cover image Bums No More!: The Championship Season of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers

Bums No More!: The Championship Season of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers

Stewart Wolpin. St. Martin's Press, $25 (130pp) ISBN 978-0-312-11576-0

During the early 1950s, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees were pitted against each other several times in the World Series, with the Bronx Bombers always emerging victorious. The pattern was broken in 1955, however, when the Brooklyn team won its first and only world championship in seven hold-your-breath games. Although many books have been written about that legendary season, Wolpin, an ex-sportswriter for the Newark (N.J.) Star-Ledger, captures as few authors have the significance of the Dodgers to their home borough, whose residents felt the equal of Manhattan as long as they had ``Dem Bums.'' Wolpin catches this sense of bonding principally by sprinkling his text with quotes from fans who recall their individual joy and the borough's collective frenzy when their team won. So it doesn't seem like hyperbole when Wolpin equates the departure of the Dodgers after the 1957 season with the death of the borough. Photos. (Apr.)