Arguably the greatest ball club in National League history, the 1953 Brooklyn Dodgers recorded some staggering statistics. They led the league in virtually every offensive category while fielding some of the finest defensive players of the era. But the team's extraordinary success on the field is only part of their story. Jackie Robinson was in his seventh year since breaking the color barrier, but ugly racist incidents were yet to abate and several marred the '53 season. The most intense rivalry in sports - between the Dodgers and the New York Giants - climaxed with a September brawl as Dodger Carl Furillo floored Giants manager Leo Durocher. First baseman Gil Hodges weathered a horrendous slump with the support of the team's devoted fans. This book tells the exciting story of the '53 Brooklyn Dodgers, highlighting a season and a team that was one of the greatest in what may have been baseball's greatest era.

The Brooklyn Dodgers are one of the most popular and most beloved baseball teams of all time. This book is a collection of writings about the Dodgers, arranged chronologically to give the readers a sense of the team's long history. Included are news reports, articles and excerpts from both fiction and non-fiction works, written by some of the best baseball writers of the past sixty years. Among them are James L. Terry (excerpted from Long Before the Dodgers); John Lardner (""The Unbelievable Babe Herman""); Red Barber and Robert Creamer (excerpted from Rhubarb in the Catbird Seat); Harold Parrott (excerpted from The Lords of Baseball and ""Owen Drops Third Strike""); Robin Roberts and C. Paul Rogers, III (excerpted from My Life in Baseball); Red Smith (""Erskine Fans 14 Yanks,"" ""Over the River"" and ""Last Chapter"").

At the turn of the twentieth century, thousands of Italian immigrants left their home country for the United States and, particularly, New York City. A small minority of the immigrants were members of a criminal syndicate that largely victimized fellow immigrants. The most common crime was a type of extortion known as "Black Hand." The methods of extortion were particularly violent, and included kidnapping, arson, and murder. The New York Police Department, unable to speak the language and unaware of the traditions of the immigrants, was virtually helpless in dealing with them. In 1904, Italian-American Lt. Detective Joseph Petrosino formed a group of Italian detectives to deal exclusively with the extortion crimes and the criminal underworld of Italian society in New York which had become known in the American press as "The Black Hand Society." This book tells the story of The Italian Squad from its inception, through Petrisnio's death, to the squad's expansion into Queens and Brooklyn.

Praise for A BROOKLYN DODGERS READER Edited by Andrew Paul Mele Forward by Carl Erskine .."..should become one of the standard histories of the irrepressible Dodgers." - Donald Honig "One of the finest collections of baseball writings ever assembled." - Tom Knight Brooklyn Baseball Historian " It's all there, told in the words of Red Smith, Jimmy Canon, and W. C. Heinz, guys who would be worth reading if they were writing about lawn care." - Jay Price Staten Island Advance