Ghosts of ballparks past at Keyspan Park

"Nothing compares to Ebbets Field," said Ralph Branca, the former Dodger, as I tailed him through the visitors on-deck circle at Keyspan Park Monday night. Then, just to add emphasis, he looked back over his shoulder staring me dead in the eye and repeated himself – five times.

"Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing." He made his point abundantly clear. "They all keep trying to do it, but they can’t."

I assumed he was referencing all of those new "retro" ballparks that are being built around the country. The ballparks that are supposed to bring back that old-time baseball feel – that Brooklyn feel.

But my query to Branca was about this ballpark, this place on Surf Avenue, Coney Island, Brooklyn, where 10 players called the Cyclones would take on the Mahoning Valley Scrappers in just a few moments.

The night was young, and I had a lot to learn.

"Nothing."

His voice echoed in my head as I took a seat next to my great-uncle, Paul Montanaro, brother to my grandmother and an old-time Dodgers fan that grew up on 80th Street near 15th Avenue in Bensonhurst. A guy who went to his first home game in 1939, when he was about 13 years old thanks to some free tickets he got from school. Someone who played ball at the Parade Grounds in its heyday, worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard until it closed in 1965 and took his son (not-so-surprisingly named Paul) to games in the ‘50s when they watched their team win the World Series and then, just two years later, abandon them for the West Coast.

"The first game I went to, Vince DiMaggio was playing center field for the Pittsburgh Pirates," he said before giving me this surprising tidbit: "We didn’t have that many Dodger fans in the neighborhood, because a lot of guys were Italian. And Joe DiMaggio was the best player at that time. A lot of guys rooted for the Yankees because of him. But I was always a Dodger fan, because they gave us the tickets. A lot of kids became fans because we got to go to the games for free.

"The seats were out in the bleachers," he continued, pointing to the 1,000-seat addition Cyclones management installed behind the right field wall to deal with the high demand for tickets. "But the bleachers there were in left field, not right. I knew one of the monitors who was in charge of giving out the tickets. So I got to go to a lot of games."

There were other ways to get into the games, too.

"At the end of the season, a lot of the ticket takers would get other jobs if the Dodgers were out of it," he said. "So they would hire kids to be ticket takers. I had friends that did that. They’d tell me to come down and meet them at the turnstile; we’d wait until the second or third inning, then go in and sit wherever we wanted. I liked to sit right by the Dodgers dugout, closest to home plate. That’s where I’d sit every time."

The good players were few and far between early on, he said, but he could still name the starting infield.

"Leo Durocher was player-manager at the time. He played shortstop. This was before Pee Wee, of course. The first baseman was a guy by the name of Dolph Camilli. He was a big star. Use to hit these high, towering home runs. Cookie Lavagetto played third. He went on to coach for the Dodgers for years. The second basemen was Pete Coscarart."

Our seats at Keyspan, behind home plate about 10 rows back, were to my uncle’s liking. All of the seats around the infield are green, with a Brooklyn Dodgers and a New York Giants logo tacked onto the aisle seat. Each one has a cup holder – something my uncle didn’t notice until the fifth inning.

"No obstructed views here," he said, before turning his attention to the signs along the outfield wall, all of them from neighborhood establishments. "The Riviera. I been there plenty of times."

We passed the time between pitches and innings by sharing a Pepsi, eating hot dogs, reading the yearbook and speaking of baseball and family.

I had a great-great-grandfather named Marco, I learned. These pitchers seemed to be getting ahead of the hitters – maybe these young kids were swinging at bad pitches. My grandmother was named for her grandmother.

Before we knew it, it was the bottom of the ninth inning. Down 2-0 with two outs and a runner on, my uncle pointed out to me that barely anyone had left the game. Everyone was still here to see how this thing would finish up. That seemed somewhat familiar to him.

It was right about then when a kid by the name of Edgar Rodriguez swung and connected with a fastball right down the middle. There was one man on.

"That’s gone," my uncle said at the crack of the bat. Everyone stood up and watched it cut through the breeze and sail over the fence. The kid broke into a trot and rounded the bases – floating just a bit thanks to the 7,500 Brooklyn fans cheering him home. He crossed the plate and the game was tied.

An inning later, the Cyclones got the win on a bases-loaded-sacrifice fly by catcher Michael Jacobs, who had struck out in his four previous at bats. Tonight, the new fans – my uncle included – would go home happy.

We left the game, headed for the car, and sat in post-game traffic for about 15 minutes, until we reached Cropsey Avenue. I took that to 17th Avenue where I turned and made my way to his 82nd Street home – just a few blocks from where he grew up.

"You know, I can take the train to the game," he said, just like he did back then, when he would walk from the Navy Yard to the subway. "But I wonder if I can take a bus. Use to be I could take a trolley down New Utrecht Avenue right to where that new stadium stands. Right to Steeplechase Park."

There were vague references but I don’t think he spoke of it by name – that place he would travel to watch his team play. Yes, this little ballpark was nice. He would go to the games, enjoy them, take his great-grandkids (one of them of course named Paul) to a few on some Sunday nights. They might even go on some rides in Astroland afterwards.

But this place we went to, down by the ocean, on the edge of the borough – this certainly wasn’t Ebbets Field.

Even when they try to do it right here in Brooklyn, there is no comparison.

Branca, I learned through my Uncle Paul, was right all along.

(July 2/9, 2001 Issue)