Boycott in Brooklyn

In Brooklyn last week, two Pittsburgh sportwriters grabbed a cab after the ball game. They asked the cab driver what he thought of his Dodgers. The elaborately bored driver replied curtly: "In Brooklyn we're even turning off the television sets."

The day before, Ebbets Field had been three-quarters empty. That day, it had an unusually small Saturday crowd of 12,821. In effect, the Dodgers were being boycotted.

Why? Why had the fans suddenly soured on last year's pennant-winning heroes? By last week, after an eight-game losing streak, the Dodgers had skidded right down into the National League cellar. But that wasn't the main reason--even though it just about eliminated them from the pennant race.

The slow chill from the Brooklyn fans began before the season opened, when the Dodger brain trust traded away two of Brooklyn's favorite heroes: Dixie Walker and Eddie Stanky.

Another blow was a boost in admission prices. But mostly the fans grumbled to each other that baseball games in Ebbets Field no longer even looked very much like baseball: the games dragged, the pitching was terrible, the Dodger line-up was forever shifting and changing, team morale was drooping.

Last week nervous Manager Leo ("The Lip") Durocher left the dugout and went back to directing his club from the first-base coaching line. He promptly got booed by the Brooklyn fans--those who were still going to games. What fans kept asking each other as they milled out of the exits: will Leo finish out the season on the first-base line? Or even in Brooklyn?

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