Altman, who came to Philly after I, but remained a Mets fan, because he could see them on TV. Still does, even though he is now in Florida. 

For me, for teams and wives, it’s  always the last one is the best one, and this group of Phillies are built to last.

I don’t quite love them as much as the last World Series winners. Peppery Shane Victorino was my favorite, followed by Chase Utley, and Jimmy Rollins, and lovable Chooch, “Hollywood” Cole Hamels, “Big Piece” Ryan Howard, Pat the Bat Burrell, ancient Jamie Moyer, Jayson Werth, “Lights Out” Lidge, and Joe Blanton.

They gave me my second World Series personal appearance.

I never saw the Yankees play the Series in person — who could afford it? 

My first in-person World Series game was in 1980, with grandstand tickets ($15) provided by NBC, which was broadcasting the Series, and I was a TV critic.

Tickets were provided by NBC PR man Curt Block, who remained a friend until he died last year. (He had moved to Philly in 1990 and became a Phillies fan, but was still devoted to Fordham, his alma mater, for basketball.)

In 1993, the Phillies played the Blue Jays, and I covered it, but since they lost, not much to say there. 

When the Phils played in the next world series, 2008, I attended the local games but did not enjoy them much.

Even though I had ended my record-setting 17-year run as the Daily News gossip columnist, I was dragooned into writing color pieces about the celebrities who attended the game, which weren’t too many.

I spent the first four innings running around the park, looking for celebs, then took the Broad Street subway to write my piece, while watching the game on the TV above my desk, at 400 N. Broad, that is now police headquarters.

It was not memorable journalism, but it did land me in the first bus, the press bus, in the victory parade rolling from Center City west into the South Philadelphia stadium. I was on the first bus to plough through the wave of delirious fans. I’m sorry I was too busy taking notes to think of getting a picture of me on that bus. 

I didn’t even have a cell phone to take pictures of the enormous crowds.

The images are live in my mind, but I can’t share them.