Tomorrow evening at 8:00, HBO will show The Ghosts of Flatbush, a documentary about the Brooklyn Dodgers during the years 1947, the year Jackie Robinson was signed to the team, and 1957, when they moved to Los Angeles. Although focused on the team, the show also delves deeply into the history and social dynamics of Brooklyn during the decade it covers. As Matthew Oshinsky writes in today's Sun:
The writers of "The Ghosts of Flatbush" are right to imply that no sports franchise now or since has so faithfully embodied a city (or a borough) as did Robinson and the Dodgers of the 1950s. At the time, Brooklyn was the nearest thing the nation had to the melting pot Americans spoke so proudly about. It was a borough of immigrants…, many still licking the wounds of past lives and wary of those across the borders of their close-knit neighborhoods. But the Dodgers belonged to everyone, and each time they took the field, the stands looked like a summit at the United Nations. As any Dodger would tell you, the scene was surely not the same up at palatial Yankee Stadium, where there were few minorities in the seats and none on the field.
Photo: Branch Rickey signs Jackie Robinson to the Dodgers and it happened on Montague Street.
