These are really wonderful. My favorite shows Berra right after Robinson stole home and includes this: "Today, he's often regarded as a universally admired, almost cuddly elder statesman of the game. But back then, when the game was on the line, Yogi Berra was a bad, bad man."

My favourite is #22, the locker-room celebration. Not only for the picture, but also the description

the Yankee standing next to Casey and the umps in #14--is that Tom Sturdivant?

Does it say who wrote these? They're well written, but every once in a while something slips in that's startlingly suspect. In the Hank Aaron set, for example, it says "With all due respect to Mays, Musial, Koufax, and a few others, Aaron was then, and is now, the greatest living baseball player." Yikes. I mean, that's the sort of thing you say on the day of retirement to be nice, but not thirty years later.

G-r-e-a-t pictures. Campy tagging the #### out of Billy Martin is my fave.

By coincidence, a friend just e-mailed these to me, and they're terrific. My favorites were #18 and #19, which show Robinson dancing off third in game 3, bluffing a steal of home. Having watched every inning of that Series, in my mind that sequence represented its turning point. It's too bad there isn't an accompanying sound track, because I can still hear Robinson's screaming in his distinctive high pitched voice.

What the pictures also don't show was how completely Bob Turley was rattled by this, and how he quickly disintegrated afterward. This was before Turley adapted the no-windup windup, and not only he could remember Robinson's steal of home in game 1, but he'd already lost a game himself that year in Detroit on a walkoff steal of home. The poor boy never had a chance.

Does it say who wrote these? They're well written, but every once in a while something slips

"Arthur Daly"? C'mon, LIFE.

Those are just fantastic. So evocative of the teams, the era, the drama. There really is something to be said for a time in baseball when a small number of truly powerhouse teams dominate and create the kind of rivalry that history remembers for (basically) ever. Every era, every type of competitive environment, has its pluses and minuses, so I'm not saying I'd always want it to be where the same two teams are facing each other six times in a nine-year period. But once very few decades, it has its place. This was glorious.

There really is something to be said for a time in baseball when a small number of truly powerhouse teams dominate and create the kind of rivalry that history remembers for (basically) ever.

The seemingly eternal struggle between the Wilpons and common sense, for example.

The seemingly eternal struggle between the Wilpons and common sense, for example.

Not only was that a gratuitous shot at the Mets' owners, but if it causes a Mets' hijack of this thread, I want to note who was responsible for it . . . .

I will say this: for all the criticism Fred Wilpon took over his desire to make the new stadium evoke Ebbets Field, when you see these photos and think back on the way it was for a Brooklyn Dodgers fan in those days, it's kind of understandable. Right or wrong, wanting to have those echoes come alive again must be a powerful, driving force for the man -- and when you own the New York National League baseball team, and you're about to build a new stadium, you are the one person in the universe who can actually do it. Given the life he's led, it would be almost impossible not to want to imprint the memory of that team, and of Jackie Robinson in particular, on the space.

It would have been so much smarter -- or at least wiser -- if he'd been able to universalize what he was trying to do instead of personalize it, and made the stadium an amalgam of all three New York NL baseball traditions, with influences from the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field weaving magic all throughout as minor notes, and emphasis on the Mets' history the major chord. Ah, well.

It would have been so much smarter -- or at least wiser -- if he'd been able to universalize what he was trying to do instead of personalize it, and made the stadium an amalgam of all three New York NL baseball traditions, with influences from the Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field weaving magic all throughout as minor notes, and emphasis on the Mets' history the major chord. Ah, well.

That's the main criticism of CitiField (one of them, anyway) -- that the Brooklyn Dodgers' segment of the NY National League experience was overemphasized at the expense of the others, including the Mets' own four-plus decades of history.

World Series Championships by New York teams:


New York Yankees 27
New York Giants 5
New York Mets 2
Brooklyn Dodgers 1

The "Angry Berra" photo is awesome. Just the part with Berra and the ump is so perfect, it's almost Norman-Rockwell-esque.

The Dodgers look really awful by that measure, having had from 1903 to 1957 to win the Series, and won only one. If you don't count 1904, when there was no WS:

New York Yankees: 27/107 seasons
New York Giants: 5/54 seasons
New York Mets: 2/49 seasons
Brooklyn Dodgers: 1/54 seasons

But the Dodgers do better when it comes to pennants (this time counting 1904, but again starting somewhat arbitrarily with 1903):

New York Yankees: 40 pennants/108 seasons
New York Giants: 17 pennants/55 seasons
Brooklyn Dodgers: 7 pennants/55 seasons
New York Mets: 4 pennants/49 seasons

Sam: sure. I posted what I did because it just dawned on me that the Mets have more World Series titles than the Brooklyn Dodgers had. I mean, deep down I suppose I knew that, but it came as a revelation anyway.

Similarly, seeing that the Mets have almost the same number of seasons in the World Series era as the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants is shocking.

Awesome images.

Actually, the Dodgers had two more pennants (1916 and 1920) as the Brooklyn Robins, which I didn't count. It was the same franchise, so they really should get credit for 9 pennants, not 7. Those were the only two World Series, by the way, in which the Brooklyn team didn't play the Yankees. In 1916, they lost in five to the Red Sox, and in 1920 they lost in seven games (5-2, though, not 4-3) to the Indians. After 1920, it was 21 years before the Dodgers returned to the Series, and every time after that, the Yankees awaited them.

New York Giants: 17 pennants/55 seasons

Or is it 15 pennants, counting from 1903? 17 would include the two from the 1880s.

Or is it 15 pennants, counting from 1903? 17 would include the two from the 1880s.

Right. 17 counts the two from the pre-WS era. It's only 15 from 1903 forward (one of which was 1904, the year no WS was played).

Simply superb. One suspects that there are lot more than just these, and one hopes that the entire collection might emerge sometime (hopefully soon!) in a coffee-table book about baseball's pre-eminent post-season rivalry.

the Yankee standing next to Casey and the umps in #14--is that Tom Sturdivant?

Since the picture was taken during Game 3, it could be. Sturdivant pitched the 7th and 8th innings that day. If we could figure out what Stengel had come out to argue, we could figure out who the player was.

-- MWE

The Series ended on October 4th.

Common sense is in short supply these days.

In fact, Game 3 of the '55 Series was the last World Series game to be played in September.

New York Giants: 5/54 seasons

Fun fact: The combined World Series / NFL Championship game records for the New York Giants is 11 and 19, and 11 and 22 if you count San Francisco. That's the exact mirror image of the Yankees' World Series record at the beginning of the Torre era.

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the Yankee standing next to Casey and the umps in #14--is that Tom Sturdivant?

Probably not, since he's got a bat in his hand, and Sturdivant didn't come to bat in that game. Going by what I can see of his face, my memory of the faces, and the process of elimination, my guess would be Bob Cerv.

Going by what I can see of his face, my memory of the faces, and the process of elimination, my guess would be Bob Cerv.

I think you're right

It was mostly by the process of elimination, since the faces of all the other Yankee batters in that third game were more familiar to me than Cerv's. The rest of them were long-time Yankee regulars whose faces would have been instantly recognizable. The only other possibility would have been Andy Carey, but Carey looked much younger than that guy in the picture.

Bob Cerv from that era

Yeah, that looks even more like the guy in the picture than the Cerv I remember from his second time around with the Yanks in the early 60's.