Dodger blue birthday wish - with a kiss.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

As a little girl growing up in Brooklyn, Frances Ricci would sit on the curb in front of her apartment building watching her brothers play stickball in the street.

"When's it going to be my turn?" she'd ask.

It never was.

Well, on her 90th birthday recently, Frances Ricci got her turn.

In front of about 40,000 people before last Sunday's Dodgers vs. Padres televised game, she stepped to home plate with her family, and uttered the five words that are at the heart of this storied baseball franchise - Vin Scully's mantra.

"It's time for Dodger baseball," Frances said in her strongest voice into the microphone as the crowd applauded.

Her stickball playing brothers are gone now, but boy would they have been proud of their baby sister. She made it to home plate in the big leagues - at 90.

"I thought my heart was going to burst I was so excited," Frances said this week from her Canoga Park home.

"Me standing at home plate with my paisano Tommy Lasorda. He gave me a kiss - on the lips."

She wears her Italian heritage on her sleeve, proud of her parents who immigrated to this country just after she was born, and raised a family through hard work and tough love.

Sure, like a lot of little girls from that generation she got shortchanged, having to stay inside helping her mother cook and sew while her brothers were out playing baseball.

But she kept an eye on the sport from afar and promised herself that one day she'd be part of the fun.

When the Dodgers moved west to Los Angeles in 1957, Frances Ricci and her growing family were waiting for them.

When the Dodgers went looking for a new booster club to support them, Frances grabbed her kids and friends at the American Legion hall and started blowing up blue and white balloons.

"Grandma would take us with her to the games, and we'd sit up in the blue section in seats reserved for the booster club," says Este Mlynowski, one of her granddaughters.

"She'd spend the whole game with a transistor radio to her ear listening to Vin Scully call the game."

With her kids and later grandkids in tow, she'd arrive at the park early getting player autographs for her white Dodger jacket. After the game, she'd go home and embroider each signature she had collected on the jacket.

It's been a rite of passage in the Ricci family. When her kids, grandkids and now great grandkids reach three, Grandma takes them to a Dodger game.

"She's my world," says Sera Ricci, another granddaughter. "We'd sit way up there in the stands and stay until the last out. Grandma would explain the game to us, make us love it as much as she does.

"It meant so much to her, to be honored on her 90th birthday by the Dodgers like that. It's just too bad they lost the game."

That's baseball, kid. You win some, you lose some. Hopefully, you win a lot more than you lose, like the Dodgers are this year.

It was well after 10 p.m. last Sunday night when the Ricci family got home from the televised game that started at 5 p.m. on ESPN.

Because he wasn't working the game, Vin Scully wasn't there. Too bad, Grandma said. She worships the ground he walks on.

Ah, well, her paisano Tommy was there, with a kiss - on the lips.

"After the game we got home and everybody was so tired we just sat on the couch," Este says. "Not Grandma.

"She was out in the kitchen baking cookies."

Probably with blue and white sprinkles on them.

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(color) Frances Ricci standing at home plate with "my paisano Tommy Lasorda." The Canoga Park grandmother celebrated her 90th birthday with her beloved Dodgers and kicked off the game on the stadium microphone with "It's time for Dodger baseball."

Jon SooHoo/Los Angeles Dodgers