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Legendary Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully penned the following essay on Gil Hodges, who is a candidate on the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Golden Days Era Ballot. The 10-name Golden Days Era Committee ballot features candidates whose primary contribution to the game came from 1950-69. A 16-member committee is scheduled to meet on Sunday to discuss each candidate’s credentials for enshrinement, with any one candidate needing 12 votes to be elected to the Hall of Fame.April 18, 1950. It was Opening Day and my first day working as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcast team. That afternoon, the Dodgers...

Day 265 Of The Dictatorship Of COVID-19: Tyranny Came Before The Election Welcome to the weekend. This post title about "Game Over" in Venezuela once the late Hugo Chavez was elected President in 1998 the freedom of the country and its economy doomed to their eventual fate. We've experienced this tyranny before our 2020 election that is said to have elected Joe Biden as our President here in the USA. The COVID-19 tyranny first unleashed in March and then lessened for a bit back again. Big Government like colleges, universities, public schools being kept open and Big Business like chain...

On this day in 1934, Washington Senator's backup catcher Morris "Moe" Berg's streak of 117 games in a row without committing an error comes to an end, setting an American League record. Berg wasn't your typical athlete: before signing with the Brooklyn Robins (they wouldn't become the Dodgers until 1932), he graduated from Princeton University with a B.A. magna cum laude in modern languages. Ted Lyons, Berg's teammate with the White Sox, would say that "he can speak seven languages but can't hit in any of them." Berg didn't have a great bat, but when every one of manager Ray...

For a franchise that has been so successful in Los Angeles, the Dodgers’ 10 retired numbers speak largely to a Brooklyn heritage. On the day the Dodgers retired his microphone alongside those numbers — and perhaps for the last time at Dodger Stadium — Vin Scully told stories of the Boys of Summer. “Those numbers are not numbers at all,” Scully said Wednesday. “I can hear them. I really can.” ... In a pregame ceremony, [Tommy] Lasorda and Sandy Koufax unveiled Scully’s blue and white circle along what the Dodgers now call their “ring of honor,” with “VIN SCULLY” atop...

We asked you to list your choices for the 10 greatest Dodgers of all time. You could vote via comment, Facebook, Twitter or email. And vote you did. We received an amazing 14,383 ballots. So many, that we have decided to expand the list from the top 10 to the top 20. You were asked to rank your top 10 in order. We assigned points, with your choice for first getting 12 points, second getting nine points, third getting eight points, all the way down to one point for 10th place. Each weekday here, we will unveil the top 20,...

Sad, a bygone Era...:-|

NEW YORK -- Employees of the Class A Brooklyn Cyclones, a New York Mets affiliate, arrived at work Wednesday morning to find a swastika and racial and anti-Semitic epithets painted on a statue of Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese that is on display outside MCU Park. ... "This is being treated as a bias crime," detective John Nevandro of the 60th precinct said in a statement. "Hate Crimes will investigate the incident."

The best part of this job is the people you meet and the relationships developed over the course of the years. To that end, it was an honor to sit down recently and talk with Vin Scully. It's mindboggling to realize that Scully has been broadcasting Dodgers games on radio-television in Brooklyn and Los Angeles since 1950, a year before I was born ... During the course of a 20-minute conversation, I asked him about his stellar career and the Dodgers of yesterday and today. You may be surprised at some of his answers ...

AP) -- Duke Snider, the Hall of Fame center fielder for the charmed "Boys of Summer" who helped the Dodgers bring their elusive and only World Series crown to Brooklyn, died early Sunday of what his family called natural causes. He was 84. Snider died at the Valle Vista Convalescent Hospital in Escondido, Calif., according to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, which announced the death on behalf of the family. "The Duke of Flatbush" hit .295 with 407 career home runs, played in the World Series six times and won two titles. But the eight-time All-Star was...

Hall of Fame outfielder Duke Snider has died. He was 84. The former Brooklyn Dodgers star died early Sunday of what the family called natural causes at the Valle Vista Convalescent Hospital in Escondido, Calif.

The man who hit the most famous home run in baseball history is gone. Bobby Thomson, whose "shot heard 'round the world" capped a best-of-three playoff and the Giants' miracle comeback to win the 1951 National League pennant over the Dodgers, died Monday night at his home in Savannah, Georgia.

Vin Scully recently watched the MLB Network replay of the perfect game pitched by Don Larsen for the New York Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1956 World Series. He watched and he listened.

GLENS FALLS, N.Y. (AP) -- As soon as he heard Johnny Podres had died, Don Newcombe recalled that famous moment more than a half-century ago. "My mind went back to Yankee Stadium, 1955, the seventh game of the World Series," said Newcombe, also a member of that Brooklyn Dodgers championship team. "I thank God for Johnny Podres. I remember how confident he was in the clubhouse before Game 7. (Manager) Walter Alston called a meeting and Johnny said, 'Just give me one run.' Well, they gave him two, and we were champs. He was a man of his word, he...

Vin Scully, the great broadcaster for the Los Angeles Dodgers, turns 80 years old today. He began his career with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1950. When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, Scully moved with them. 8 seasons in Brooklyn, 50 seasons in LA. 58 seasons and counting. Wow. Scully's longevity is remarkable, but even more remarkable is his unique style. It transcends just sportscasting. It is artistic broadcasting at its best. You don't have to be a sports fan to appreciate him. You can read about his style in this fine Salon article There are more articles...

Fifty years ago, L.A. City Council voted to provide Walter O'Malley with 300-plus acres in Chavez Ravine. The rest is baseball history.All of 22 years old and fresh out of USC, Rosalind Wiener was looking for ways to attract voters in her bid for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council. She had 35,000 cards printed up enumerating the standard election promises: strengthen drug laws, improve the economy, eliminate government waste and provide adequate public transportation. But she needed one more item. Something different. Something original. Well, her family had always been huge baseball fans, so why not? Wiener's...

The vote was unanimous, and so Walter O'Malley of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Horace Stoneham of the New York Giants had permission to move their ballclubs to the West Coast. The date was May 28, 1957, 50 years ago today, and to some the idea was unthinkable. New York without National League baseball? Without the Giants of John McGraw and the Dodgers of Jackie Robinson? Without the most intense rivalry in all sports? It seemed like a dream, a nightmare to many. But although O'Malley and Stoneham claimed it was far from definite that their teams would move -- after...

June 18, 2002 Call It Dodgers Lite, but Brooklyn Loves ItBy IRA BERKOW WO freshly minted Brooklyn Cyclones, members of this Class A baseball team that is more or less a wisp — less would be the key word here — of the late, loved and lamented Dodgers, were in this kaleidoscopic part of the universe for the first time yesterday, and feeling their way. One, a 22-year-old pitcher named Eric Templet, is from Gonzalez, La. The other, Kevin Deaton, a 20-year-old, also a right-handed pitcher, is from Cocoa Beach, Fla. They were sitting in a dugout at KeySpan...

PHOENIX (AP) -- Joe Black's rendezvous with fame was nearly 50 years ago. By the time he lost his battle with cancer, he was remembered as much for his generous nature as for being the first black man to win a World Series game. ``He was a contemporary of Jackie Robinson, and he saw what he went through,'' Arizona Diamondbacks general manger Joe Garagiola Jr. said of Black, who died Friday in nearby Scottsdale. He was 78. ``He went through many things himself,'' Garagiola said. ``But this was a man with no bitterness or hate in his heart. He was...

Rebecca A. Brady, 714 E. Fifth St., Brooklyn, writes: For years you have been using the derogatory term, "The Bums," in poisonous contrast to the inspiring, "The Bronx Bombers" for the Yankees. It is shuddering just to think of the pitiful contrast in connotations. In this age when we all know something about psychology, we should realise people respond to the name they are called. If you have children you would not call them "Bums" if you expected them to amount to anything. Every once in awhile a protest of this nature arrives in the mail, but this is the...