TCBA Yearbook

Loyalty

INDEX Seasons 1902 1903 1904 1905 1906 1907 1908 1909 1910 1911 1912 1913 1914 1915 1916 1917 1918 1919 1920 1921 1922 1923 1924 1925 1926 1927 1928 1929 1930 1931 1932 1933 1934 1935 1936 1937 1938 1939 1940 1941 1942 1943 1944 1945 1946 1947 1948 1949 1950 1951 1952 1953 1954 1955 1956 1957 1958 1959 1960 1961 1962 1963 1964 1965 1966 1967 1968 1969 1970 1971 1972 1973 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020  2021  2022 2023  2024  2025 2026  2027  2028 2029   Miscellaneous Foreword 1 Foreword II Introduction The Ad The Letter The Test First Newsletter Yesterday Gold Origins TCBA Almanac

I grew up in the New York area during the Fifties, when the Brooklyn Dodgers were a real team that challenged the Yankees in the World Series every fall. Gil Hodges and Duke Snider were my heroes, and I knew the lineup of that 1955 team better than any school lesson - Reese, Gilliam, Snider, Hodges, Furillo, Campanella, Robinson, Amoros, and Newcombe. They were my boys, my team, my baseball cards staring back at me as I pushed them around on the bedroom floor in mock heroics. When the 1957 season ended and the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, my loyalty went with them. My Dad and so many others were bitter and angry about the move, but I was much too innocent to understand or to even begin to feel the pain of betrayal spoken of so often during the Winter of ‘57. It wasn’t until I had my first glimpse of the New Breed, the Amazin’ Mets, that I finally gave up allegiance to my beloved Dodgers, and even then, only because Gil Hodges was with the Mets, (to be joined by Duke Snider the following year.)      Today, of course, things are different. Players are not bound to a team by a sense of loyalty. We live in an incredible age of greed, when mindless materialism is the preferred religion, when the reason for being is to acquire wealth, when the meaning of life is to have more. A player goes where the money is best. The loyalty of young boys and girls is no longer given so innocently, for it comes generously laced with the cynical understanding that favorite players will soon be moving on to another team for more money. It is no longer considered betrayal to leave the home team fans for otherwheres. No, it is an expected passage in the rites of accumulation, that phenomenon that we once called growing up.      I come from a different time. I come from an age when social responsibility and loyalty were admired qualities, when the idealism of a brave new world insulated us from the ravages of betrayal. I was not prepared to have my face smashed against the windshield of deceit when I had a head-on collision with betrayal, especially when it was my wife driving in the opposite direction.      I wear a seatbelt now, but I didn’t then. During the time it took to recover from the inflicted damages, TCBA was left adrift and the Hyde Park Vita-Men suffered badly. The patient was terminal, but no one was around to pull the plug; it took five more years before the team regenerated into a new form.      For me, the pain is long gone, the maturing process complete. But mostly, I understand now why my father wept that night in the winter of 1957.                                                                                                                                 - Bob Braun << Previous • Next >>