Hometown Team

"Los Angeles!"

It was a cry from the heart that made Leslie cringe.

She told him the Dodgers moved in 1957. "They've been my hometown team for all my life."

Tears started pouring from Steve's eyes. "No, no. It's too much. Not the Dodgers, too!"

Leslie stopped talking and just put her arms around him and let him cry.

Finally, he ran down and stiffened. Leslie let him go immediately.

He sat up straight and wiped his eyes.

"I'm sorry," Steve said. "I'm being stupid. It's just a baseball team."

"Don't apologize," Leslie said, draping her arm over Steve's shoulders and pulling him to her side. It wasn't comfortable for her, because he was so much taller, but she didn't mind when he seemed to find comfort in it. He put his head on her shoulder and blinked away his tears. "I understand," Leslie continued. "This is the last straw. Tell Aunt Leslie what you're feeling. Please."

"I thought ... I saw baseball on the TV and I thought here was something that hadn't changed. Something I could count on. I should have known better," he said almost angrily.

"You should have," Leslie agreed. "Nothing stays exactly the same. Oatmeal is still available in a cardboard cylinder, but the logo isn't the same. Coke is still sold, but they make it with corn syrup instead of cane sugar. The Dodgers still play, but now they play in L.A. Today you can watch baseball on TV when you can't get to the game. You will see black players and players from other countries playing alongside men from Texas and Iowa. You can still buy hotdogs and Crackerjack and beer at games, but also caramel macchiatos, nachos and goat cheese pizza."

"Goat cheese, really?" Steve raised his eyebrows. "Goat milk was for people who couldn't afford to keep cows."

"Now it's trendy," Leslie assured him. "I can't stand it. Leaves a nasty aftertaste in my mouth, but lots of people love it. Anyway, as I was saying, baseball has changed, but it's still a wooden bat smacking against a ball and runners sliding under a tag and the crowd leaping up cheering. You can still recognize it."

Steve mulled over what she said. "What about women? You said Negroes and people from other countries, what about women? Do they still play baseball?"

"Not in the Big Leagues. Not professionally," Leslie said. "The Women's Baseball League was a wartime thing that faded away when the men came home. There's a great movie about it called 'A League of Their Own.' We'll watch it," she promised. "But let's get back to the Dodgers. Really, a history of the Dodgers is a history of postwar America."

She fiddled with her smartphone for a moment. "I know the outline, but I can never remember the dates," she explained. "So you know the Dodgers went to the World Series in '41."

"And lost to the damned Yankees," Steve grumbled.

Leslie nodded. "Well, the Dodgers were a powerhouse after the war. They won the pennant again in '47, '49, '52 and '53."

Steve brightened at the thought.

"And they lost the World Series each time," Leslie said. "To the Yankees — each time."

Steve groaned and let his head fall to the back of the couch.

"1951 was their most embarrassing year," Leslie said. "In August, Brooklyn led the league by 13 1/2 games over the Giants."

Steve's lip curled at the mention of the Dodgers' hated crosstown rivals, the New York Giants.

"But the Dodgers went on a crashing losing streak while the Giants went on an amazing winning streak. They ended the season in a tie and went to a three-game playoff. In the third and deciding game, the Dodgers had a 4-2 lead in the bottom of the ninth, when Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson came up against pitcher Ralph Branca."

Leslie hit play on her phone and Steve heard the fateful call of Thomson's three-run, walk-off home run. "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!" the announcer exulted.

Steve groaned, imagining listening to the game on the radio in the apartment he and Bucky shared.

"They call that home run, 'The Shot Heard 'Round the World'," Leslie said.

"Are you trying to make me glad the Dodgers left Brooklyn?" Steve asked.

Leslie laughed at him. "No, the Brooklyn Dodgers were a great team, and I don't just mean on the field. In 1947, the owner, Branch Rickey, hired the first African-American player in the major leagues, a second baseman named Jackie Robinson."

Steve leaned forward in interest. "Brave thing of Rickey to do," he said. "People were so bigoted, anti-anyone who was different, whether they were Negros or Chinese or Irish. Gabe and Jim took so much shit. I took so much shit for having them in my unit, as if it mattered," he said scornfully. "And Bucky and I went to a lot of Negro League games. Those boys could play," he said in remembered appreciation.

"We don't call blacks 'boys,' any more. It's considered demeaning," Leslie corrected gently. "And the preferred term is 'black' or 'African American,' not 'colored' or 'Negro' or any ruder word. Though the Negro Leagues are still called the Negro Leagues," Leslie said.

Steve looked down his nose at her in mock offense. "I didn't call them 'boys' because they were N ... black. I called them 'boys' because they were baseball players," he said.

"Point," Leslie agreed.

"So, tell me more about Robinson," Steve said.

"Rickey wasn't entirely altruistic trying to break baseball's color barrier," Leslie said. "He knew Jackie on the field would bring black spectators to the ballpark. But he didn't want to chase other spectators away, either. He carefully chose his candidate. He wanted someone who could be patient in the face of the racist attacks they both knew would come. Jackie proved himself on the field and was an amazing base stealer. One radio clip I've heard called him 'the Dodgers speed merchant.' I like that one. He was the first Rookie of the Year in baseball and the award is named after him. In 1997, on the 50th anniversary of his first game, Major League Baseball retired his jersey number, 42, all across baseball. Players who already wore it could continue, but no new players would be issued that number. And a few years later, baseball started Jackie Robinson Day. Every player across baseball wears Number 42 in recognition of his and the Dodgers' impact on the game. Everyone remembers the Brooklyn Dodgers, because it was — it still is — an awesome organization," Leslie said earnestly. She took a deep breath, then went back to her history lesson.

"So, Jackie was a key player in those successful years of the late '40s and early '50s. But by 1955, the 'Boys of Summer,' the core of the Dodgers was beginning to age," Leslie said, reading directly from her phone. "But they weren't done yet."

As the unofficial historian for a secret agency, Leslie loved documentaries. She had amassed a number of Dodger documentaries. She mentally debated whether to put in the DVD of the 1955 World Series, but instead chose a DVD "1955, Seven Days of Fall," which explored the whole Brooklyn Dodgers 1955 phenomenon. She could show Steve the official World Series DVD later.

As the one-hour program played, she busied herself fetching Dodger related items from her rolling suitcase, things she had picked up on a quick trip to her apartment after Maria Hill called her.

One was a Brooklyn Dodgers cap, way too big for her child-sized head. Seriously, she had to buy a youth size bicycle helmet! She showed Steve the Brooklyn "B" then slipped it on his head without interrupting the flow of the story. He gave her a grateful look, and returned his attention to the show.

Since it was almost lunchtime, Leslie decided to introduce Steve to another cultural icon and called her favorite pizza place. She ordered three large pizzas in different flavors.

"Would you like an order of volcano wings to go with that?" the pizza guy asked. He explained it was a promotion. Buy three large pizzas and get an order of wings, free.

Leslie hesitated, because she didn't like super spicy food, but this was a cultural phenomenon, too.

"Can I get them plain, with volcano sauce and honey barbecue sauce on the side?"

"Hmm, the volcano sauce might eat through the Styrofoam," the kid joked. "I'll make sure you get plain wings, Ms. Reynolds. Deliver to the usual address?"

Oh, Leslie hadn't thought about that. "No, I'm visiting a friend." She gave Steve's address. "You'll have to leave it with the concierge."

"Sure, we've been there before," the kid assured her, and took her credit card number. Leslie added an extra dollar tip, because he'd been so helpful.

The food hadn't arrived when the video ended. Steve wiped tears of joy from his eyes. "Wish I'd been there," he said wistfully, then sighed. "But it wouldn't have been the same without Buck."

Leslie patted his arm. Honestly, she was addicted to having a good reason to touch his muscles.

"I can't believe they left Brooklyn after that," Steve complained.

"They played one more year in Brooklyn," Leslie said. "The new owner Walter O'Malley wanted to build a new stadium in Brooklyn. Ebbets Field was falling apart. But O'Malley couldn't get cooperation from the city of New York. They tried to force him to move the team to Flushing Meadows."

"Queens!" Steve said in horror.

Leslie chuckled. "Queens," she agreed. "If O'Malley had done that, it still wouldn't have been the 'Brooklyn' Dodgers," she pointed out. "The city wanted a city-owned ballpark, but O'Malley was a real estate mogul. He wanted to own the land. When he couldn't come to an agreement with the city, he contacted Los Angeles, which had been angling for a team."

"But, all the way on the West Coast?" Steve said doubtfully. "It'd take days to get there."

"By that time, there were nonstop transcontinental airlines," Leslie said. "Teams weren't limited to train travel, so the distance didn't matter as much."

Steve remembered air travel with thundering propellers. He remembered jumping out of a plane into enemy territory. He could imagine airplanes getting faster and faster, especially if Howard Stark had anything to do with it. He nodded understanding.

"The owner of the Giants was having the same trouble finding a new home for the team, because the Polo Grounds were out of date. O'Malley persuaded him to move the team to San Francisco, so the Giants and the Dodgers have maintained their rivalry on the West Coast."

"And Los Angeles had enough people to support a baseball team?" Steve asked. He remembered it as a small city surrounded by orchards and farmland.

Leslie checked stats on her phone.

"By 1950, Los Angeles was the fourth largest city in the U.S., after New York, Chicago and Philadelphia. By 1960, it was third, with nearly two and a half million people. L.A. continued to grow in the postwar era," Leslie said. "Lots of servicemen had been stationed on the West Coast during the war. Lots of people moved west to build planes and ships. They liked it and they stayed or moved back when the war ended. The orange groves and bean fields gave way to housing tracts. I remember L.A. as wall-to-wall suburbs by the time I was old enough to pay attention."

"How big is it now?" Steve asked curiously.

"About 3.8 million in the city, but things are different when you consider the whole metropolitan area," Leslie answered. "There's about 13 million in the whole L.A.-Orange County area. About 20 million in the New York-Newark area."

"That's a lot of people," Steve said, trying to imagine it. It helped that he came from New York, the biggest city in the U.S. since the first census. There'd been nearly 6 million people in New York City when he was a child in the 1920s.

"A lot of people," Leslie agreed.

A/N: A lame ending, but I wanted to get something out for you. I spent my typing time last weekend decorating for Halloween, making a costume and carving a pumpkin. The pumpkin earned me a prize of a movie gift card, just enough to buy two tickets to "Thor: Ragnarok." That'll be next weekend. This weekend I have to clean up all the stuff from Halloween. *Sigh* And, also *sigh*, Dodgers didn't win the World Series, but they were awesome games.