Senior Citizen Softball Players Play All-Star Game in Commemoration of the 60th Anniversary of the Brooklyn Dodgers ONLY World Championship

The Bristal All-Stars, softball players in their 70s and 80s who play two doubleheaders a week in the Long Island Senior Softball League paid tribute to the glory years of New York baseball, which for many was highlighted by the Brooklyn Dodgers ONLY World Series Championship, when they beat the Yankees in seven games in 1955. 72 year old David Goldstein pitched to 73 year old Al Bonfardino in the Long Island Senior Softball Association annual All-star game sponsored by The Bristal Assisted Living Communities. Players wearing Yankees caps and Brooklyn Dodger caps took the field at Baldwin Park, in Baldwin Harbor, as they commemorated the glory years of baseball in New York.

From the 1947 season until 1957 when the Dodgers and Giants left NYC for California, New York was the epicenter of “the American Game”. In every year but one, one of the three New York teams played in the World Series, and there were six subway series as well. 1955 marked the fifth time in nine years that the Yankees and the Dodgers met in the World Series, with the Yankees having won in 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953. The 1955 World Series also marked the end of a long period of invulnerability for the Yankees in World Series; it was the Yankees’ first loss in a World Series since 1942 and only their second since 1926.

In 1955,Gil Hodges drove in two runs as twenty-three year old Johnny Podres scattered eight hits over nine innings to beat the Yankees 2-0 in the seventh game before 62,465 fans at Yankee Stadium. History did not repeat itself in Baldwin in 2015, as the Bristal Yankees rallied to beat the Bristal Dodgers 5 -4.