It’s the Yankees and the Dodgers in the World Series! Casey Stengel‘s five straight World Series appearances as manager of the Yanks began in 1949, once with the Phillies and once with the Giants and the other three with Brooklyn. That was when television was in its infancy and they were still making Studebakers.

My first was one of my favorites, 1955. I wanted to be like Johnny Podres. Brooklyn’s lefty pitched two complete game victories, including a 2-0 win in the seventh game at Yankee Stadium helped by a great running catch by left fielder Sandy Amoros to win the series for the Dodgers and a new Chevrolet Corvette for himself as the most valuable player. Eleven years later, I was the letter carrier who delivered to his bleary early morning eyes his contract offer from the Detroit Tigers. We don’t always realize how quickly the time is passing.

Then ’56 when Sister Angeles let us watch the first three innings during my favorite school period, lunch, and then the end of Don Larsen‘s perfect game.

Being a Dodgers fan was fun in the fifties. They were the underdogs of autumn in the big city against the we like white Yankees of Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and friends. The Dodgers had Roy Campanella, Jim Gilliam, Gil Hodges, Don Newcombe, and Carl Furillo, plus a guy who didn’t mind being called Pee Wee Reese. In addition, their center fielder was the Duke of Flatbush, Mr. Snider.

The two teams met again after being separated by thousands of miles. Kind of the same but not. The last time was in the punctuated season of 1981. That brings up the sad shock of learning of the passing of Fernando Valenzuela. Even after I stopped loving the Dodgers I still loved “The Fat Kid”. He was an absolute tiger to oppose and an absolute gentleman to observe at all times.

That still won’t make me favor the Dodgers. There are matchups sometimes when I want both teams to win and sometimes I want both teams to lose. This one comes close to the latter. The best contests are the ones where you don’t care who wins, you just want to see the games. My solution to the Joe Davis /John Smoltz thing is to just kill the audio. That also works well between innings. Let’s just enjoy it.