THROWBACK THURSDAY

Some of you who know how I worship at the spikes of the Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team and how I consequently share the same message back and forth with my buddy Baseball Steve - "Have I ever told you how much I hate the Los Angeles Dodgers" - may be surprised . . . nay, astounded . . . to learn that once upon a time in a previous life I was a fan of those damnable Dodgers.

I'm not sure how it happened but I became a fan in the mid 1940's of the old Brooklyn Dodgers as I was growing up in faraway North Dakota.

Everyone else in my family, for whatever reason, rooted for the Cleveland Indians.

But my team was the team of Jackie Robinson.  

Of Pee Wee Reese.  

And Gil Hodges.  

And Duke Snider.  

And Carl Furillo.  

And Johnny Podres.  

And Carl Erskine.

Funny how I can remember the names of so many of those heroes of my youthful days.

I continued to hope for the glory days for "my" Dodgers as they abandoned Ebbets Field and Brooklyn for the Hollywood lights of Los Angeles.

It lasted until the team was sold to an Australian, for gosh sakes.  

The hated Rupert Murdoch, who has other sins on his black record.

Fortunately for me that was in 1998 and coincidentally was the same year that the Diamondbacks came into existence.

And since I was a longtime resident of Arizona the switch was easy, even after 50-some years of cheering on the Boys in Blue.

But ten years earlier, though I was then living in Mexico, I was still rooting for the Dodgers.

Yes, those Dodgers.

Those were the Dodgers of Kirk Gibson and Orel Hersheiser and I was very proud of them.

Now . . . they're just those Damnable Dodgers.