Duke Snider
Duke Snider, one of my boyhood heroes died today; he was 84. I’ve already written about him and the rest of the Brooklyn Dodgers – here. One of the great players on a great team. He was a power hitter who fielded with grace. He played on a team that was from another world. Professional sports are no longer games, but high finance industries.
RIP
I grew up in NJ but loved the Brooklyn Dodgers. With three brothers, all Dodger fans, you might say I was to Dodger fandom born. I wasn’t even a teen in 1951 but was listening on that fateful day in October (on the radio) when Bobby Thomson hit that shot hit round the world. We were just beside ourselves. Still we kept rooting on the Duke, Campy, Carl, Jackie, and PeeWee and our dreams were answered in 1955. Oh bliss! Yes, baseball is different today, but old passions never die. I still love the game (NY Mets) and still hate the NY Yankees.
I knew nothing of baseball, but Bev Snyder, Duke’s wife, was in several Adobe classes with me and she was designing a web page about him. She was petite, and a very delightful lady. Imagine, she must have been mid seventies, learning all that Adobe stuff. Maybe you can find that site.
There was a nice piece in the NY Times sports section today written by Ralph Branca (he was the pitcher that threw the ‘shot hit around the world’). Wonderful memories of the Duke, and at the end of the piece he related how he had called the Duke a short time before he passed away. Snider was in a nursing facility and unable to talk attended by his devoted wife Bev. “I wanted him to know what a privilege it was to call him my friend. At that point, all Bev could do was put the phone to his ear.” She sounds like a very special lady