By Peter King
The arrival of spring training, and the anticipation of another baseball season, brings back great memories. My earliest baseball memories date back to the early 1950s and the Brooklyn Dodgers, the famed “Boys of Summer,” in what is now regarded as the sport’s Golden Age. Baseball was the unquestioned national pastime, and New York’s Yankees, Dodgers and Giants were the dominant teams.
From 1947 to 1956, the Yankees won eight league pennants, the Dodgers six and the Giants two. For nine of those 10 seasons, at least one World Series teams was from New York, and for eight years, both teams were. That was a true monopoly of excellence.
The Dodgers teams of my youth included such Hall of Famer players as Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider and Gil Hodges. There was nothing better than sitting in the stands at Ebbets Field, watching these stars excel. (Tickets for bleacher seats cost 75 cents!) As mighty as the Dodgers were, however, the Yankees, led by legendary stars like Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Whitey Ford, prevailed in five of the teams’ six World Series encounters.
And then, in 1957, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley announced the unthinkable: He would move the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles the following year, and the Giants would go to San Francisco. My childhood had come to a crashing halt. National League baseball would be gone from New York.
My final goodbye to the Dodgers would come on Sept. 22, 1957, when I went to their final home day game at Ebbets Field. Brooklyn beat the Phillies, 7-3, and Duke Snider hit two home runs, but that was small consolation. Dodgers baseball in New York, and my years of sports innocence, were behind me.
National League baseball didn’t return to New York until the Mets arrived in 1962. They were an expansion team, which meant they were composed of players others teams didn’t want. There were some rough, lean years, but to Mets fans, it didn’t matter. They rallied behind the team, and after seven seasons, and many losses, the 1969 Miracle Mets, led by their manager, Dodgers legend Gil Hodges, won the World Series in a never-to-be-forgotten triumph over the heavily favored Baltimore Orioles.
The Mets captured the Series again in 1986, defeating the Red Sox in a memorable seven-game struggle. There have been several good runs since then that fell just short, including a World Series defeat to Kansas City in 2015 and, most recently, a League Championship Series loss to the Dodgers in 2024. Now the Mets face the 2026 season having decided to go forward without their all-time leading home run hitter, Pete Alonso, and star relief pitcher Edwin Diaz, as well as proven veterans Brandon Nimmo and Jeff McNeil. Their core four are gone. For Mets fans, spring training will be filled with questions and unknown answers.
I know that baseball has changed dramatically since years ago. There are almost twice as many teams now as there were then; players move from team to team, season to season; and teams regularly play inter-league games. As well, the Super Bowl has surpassed the World Series in public attention, and sports such as hockey and basketball crowd the calendar, playing well into the baseball season.
But still, that sense of anticipation remains. There is something about the fresh spring air and the crack of the bat that brings our attention back to the baseball diamond. The distances from the pitcher’s mound to home plate, and between the bases, remain the same, as do ball and strike counts. And, especially on Long Island, many thousands of kids are looking forward to playing Little League baseball in a new season, when, as always, their parents and grandparents will be in the stands, cheering them on. They’ll create new memories that, in years to come, they’ll pass on to their children and grandchildren.
No matter the rule changes or league realignments, baseball will remain unchanged as an essential component of the American fabric. Almost 75 years ago, the renowned cultural historian Jacques Barzun famously proclaimed, “Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.” That is as true today as it was then, and I believe it will be true for generations to come.
Play ball!
Peter King is a former congressman, and a former chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security. Comments? pking@ liherald.com.
