Sports

New York fans who grew up with Brooklyn Dodgers face a tough choice in this World Series

Published

1 year ago

October 24, 2024

New York fans who grew up with Brooklyn Dodgers face a tough choice in this World Series

Even now, after all these years, Norman Siegel is conflicted. He was born in Brooklyn, raised in Brooklyn, and he firmly believes his childhood passion for the Brooklyn Dodgers set him on a course to becoming a civil rights attorney.

Now it’s the Los Angeles Dodgers who’ll be playing the New York Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series Friday night, this after knocking off the Mets in the National League Championship Series. And it so happens that Siegel, who turns 81 in November, transferred his loyalties to the expansion Mets in 1962, five years after the Dodgers moved to the west coast.

Should a loyal Mets fan root for the Yankees in the World Series? On the other hand, how can a native of Brooklyn root for the team that abandoned Ebbets Field?

This will be the 12th time the Dodgers and Yankees have met in the World Series, and it’s the fifth meeting since the Dodgers relocated to Los Angeles. To gain some perspective that can only be provided by a true Brooklynite, I spoke with Siegel. I spoke with Abby Tedesco, 90, who participated in the big celebration in front of the Hotel Bossert on Montague Street that October afternoon in 1955 when the Brooklyn Dodgers toppled the Yankees in Game 7 of the World Series for their only pre-Los Angeles championship. I spoke with Shaine Kay, age 51. Not yet born when the Dodgers moved away, even he has feelings on the matter.

Norman Siegel had sports in his blood. His father, Benjamin Siegel, had played some semi-pro basketball back in the day, and he was a hearty Dodgers fan. Benjamin Siegel was a union foreman for Supreme Printing Co., on Varick Street in Greenwich Village, which meant daily trips into Manhattan, but he still found time for trips to Ebbets Field, often with Norman at his side.

Norman Siegel was a fine student at New Utrecht High School and later at Brooklyn College and NYU School of Law, but it’s nothing compared with the education he received at Ebbets Field. Going to Brooklyn Dodgers games, he said, “sensitized me to the concept of racial equality, which led me to become a civil rights lawyer. And I’ve been doing that now for 54 years.

“Ebbets Field was my first exposure to people who were Black in significant number,” Siegel said. “Sitting with Black people in the bleachers helped make me be comfortable rooting for a team that was racially mixed.”

The Dodgers made history in 1947 when their general manager, Branch Rickey, broke baseball’s longstanding color line by promoting Jackie Robinson to the big leagues. Soon other Black players would come along. Roy Campanella. Don Newcombe. Joe Black. Siegel saw all of them.

“For 75 cents you could sit in the bleachers,” Siegel said. “We didn’t high-five anyone in those days, but whenever anyone on the Dodgers did something, whether it was Jackie or Pee Wee Reese or Duke Snider, we’d get up and applaud. Sometimes I would look at the other people, they were Black and White. So whether it was Preacher Roe or Don Newcombe pitching, we usually had four Whites and five Blacks or five Blacks and four Whites, or something like that, but we were all together. It was we shall overcome.”

“I celebrated in ’55, of course, when we finally beat those damn Yankees,” Siegel said. “And I was devastated in ’57.”

Norman Siegel with a photo of several Brooklyn Dodgers greats (Courtesy photo)

With his law degree, and with what he learned growing up at Ebbets Field, Siegel went south to work for the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. In 1985 he was named executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union. Now living in the Upper West Side in Manhattan, he’s on the board of directors of the Jackie Robinson Foundation. He is a New Yorker, through and through, and the Dodgers have now been Los Angeles’ team for almost seven decades.

So … Dodgers or Yankees in the World Series?

“People have been asking me what I’m going to do,” Siegel said. “I’ll know for sure when the the first game starts.

“But when I see that uniform, with ‘Dodgers’ across the front, it wins me over.”

Abby Tedesco has no conflicts about which team she plans to support in the World Series.

It’ll be the Dodgers.

It’s a Brooklyn thing.

Abby is living in Lido Beach on Long Island now and has a summer place in the Berkshires where her family runs an animal sanctuary, but to talk to this spry, upbeat woman about growing up in East Flatbush is to talk about those many happy treks to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers.

Abby’s biggest takeaways? She especially enjoyed the slaphappy band of Ebbets Field musicians known as the “Dodgers Sym-Phony,” and as a youngster she’d marvel as the volume of peanut shells that collected on the ground during the game. “We’d be eating peanuts all day, and what a mess we’d leave,” Abby said. “I don’t know how they got them all picked up.”

Abby Tedesco with a photo of the memorable 1955 Dodgers. (Courtesy photo)

But it was Abby’s father, Moe Moskowitz, who wore the Dodger pants in the house. “He wasn’t just a Dodger fan, he was a crazy Dodger fan,” Abby said. “If he was watching a game the Dodgers could have an 8-0 lead in the eighth inning and he’d be saying, ‘It’s too close! It’s too close!’ Sometimes he’d get so nervous he’d turn the game off and read about it in the paper in the morning.”

Moe Moskowitz was in ladies’ corsets. “My father managed a chain of 15 stores owned by my uncle,” Abby said. “The company was called Corsetorium. They used to say, ‘Of course it’s Corsetorium!’”

Dashing about from corset shop to corset shop kept Moe busy, but not too busy to take the family to Dodgers games. The family home at East 54th Street and Lenox Road was only a couple of miles from Ebbets Field.

“Jackie Robinson lived not too far from where we lived,” Abby said. “My father would pile all the kids in the car and we would drive past there all the time to see if we could spot him out front and wave hello. We never did see him, but we’d keep going.”

When the Dodgers toppled the Yankees in the 1955 World Series, Moe again piled all the kids in the car. This time the destination was the Hotel Bossert.

“He knew the Dodgers would be celebrating there, and he wanted us to be part of it,” Abby said. “And we just stood there, watching everyone come in and out of the hotel. That was exciting.”

What wasn’t so exciting in the Moskowitz house was what happened two years later, when the Dodgers announced the move to Los Angeles. Moe was all worked up — even more so than if the Dodgers had an 8-0 lead in the eighth inning — but he got over it. “He went from being a crazy Dodgers fan to being a crazy Mets fan,” Abby said.

Moe Moskowitz passed away in 1992. He lived to see the Mets win two World Series championships, twice as many as were won by the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Abby isn’t as big a baseball fan as her father was, but, yes, she rooted for the Mets to beat the Dodgers in the NLCS.

She’ll be rooting for the Dodgers — the Los Angeles Dodgers — to beat the Yankees in the World Series.

“Even though they beat us, I want them to beat those damn Yankees,” Abby said.

And then there’s Brooklyn native Shaine Kay, too young to have even stepped inside Ebbets Field. Moreover, he admits he hasn’t been much of a baseball fan “since I was little.” And yet there’s a Brooklyn Dodgers beat to this heart, partly because of the relationship he had with his grandfather, the late William Kelleher, but also because of that time he met Dodgers icon Duke Snider — the Duke of Flatbush himself! — at an autograph show.

“My grandfather was a big Dodger fan, and my uncle — his brother — was a New York Giants fan,” Kay said. “I heard all the stories about the rivalry they had, and them cursing each other out at the dinner table.”

Like many Brooklyn Dodgers fans, Kelleher eventually transferred his loyalties to the Mets. Kay, on the other hand, had mixed loyalties: He became a Yankees fan as a child but maintained a fondness for former Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese through the stories his grandfather would tell him.

Kelleher died in 1988. Kay drifted away from baseball. He eventually moved to Long Island, and then one day he ventured into a flea market that was selling odd sports souvenirs. Wouldn’t it be swell, he told himself, if there happened to be a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey with Pee Wee Reese’s No. 1 on the back?

What he found was a Brooklyn Dodgers jersey with Duke Snider’s No. 4 on the back.

“The place was going out of business, so I got it dirt cheap,” Kay said. “About a week later, my friend calls me up and says, ‘Get down to the comics store and bring your jersey.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He says, ‘Duke! Duke! He’s at the comic book store and he’s signing autographs.’ I said, ‘Who?’ And he says, ‘Like the jersey you just bought, idiot! No. 4, Duke Snider, is signing autographs.’”

Shaine Kay with his #4 Duke Snider Dodgers jersey. (Courtesy photo)

Kay gathered his Duke Snider jersey and went to the store, paid $20 to get in line, and presented himself to the Hall of Fame Dodgers center fielder. That’s when somebody stepped in and told Kay that Snider was only signing baseball cards or baseballs that had been purchased at the store.

They say Duke Snider had great range when he patrolled center field for the Dodgers. He showed it again that day at the comic book store, going way out of his way on behalf of Shaine Kay.

“I was going to say, alright, I’m leaving, give me my 20 bucks back,” Kay said. “And then Duke Snider says to me, I was maybe 15 at the time, he says, ‘Any kid who knows who the hell I am, let alone owns my jersey, I’m signing his shirt.’ And he took a Dodger blue sharpie out of his own pocket and signed it.”

So, Kay’s rooting for the Dodgers in the World Series, right? In memory of his grandfather! In memory of Duke Snider!

“I’m rooting for the Yankees, mainly because they’re a New York team,” he said. “But I love the fact that it’s Dodgers-Yankees, again, just like it used to be.

“But when I go,” Kay said, referring to the day he dies, “that Duke Snider jersey is going in the box with me. The rest of my jersey collection, they can split it up. But the Duke’s going with me.”

(Top photo of the 1954 Brooklyn Dodgers: Hulton Archive / Getty Images)

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Jon Jones requests UFC release after Dana White says legend was ‘never’ considered him for White House card

Published

8 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Jon Jones requests UFC release after Dana White says legend was ‘never’ considered him for White House card

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Mixed martial arts legend Jon Jones ended his retirement from UFC simply because he wanted a spot on the “Freedom 250” fight card at the White House in June.

But, when UFC CEO Dana White announced the card during UFC 326 this past weekend, Jones wasn’t among the fighters. As a result, he has requested a release from his UFC contract.

White was candid when asked about Jones following the UFC 326 card.

Jon Jones of the United States of America reacts after his TKO victory against Stipe Miocic of the United States of America in the UFC heavyweight championship fight during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 16, 2024 in New York City. ((Photo by Sarah Stier/Getty Images))

“Never, ever, ever, which I told you guys a hundred thousands times, was Jon Jones ever even remotely in my mind to fight at the White House,” White explained, per CBS Sports. “Some guy with Meta Glasses filmed him talking about his hips – that his hips are so bad. And I don’t know if you guys saw that flag football game where he can barely run. Jon Jones retired because of his hips. He’s got arthritis in his hips. Apparently, doctors say he should have a hip replacement.”

White added that “the Jon Jones thing is bulls—,” saying that he texted the fighter’s lawyer saying he would never be on the White House card despite Jones saying he was in negotiations for it.

UFC ANNOUNCES CARD FOR WHITE HOUSE EVENT

The Meta Glasses incident White is referring to came from a viral video, where Jones, unaware he was being filmed, discussed issues with his hips to a fan.

On Monday, Jones composed a thorough response to White’s comments about him and the White House Card. He previously posted and deleted social media explanations, but Monday’s appeared to be his final statement on the matter.

UFC President Dana White speaks after UFC Fight Night at Toyota Center on Feb. 21, 2026. (Troy Taormina/Imagn Images)

“Yes, I have arthritis in my hip and it’s painful, but that doesn’t mean I can’t fight,” Jones, who retired a heavyweight champion in 2025, said. “So let me get this straight, if I had accepted the lowball offer, suddenly my hip would be fine and I’d be on the White House card? That doesn’t make sense. I even received stem cell treatment last week to get ready for the White House card, and training camp was scheduled to start today. I was preparing to be ready.

“I understand business deals fall through sometimes, but going out publicly and saying things that aren’t true isn’t right. After everything I’ve given to the UFC, the years, the title defenses, the fights, hearing that I’m ‘done’ is disappointing. Especially when as recently as Friday UFC was calling me trying to get me on that White House card for a much lower number.”

Jones finished his statement by saying he “respectfully” asks to be released from his UFC contract.

Jon Jones enters the ring before facing Stipe Miocic in the UFC heavyweight championship fight during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on November 16, 2024 in New York City, New York. (Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC)

“No more spins, no more games. Thank you to the real fans who know what’s up,” he wrote.

The UFC did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Fox News Digital.

Jones is considered one of the best UFC fighters of all time, owning a 28-1-1 record, which includes his last bout with Stipe Miocic, knocking him out to take the heavyweight title belt. He is also a two-time light heavyweight champion.

Follow Fox News Digital’s sports coverage on X and subscribe to the Fox News Sports Huddle newsletter.

Scott Thompson is a sports writer for Fox News Digital.

Sports

With U.S. at war with Iran, political upheaval could engulf World Cup

Published

8 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

With U.S. at war with Iran, political upheaval could engulf World Cup

Twelve days ago the U.S., a World Cup host country, launched a full-scale bombing campaign against Iran, a country that has qualified to play in the tournament. That’s never happened before.

Five days later, that same World Cup host began military operations inside the borders of Ecuador, another World Cup qualifier, half a world away. That’s never happened before either.

With the tournament scheduled to kick off in three months, those events have soccer scholar Jonathan Wilson questioning whether it’s wise for the World Cup to go on at all.

“It seems to me, for each passing day, it’s less and less likely that the World Cup can happen,” he said.

That take seems unduly alarmist said David Goldblatt, a British sportswriter and sociologist who is a visiting professor at Pitzer College in Claremont. Anything short of a full-scale war inside the U.S. would not be enough to pull the plug on the tournament now, he said. Especially with FIFA expecting revenues of as much as $11 billion.

“I mean, it’s not a good look,” Goldblatt conceded. “And certainly when set against FIFA’s official pronouncements on its role in encouraging world peace and cosmopolitan celebrations of a universal humanity, none of that sits terribly easily.

“But in terms of actually running the World Cup, I don’t think it’s going to make very much difference at all.”

However, with the Trump administration open to engaging in more international conflicts, there’s little doubt this World Cup, the largest and most complex in history, will also be the most political in history as well.

Complicating things further is the fact the current conflict in the Middle East hasn’t been limited to just the U.S. and Iran. Iranian missiles have hit both Qatar and Saudi Arabia, among other countries, and Jordan has fired on U.S. assets.

Those three countries are World Cup qualifiers as well.

The fate of a soccer tournament pales in importance to the death and destruction the conflagration in the Middle East has produced, of course. But the need for unity is the very reason there’s a World Cup in the first place.

When French soccer administrator Jules Rimet founded the tournament 96 years ago, he believed soccer could be a tool for international peace. And in the early years of the tournament, Rimet, FIFA’s longest-serving president and a talented diplomat, was able to limit the impact of geopolitics on the World Cup, watering down Mussolini’s influence on the 1934 World Cup, for example, and steering the 1938 tournament away from Hitler’s Germany.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has taken a far different approach, courting President Donald Trump’s support despite his growing number of global conflicts.

A week before bombs began falling on Iran, Infantino appeared at the inaugural meeting of Trump’s Board of Peace wearing a red cap with ‘USA’ on the front and the numbers ‘45-47’ — a reference to Trump’s non-consecutive presidencies. That act was so blatantly partisan, IOC president Kirsty Coventry said her organization would investigate whether Infantino, an IOC member, breached the terms of the group’s charter, which requires members to act independent of political interests.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino holds up a USA hat as he attends the inaugural meeting for the Board of Peace at the Institute of Peace in Washington on Feb. 19.

(Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)

“Infantino has absolutely breached every FIFA protocol on neutrality,” said Wilson, author of “The Power and Glory: The History of the World Cup.”

“Absolute neutrality is always impossible and not desirable, but it has clearly gone way, way, way beyond. The peace prize looked grotesque at the time. It looks even worse now. And I can’t see how the future will look kindly on Infantino. I think Infantino has to some extent legitimized Trump.”

This is hardly new behavior from Infantino, who had close relationships with Vladimir Putin ahead of the 2018 tournament played in Russia and Qatar’s leaders ahead of the 2022 tournament despite their well-known human rights violations.

The list of countries Infantino is asking to overlook poor relations with the country hosting the majority of World Cup games this summer is growing.

Consider that Denmark, which administers Greenland, an autonomous territory Trump has also threatened to invade, can qualify for the tournament in a European playoff that will take place later this month. Then there’s World Cup qualifiers Haiti, Ivory Coast and Senegal, who aren’t at war with the U.S. but whose citizens have been banned from entering the country to cheer for their teams. That completely contradicts a promise from Infantino, who said “everybody will be welcome” at the 2026 World Cup.

“If I had a crystal ball I could tell you now what is going to happen,” Heimo Schirgi, the World Cup chief operating officer for FIFA, said Monday. “But obviously the situation is developing. It’s changing day by day and we are monitoring closely. [But] the World Cup will go on right? The World Cup is too big and we hope that everyone can participate that has qualified.”

Goldblatt, the Pitzer professor, said Infantino’s action are understandable since he has few cards to play against Trump.

President Trump speaks as he receives the FIFA Peace Prize while FIFA president Gianni Infantino applauds Friday.

“What’s Infantino going to do? What levers can you pull?” he asked. “You can threaten to take it away. That’s not happening. Moral admonishment? Who’s going to take that from FIFA? It is a farcical idea that anybody thinks that the president of FIFA has any kind of collective moral authority or any role as a spokesperson for the progressive part of the world.

“They may fantasize that this is the case. But it is morally and politically absurd that any of us should expect that of these people. So if you are Infantino and that is the case, you know what works with Trump? What works is flattery. So of course he’s gone down that path.”

The games, Goldblatt said, will go on even if bombs are still falling. And that may not be an entirely bad thing.

“Football’s a great distraction. That’s partly why it’s so popular,” he said. “It will be virtually impossible, if the war continues, for that not to be a central element of like, the meaning and the purpose of what we’re all doing here.

“How we’ll feel and what it will look like, I don’t know. It will be very strange. Football is unpredictable and extraordinary. Something will happen that will warm our souls.”

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

Sports

Australia grants asylum to 5 Iranian women’s soccer players amid Iran conflict

Published

20 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Australia grants asylum to 5 Iranian women’s soccer players amid Iran conflict

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Australia granted asylum to five players from the Iranian women’s soccer team who were visiting for a tournament when the U.S.-Israeli attacks against Iran began.

Australian federal police officers on Tuesday transported the five women from their hotel in Gold Coast, Australia, to a “safe location” after they made asylum requests to meet with Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and to finalize the processing of their humanitarian visas.

“Last night I was able to tell five women from the Iranian Women’s Soccer team that they are welcome to stay in Australia, to be safe and have a home here,” Burke said on X.

The move comes after the team refused to sing the Iranian anthem before their first Women’s Asian Cup match early last week against South Korea, although they later sang and saluted the anthem in two subsequent matches, including ahead of their final match, when they were eliminated by the Philippines.

IRANIAN WOMEN’S SOCCER FANS SHOW SUPPORT FOR TRUMP AS TEAM APPEARS TO PIVOT ON NATIONAL ANTHEM STANCE

Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke poses with five Iranian women soccer players who have been granted asylum in Australia, Tuesday, March 10, 2026. (Australia Ministry of Home Affairs)

“I don’t want to begin to imagine how difficult that decision is for each of the individual women, but certainly last night it was joy, it was relief,” Burke told reporters after signing the documents. “People were very excited about embarking on a life in Australia.”

The five women said they were happy for their names and pictures to be published, according to Burke, who emphasized that the players wanted to make clear that they were not political activists.

The Iranian team arrived in Australia for the tournament before the war against Iran began on Feb. 28.

After the team was eliminated from the tournament over the weekend, they faced potentially returning to a country still under bombardment. The team’s head coach, Marziyeh Jafari, said on Sunday the players “want to come back to Iran as soon as we can.”

An official squad list named 26 players, as well as Jafari and other coaches.

While only five players were granted asylum, Burke said the offer was given to everyone on the team.

IRAN FLAG REMOVED FROM PARALYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY AFTER SOLE ATHLETE WITHDRAWS OVER TRAVEL SAFETY CONCERNS

Iran players during their national anthem ahead of the Women’s Asian Cup soccer match between Iran and the Philippines in Robina, Australia, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (Dave Hunt/AAPImage via AP)

“These women are tremendously popular in Australia, but we realize they are in a terribly difficult situation with the decisions that they’re making,” Burke said. “The opportunity will continue to be there for them to talk to Australian officials if they wish to.”

It remains unclear when the remaining players will leave Australia.

“Australians have been moved by the plight of these brave women,” Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters. “They’re safe here and they should feel at home here.”

“They then had to consider that and do it in a way that did not present any danger to them or to their families and friends back home in Iran,” he continued.

The asylum offer came after U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday called on Australia to grant asylum to any team member who wanted it.

Trump had blasted Australia on social media, saying Australia was “making a terrible humanitarian mistake” by allowing the team to be “forced back to Iran, where they will most likely be killed.”

Supporters react towards a bus transporting Iranian woman players following their Women’s Asian Cup soccer match against the Philippines on the Gold Coast, Australia, Sunday, March 8, 2026. (Dave Hunt/AAP Image via AP)

“The U.S. will take them if you won’t,” Trump said, despite his administration’s efforts to limit the number of immigrants in the U.S. who can receive asylum for political purposes.

Just hours later, Trump praised Albanese in another post.

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“He’s on it! Five have already been taken care of, and the rest are on their way,” Trump wrote.

Albanese said Trump had called him for “a very positive conversation,” about the issue. The prime minister said he explained “the action that we’d undertaken over the previous 48 hours” to support the women.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.