Still No Joy in Flatbush : 30 Years Later, Diehard Brooklyn Dodger Fans Keep Mourning the Team That Broke Their Hearts

It's been 30 years since the Dodgers stopped playing baseball in Ebbets Field and the lights went out in Flatbush. Thirty years since Walter O'Malley shocked the sports world and moved his beloved bums to the cash-green pastures of Southern California.

Thirty long years. Time enough for the most diehard Brooklyn fan to forget. Time to get on with life and bury the past, right?

"Like hell," says Vinnie Faretra, a 57-year-old truck driver from Brooklyn. "I mean, these guys, they broke my heart. They tore the guts out of this town when they left. I should forget \o7 that? \f7 What's the hurry?"

The Move Still 'Hoits'

Vinnie doesn't want to insult anyone, see, but the idea that his team is playing ball out in "La-La Land" still hoits. And he can't shake the notion that a great crime has gone unpunished.

"It don't seem right," he says, speaking for Brooklynites past and present. "We wuz robbed. Treated like dirt. This is a long, sad story. You got a minute?"

Before Vinnie gets rolling, a few facts are in order: The Brooklyn Dodgers no longer exist. Ebbets Field was torn down in 1960. And if you think the team is ever coming back, there are a couple of guys on Flatbush Avenue who would love to sell you a bridge.

But who needs reality?

Vinnie--and thousands of fans like him--simply cannot let go. They are in mourning for a vanished team and a golden sports era when baseball was more than just a business. They still grieve that a club that had stars like Jackie Robinson, Pee-Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe and Duke Snider has deserted them forever.

A Gentler, Kinder Time

And their nostalgia goes beyond baseball: In the Brooklyn of the 1950s, America was at peace. Working-class people from a hodge-podge of ethnic neighborhoods put aside their differences and rooted as one for the Dodgers. Radios on kitchen tables filled their homes and tenement apartments with the team's latest exploits. It was a gentler and kinder time.

"If the words on the Statue of Liberty meant anything at all, they applied to Brooklyn in the old days," says Red Barber, who was the Dodgers' radio announcer from 1939 to 1953. "You had blacks, Jews, Italians, Irish, Polish and others working hard to make a living, and they all cared passionately about their ball club.

"I've never seen a community that was so attached to a team, or grieved so much when it left. And the grieving goes on today."

Meet the walking wounded of Brooklyn: An army of lost souls from coast to coast who still have not forgiven "The O'Malley," as he is known in Flatbush bars today. Fiercely loyal to their old neighborhoods and steeped in a baseball folklore second to none, they live in a world where time officially stopped on Oct. 23, 1957, the day the Dodgers left town.

Some, like Vinnie, keep their feelings to themselves and mutter about the past only when provoked. Others lose themselves in a world of Brooklyn Dodger fan clubs, Brooklyn Dodger newsletters and Brooklyn Dodger memorabilia auctions. Thousands of them gather each year to honor members of the old team at a Hall of Fame ceremony. Some even cry.

Crazy? Perhaps. But these people do not need pity. What they need is a sympathetic ear.

"You got a minute?" Vinnie asks. "I could tell you about the beefs we used to have in bars about the Dodgers and the Giants. Talk, talk, talk. Boy, I could go on for hours."

He probably could. So forget the condolences, pal. Leave your helpful advice at the door and hoist a couple for the team. This is one wake that never ends.

The first signs of Dodgeritis, a most mysterious disease, appeared in 1958 on opening day. Thousands of Brooklyn Dodger fans woke up, rubbed their eyes and realized that Pee-Wee, Campy, the Newk and the Duke were gone.

In other cities, fans were welcoming their teams back from spring training. But there was no joy in Flatbush. Ebbets Field, the historic bandbox that had been home to the Dodgers since 1913, was strangely silent.

"It's a funny thing, but I felt listless, really kind of down, and I didn't know why," says Irving Rudd, 70, the Brooklyn Dodgers publicist who did not move with the club to Los Angeles and is now a boxing press agent in New York.

"I went to my doctor and he told me there were lots of cases just like mine in the neighborhood. People wandering around in a funk. He called it Dodgeritis, and said there was no known cure."

It got worse.

When the Los Angeles Dodgers played their first games that year in Philadelphia, busloads of Brooklynites traveled down to Shibe Park. They carried huge, handmade signs reading: "It's the \o7 Brooklyn, \f7 not the Los Angeles Dodgers." Some fans cheered the old team as if it had never left. But others were disturbed by the "L.A." emblem on the blue baseball caps and left feeling depressed.