By RICHARD GOLDSTEIN and BRUCE WEBER
Duke Snider, the Hall of Fame center fielder renowned for his home run drives and superb defensive play in the Brooklyn Dodgers’ glory years, died Sunday in Escondido, Calif. He was 84.
From 1949, his first full season, until 1957, the period generally considered the golden age of New York baseball — the last time the city’s fans were divided into three camps, and when at least one New York team played in the World Series each October — Snider was a colossus, one of three roaming the center fields of New York.
The others, of course, were Willie Mays of the New York Giants and Mickey Mantle of the Yankees, and the three became symbols of their teams, as the city’s fans argued over who was best: Willie, Mickey or the Duke?
History has since settled Snider in third place, but at the time he had a good case to make. The Dodgers, known fondly as Dem Bums and immortalized by the writer Roger Kahn as “The Boys of Summer,” won six National League pennants during Snider’s 11 seasons in Brooklyn.
They had a roster full of stellar players — Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese and Gil Hodges among them — but Snider was arguably the star among stars.
A swift outfielder, a slick fielder and a No. 3 hitter with reliable power in the clutch, he hit 40 or more home runs in five consecutive seasons, something neither Mays nor Mantle ever achieved, and a feat matched by only two other National Leaguers, Ralph Kiner and Barry Bonds.
He was the only player to hit four homers twice in a World Series, including in 1955, when the Dodgers ended decades of frustration and defeated the Yankees, bringing Brookyn its only World Series championship.
As if for good measure, in 1957, before the Dodgers left for Los Angeles, he hit the last home run at their famous Brooklyn ballpark, Ebbets Field.
“They used to run a box in the New York papers comparing me to Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays,” Snider recalled on the eve of his 1980 induction into the Hall of Fame. “It was a great time for baseball.”
The comparisons with Mantle and Mays may have been apt, but they were also hard on Snider, who was known as a perfectionist, a harsh self-critic, and a man whose moods could be dark.
As pitcher Carl Erskine, his Dodger roommate, recalled in “Bums” (Putnam, 1984) by Peter Golenbock: “Every place he went, no matter how good he was, they’d say, ‘His potential is so great, he can do even better.’ And this was a real frustration for Duke. He saw himself as not measuring up.”
“I had to learn that every day wasn’t a bed of roses, and that took some time,” Snider said. “I would sulk. I’d have a pity party for myself.”
Playing for 18 seasons, Snider had 407 home runs and 2,116 hits. He batted at least .300 seven times, had a lifetime batting average of .295 and was generally among the league leaders in runs batted in and runs scored.
Snider shined in center field, although Ebbets Field denied him the outfield expanse enjoyed by Mays at the Polo Grounds and Mantle at Yankee Stadium. He moved back on the ball brilliantly and unleashed powerful throws.
Edwin Donald Snider was born on Sept. 19, 1926, in Los Angeles and was brought up in nearby Compton. His father, Ward, seeing him return proudly from his first day at school, at age 5, called him the Duke.
Snider signed with the Dodgers’ minor league system out of Compton Junior College for a $750 bonus and made his debut in Brooklyn on opening day 1947 with a pinch-hit single against the Boston Braves. But his arrival was hardly noticed. That was the day Robinson broke the major league color barrier.
Snider was overanxious at the plate and frustrated by the curveball. Branch Rickey, the Dodgers’ general manager, and his aide George Sisler, once a great hitter with the St. Louis Browns, worked with Snider in spring training in 1948 to teach him the strike zone. Snider credited Rickey’s guidance for making him a Hall of Famer.
Snider flourished in 1949, his first full season with the Dodgers, when he batted .292 with 23 home runs and 92 R.B.I. The following year, a Duke Snider Fan Club was born.
But Snider’s moodiness affected his relationship with the fans. When he was booed by Dodgers fans in midsummer 1955 after a prolonged slump, he fumed. As he recalled in “The Duke of Flatbush” (Zebra Books, 1988), written with Bill Gilbert, he told sportswriters: “The Brooklyn fans are the worst in the league. They don’t deserve a pennant.” The complaint made headlines.
Pee Wee Reese, the Dodger captain and shortstop who would later join Snider in the Hall of Fame, teased him over his outbursts, and Snider later reflected how “Pee Wee taught me to control my emotions more.”
But a year after the tirade against the fans, Snider was chided by some sportswriters as being ungrateful for his good fortune when he collaborated with Roger Kahn for a May 1956 article in Collier’s titled “I Play Baseball for Money — Not Fun.”
On Sunday afternoon, Sept. 22, 1957, Snider hit two home runs off the Philadelphia Phillies’ Robin Roberts. The second drive was the last homer at Ebbets Field. The Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and the Giants went to San Francisco the next season.
Snider was 31 by then, hampered by a sore knee and frustrated by the bizarre dimensions at the Los Angeles Coliseum, where the fence in right-center field was 440 feet away. His production declined in the Dodgers’ four seasons there.
After 11 years in Brooklyn and five in Los Angeles, Snider was sold before the 1963 season to the Mets for $40,000, joining a dreadful ball club in its second season that was collecting former Dodgers, Giants and Yankees to boost attendance.
Snider was reunited with his Brooklyn teammates Hodges, Roger Craig and Charlie Neal and played for Casey Stengel, who managed the Yankees in all those World Series games against the Dodgers teams of the 1950s.
Snider hit his 400th homer and got his 2,000th hit as a Met, but batted only .243 on a team that lost 111 games.
Just before the 1964 season, the Mets accommodated Snider’s desire to play for a contender and return to the West Coast by selling him to the San Francisco Giants. Now Snider was a member of the Dodgers’ archrivals. He batted .210 in 91 games, then retired at age 38.
Snider later managed in the Dodgers’ and San Diego Padres’ farm systems and served as a broadcaster for the Padres and the Montreal Expos.
He is survived by his wife, Beverly; two sons, Kevin and Kurt; and two daughters, Pam and Dawna.
Snider returned to Brooklyn on a sad note on July 20, 1995, when he appeared in federal court, a couple of miles from where Ebbets Field once stood, as a criminal defendant.
Snider and another Hall of Famer, the former Giants first baseman Willie McCovey, pleaded guilty to tax fraud for failing to report thousands of dollars earned by signing autographs and participating in sports memorabilia shows. “We have choices to make in our lives,” Snider said. “I made the wrong choice.”
The following Dec. 1, he was sentenced to two years of probation and fined $5,000.
Although he made his home in California, Snider retained emotional ties to Brooklyn.
He made that clear on Sept. 12, 1963, when the Mets gave him a “night” at their home in the Polo Grounds, where the Brooklyn Dodgers had long been the hated foe. Snider’s former Brooklyn teammates were introduced — Robinson, Campanella, Erskine, Furillo, Don Newcombe and Ralph Branca. And then Snider moved to the microphone.
“I look up into the stands and it looks like Ebbets Field,” he said. “The Mets are wonderful, but you can’t take the Dodger out of Brooklyn.”
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