FOND MEMORIES SNIDER, DODGERS CELEBRATE 1955 WORLD SERIES TITLE.

Byline: Tony Jackson Staff Writer

For those who weren't around, there are only photographs and video captures, grayish, grainy images that convey the moment but can't begin to convey the magnitude, the euphoria, the utter catharsis of that crisp, autumn afternoon in New York a half-century ago.

For Edwin Donald Snider of Fallbrook, whose Hall of Fame plaque bears the name Duke, those images are full-color, brilliant and vivid.

The trick is to view them as he always does, on the high-definition plasma screen of his mind's eye.

Ask him now what stands out about that day, the day he and his teammates finally brought a world championship to long-suffering Brooklyn after coming so agonizingly close on so many occasions, and Snider won't immediately mention Sandy Amoros' famous running catch or Johnny Podres' complete-game shutout of the vaunted New York Yankees, both of which Snider watched from his customary vantage point in center field.

What Snider remembers most clearly is the final out, a ground ball that left Elston Howard's bat on a most appropriate trajectory toward the glove of shortstop and captain Pee Wee Reese.

``I was probably happier for Pee Wee than for everybody else,'' Snider said last week. ``He had been there longer than most of us, and he had gone through (losing the World Series) more times than I had. I was glad that groundball was hit to him. It was such a load off everybody's back because we had finally won a world championship.

``I didn't feel like the Yankees were any better as a team than we were in the years we had lost to them, even though they were a tremendous baseball club. But it just seemed like they won the odd game most of the time.''

Thanks to Podres and Amoros and Reese and Snider and a host of other names who 50 years later are as hallowed in Chavez Ravine as they once were in Flatbush, the Dodgers finally triumphed in that odd game, that unbearably tense Game 7 in 1955, winning their first World Series after losing seven, including five to the Yankees from 1941 to `53.

Years later, Reese, who died in 1999, would admit that as he jogged to his position for the bottom of the ninth inning, he was sure that tenuous 2-0 lead wouldn't hold up, that the legendary ghosts of Yankee Stadium would haunt the Dodgers once more. When Reese fielded Howard's grounder and threw across to Gil Hodges, he set off a celebration the likes of which Brooklyn had never seen.

No one could have known it at the time, but Brooklyn would never see another World Series championship. Three years later, the Dodgers were gone to Los Angeles, leaving Brooklyn with only the fading memory of its lone title.

The 50th anniversary of that championship season will be celebrated throughout the summer at Dodger Stadium. The club plans to wear Brooklyn jerseys several times during the season, and the whole affair will culminate in an Aug. 28 pregame ceremony in which, club officials hope, every living member of that 1955 club will be present.

Snider, 78, wouldn't miss it for anything.

``I think there are only 11 of us around now, because, unfortunately, so many have passed away,'' he said. ``But I'll be there for that, and I'm also going to throw out the first pitch at the home opener (April 12).''

Snider retired in 1964 after 18 seasons, during which he batted .295, hit 407 home runs and drove in 1,333 runs. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1980, the summer the Dodgers officially retired his No. 4 jersey.

``Duke was not just a great baseball player with all the tools, but he could have been a great football player, too,'' said former teammate and Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda, who played briefly with the Dodgers in 1955. ``But the thing I remember most is the way he took me in on that team filled with stars. He'd call me back to the back of the bus, and we'd have a beer. He was one of the all-time greats, but he always made me feel like I belonged. I never forgot that.''

Today, Snider enjoys a blissful, but busy, retirement in Fallbrook, north of San Diego, where the baseball field at the lone high school bears his name.

Once a year - Feb. 20 this year - Duke Snider Field plays host to the Duke Snider Home Run Derby, a fund-raiser in which the top high school hitters from Orange, Riverside and San Diego counties are invited to swing from the heels. The first-place finisher receives a trophy, and his school's athletic program gets $1,000.

Snider said the event originally was the brainchild of the Fallbrook High baseball booster club and that most of the hands-on work is done by the school's baseball team and coaching staff.

Snider's job is simply to show up.

``It's run exceptionally well, and I'm proud to be a part of it,'' he said. ``I have a little chair, sort of a captain's chair, that I sit in just off the batting cage. I talk to each kid as he goes up to hit. I just tell them to relax and have a good time, that there's no pressure involved. Everybody has a good time.''

This week, Snider is at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Fla., participating, as he always does, in the Dodgers' semi-annual Adult Baseball Camp. There is a special emphasis this year on the 50th anniversary of that magical 1955 season. Ralph Branca, Clem Labine and Carl Erskine, all pitchers on that team who routinely attend the adult camp, are there, as usual. So are Roger Craig, a pitcher on the `55 club, and Don Zimmer, an infielder.

Undoubtedly, there will be as many stories flying around as baseballs, and a few reminiscences, too. There was a monkey-off-the-back aspect to that `55 Series, similar to what happened in Boston last fall, and the Dodgers had suffered through as many near-misses as the Red Sox.

``I don't think there was any added pressure,'' Snider said. ``I think there was just a cloud hanging over the head of the Brooklyn rooters. ... They talk about 1951, when we lost (in a playoff) to the Giants on the Bobby Thomson home run, and how sad a day it was. It was very discouraging, but hindsight has 20/20 vision. We won (the pennant) in `52 and `53, finished second in `54 and won the championship in `55.

``What happened in `51 made a better team out of us. I think the `52 team was a better team starting lineup-wise and possibly pitching-wise than the `55 team. But in `52, we lost Game 7 to the Yankees, and we were the odd men out. To finally win in `55 was a burden off everybody.''

Snider's point was that the difference between `52 and `55 was one game each season, a game each team has about the same chance of winning or losing as it does some Thursday night game in the middle of June. Except in these cases, it was Game 7. And in `55, the Dodgers had the right pitcher on the mound and the right amount of luck on their side.

So there was no sense throughout that `55 season that this finally would be their year. Or that it wouldn't be.

``I don't think we ever thought about that,'' Snider said. ``We had finished second to the Giants (in `54). We went to spring training just knowing we had to work harder and improve ourselves to win the pennant. We went into the season in tiptop shape and went 22-2 to start the season. We clinched the pennant (Sept. 8), the earliest it had ever been clinched in the National League. Everything just clicked. Everybody was a hero right from the start of the season, and we didn't look back. Each day was brand new, and we were ready to beat somebody.''

Snider doesn't watch much major-league ball these days. He retired from broadcasting several years ago, and is somewhat turned off by the way starting pitchers are used, how they're kept on strict pitch counts and often pulled from games when they're pitching well. But he still loves the game, at least in its purest form, which is one reason he derives so much enjoyment from the Dodgers Adult Camp.

He has few opinions on the current Dodgers, although he did say he thought it was ``wise'' to let Adrian Beltre walk rather than pay him what it would have taken to keep him in Los Angeles after only one good season.

The game has changed immensely in the 40 years since Snider retired, finishing his career with two unremarkable seasons with the New York Mets (`63) and San Francisco (`64). But his memories of 1955 haven't faded, and he is only too happy to rehash them this summer as the Dodgers commemorate their finest moment in Brooklyn.

Tony Jackson,[phone]

tony.jackson(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

5 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- 3) Johnny Podres jumps into Roy Campanella's arms (upper left) as Don Hoak joins the celebration after the final out of the 1955 World Series. Sandy Amoros' running catch at the wall (upper right) kept the Yankees off the scoreboard in Game 7. When it was over, series MVP Podres (above, with arrow) was mobbed by teammates and media.

Photos provided

(4) DUKE SNIDER

(5) Duke Snider, center rear, joined, from left, Sandy Koufax, Roy Campanella and Don Drysdale during a Dodgers Hall of Fame ceremony at Dodger Stadium in 1990.

Ken Levine/Getty Images

Box:

DUKE SNIDER

Source: www.baseball-reference.com