The Duke
The Duke
By Jim Ross
On April 15—opening day of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ 1947 season—a 28-year-old rookie named Jackie Robinson started at first; 20-year-old rookie Duke Snider sat in the dugout. The next game—a week before I was born or I might’ve been there—the two hammered their first major league hits. Around the batter’s cage, The Duke often kidded with Jackie. They sometimes ate together. When Dixie Walker circulated a petition to remove Jackie from the team, The Duke refused to sign, just like when he was told to bunt, he sometimes swung for the bleachers.
Seven years later, on May 25, 1954, Dad took me to watch the Dodgers play the Philadelphia Phillies at Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. When we arrived, Grandpa Frank, who worked the ticket booth, offered to get me the autograph of “Anyone, but only one” Dodger. He hinted: ask for homeboy Gil Hodges. Dad wanted me to pick Roy Campanella. Mom said, Get Jackie.
The Duke started in centerfield, Jackie in leftfield, Gil on first base. Roy had the day off. Batting third, The Duke homered in the first inning with one out, one on. We jumped up and down, screaming, as The Duke ripped around the bases. When somebody spilled a beer down my back, Dad laughed, “You’ve been baptized.” The Duke finished with three hits, two runs scored, two RBIs. Jackie and Gil both hit one single each. The Dodgers lost 8-6, and Johnny Podres, who came into the game 4-0, took the loss. Seeing my sad face, Dad said, “It’s only one game.”
I asked Grandpa Frank for The Duke’s autograph.
***
“Move it,” entreats my wife Ginger. “We gotta get home.”
“What’s up?” I ask, easing into the passenger seat.
“There’s a special, today only, you can talk with any ex-baseball player for a buck.”
“I’ll finally talk with The Duke,” I say.
“Emily’s holding him on the line. We gotta hurry before he hangs up.”
“I’ve dreamed of this all my life,” I say.
When we arrive home, our daughter tells me, “The Duke said he’d call back.”
While waiting, I jot down these questions:
- People were always comparing you with someone: all Brooklyn wept when its favorite son, nice guy Gil, was in a batting slump; Willie Mays was faster going back to the wall. But you were faster than Willie coming in on line drives and none of the “Boys of Summer” could drive in runners in the clutch like you. No other player hit four homers in two different World Series. Did you ever tire of all the comparisons?
- You once said, “When they tore down Ebbets Field, they tore down part of me.” Yet, you played seven more years, five with the Dodgers in Los Angeles, finishing with the fledgling New York Mets and the San Francisco Giants. Should you have hung up your spikes earlier? Have you thought about what your post-Brooklyn years might have been like had you been traded to a contender with a short right field fence?
- People chided you for admitting you were in the game for the money. At your peak, as one of baseball’s premier players, you made a measly forty-four grand. Since then, free agency has run amok and mediocre players command megabuck salaries. Did you take it on the chin undeservedly?
- You transitioned from your playing years to other roles in baseball and found a second home with the Montreal Expos. Did you enjoy evolving while staying in the game? How would you compare your 11 years in Brooklyn with your 14 years in Montreal?
- Is there life after baseball? Did you adequately fund your retirement? Other than becoming an avocado farmer, did you re-discover any parts of yourself that you’d left behind before baseball took hold of your life?
I wait by the phone for The Duke to call back. The longer I wait, the more the urgency grows. Finally, the phone rings. When I’m not called to the phone, I assume it isn’t for me. I keep waiting. I think the call never comes, but it did. Dad had answered the phone upstairs and, instead of calling me, began reading some poetry he’d written to The Duke, starting with his “Sorrows of a Dodger Rooter,” and The Duke encouraged him to “Keep going, keep going.”
It turned out, it was all just a dream: vivid, bigger than life, but a dream. I joked with Ginger, “You think they’ll ever have another one-day special?”
***
After retiring in 1964 from an 18-year career playing Major League Baseball, for several years The Duke scouted and managed minor league teams for the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Diego Padres. Then, he found his second home in Montreal. He had his professional debut in 1944 with the AAA International League’s Montreal Royals, a Brooklyn Dodgers farm team that nurtured Jackie, Roy, and some other “Boys of Summer.” After starting the season in Brooklyn in 1947, The Duke spent the early months of the 1948 season with the Royals before being called up for keeps by the Dodgers.
In 1973, he returned to Montreal, replacing Jackie Robinson who died after one season as an Expos English-language broadcaster. From 1973 through 1986, The Duke reached into his deep memory banks to provide color commentary for Expos games in the play-by-play duo of “Dave and The Duke,” with Dave “Up, Up and Away” Van Horne. During his first two years back in Montreal, The Duke also served as the Expos batting coach. Halfway through his Expos years, The Duke was finally inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
After retiring from the Expos after the 1986 season, The Duke began supplementing his income by signing autographs and selling baseball memorabilia. For example, along with Catfish Hunter, Ernie Banks, and seven other Hall of Famers, he signed special edition baseball cards that could be purchased in exchange for three Nabisco proofs of purchase and a mere five dollars. My family of four consumed immense quantities of Nabisco products because we secured at least three cards for each player, which required no fewer than 90 proofs of purchase! The rarity in the Nabisco series is another former Dodger, Don Drysdale, who pulled out of his agreement to sign the Nabisco cards, resulting in limited availability.
In 1995, Duke Snider and his fellow Hall of Famer, Willie McCovey, were indicted for tax evasion for failing to report income from sports card and memorabilia shows. In pleading guilty, The Duke said, “I take full responsibilities for my actions. I also hope that my fans, especially those in Brooklyn, can accept my apology.” He was given two years of probation and a $5,000 fine. At the Federal Courthouse in Brooklyn, the judge described Snider as “idolized by a generation of which I was one.” As he handed down the sentence, the judge said, “Because of who you are, you have been publicly disgraced and humiliated, and it’s taken place here in Brooklyn where you were idolized by a generation.” McCovey received similar treatment from the court.
Jackie died at 53; The Duke endured to 85. From an investment perspective, Mom was right: I should’ve asked for Jackie’s. But can logic temper hero worship? Should it? I made the right decision asking for The Duke’s.
***
A few years before The Duke’s 2011 death, my son Alex bought me a Duke-signed baseball for Christmas. It soon vanished. We blamed the dog. Seven years and one dog later, Ginger found it in an abandoned knitting bag. “I was keeping it safe from the dog,” she alleged.
I now keep the Duke-signed baseball in a clear acrylic display case made of interlocking parts. My three-year-old twin grandkids began playing with the case as if it were a Rubik’s Cube. Then they began removing the ball and passing it between them as if it were the King’s Jewels. They got that right.
NOTES:
“Sorrows of a Dodger Rooter” was the only poem Dad ever published.
Duke Snider’s peak salary of $44,000 in 1956 inflates to $220,324 in 1991(the year I waited for his call) and to $493,559 in 2023.
The 2022 minimum MLB salary was $720,000; the average was $4.9 million.
Highest MLB salary in 1956 was Yogi’s $58,000; highest in 2023 were Matt Scherzer and Justin Verlander at $43.333 million.
Jim Ross jumped into creative pursuits in 2015 after a rewarding research career. With a graduate degree from Howard University, in eight years he’s published nonfiction, fiction, poetry, photography, plays, hybrid, and interviews in nearly 200 journals on five continents. Writing publications include Columbia Journal, Hippocampus, Lunch Ticket, Manchester Review, Newfound, Ocotillo Review, The Atlantic, and Typehouse. Photo essays include: Amsterdam Quarterly, Barren, DASH, Kestrel, Ilanot Review, Litro, NWW, Pilgrimage, Sweet, Typehouse. A Best of the Net nominee, Jim recently wrote/acted in a one-act play and appeared in a documentary limited series broadcast internationally. Jim’s family splits time between city and mountains.
Jason David Córdova lives in Puerto Rico as an illustrator and painter. Some of his art can be seen on Instagram at @jasoni72. You can visit his shop on Red Bubble.
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