The Last Years of the Brooklyn Dodgers

This work, which picks up where the author’s previous book, The Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s (McFarland, 2005), left off, covers the Dodgers’ final eight years in Brooklyn. Chapters carry the reader from the 1951 playoffs, when a late season collapse and Thomson’s “Shot Heard Round the World” dealt Brooklyn a heartbreaking blow, through the 1955 World Series title, and finally to Walter O’Malley’s controversial decision to move the team to Los Angeles. The author covers each season in-depth and assesses popular perceptions of the Dodgers, their players and owners, and considers O’Malley’s culpability in the team’s departure, which ended a string of 74 years in which Brooklyn had major league baseball.

Rudy Marzano started his career as a reporter on the Newark Evening News after graduating from Rutgers University. He retired from AT&T where he was a press relations manager, writer and editor. He lives in Point Pleasant at the Jersey shore.

Rudy Marzano
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 216
Bibliographic Info: 25 photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2008
pISBN: 978-0-7864-3006-2
eISBN: 978-1-4766-1295-9
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments      vii
Introduction      1

1. 1950: The Struggle for Power      9
2. 1951: The Shot Heard All Over Flatbush      44
3. 1952: Dressen Survives His Mistakes      76
4. 1953: Race Was Always a Problem      97
5. 1954: Behind the Giants Again      118
6. 1955: Finally, the Year of Jubilee      135
7. 1956: Inching Their Way Westward      155
8. 1957: Over the Sierras to La-La Land      177

Aftermath      189
Chapter Notes      195
Bibliography      201
Index      205