Sports
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)
Sports
London descends into disorder as Morocco fans flood streets after World Cup elimination by France
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Public unrest began in parts of London late Thursday night, and it appears Morocco’s exit from the 2026 FIFA World Cup at the hands of France is the reason.
France took down Morocco 2-0, eliminating the African country for the second consecutive tournament, this time in a quarterfinal match.
As a result, many feared Paris would erupt into riots, especially after the chaos that followed Paris Saint-Germain’s UEFA Champions League victory over Arsenal in May.
Instead, images and videos from Edgware Road in northwest London showed police clashing with large crowds as smoke billowed through the streets and debris littered the roadway.
A police vehicle is parked in a road as people from pro-Palestinian activist groups gather near the Edgware United Synagogue during a demonstration against the “Great Israeli Real Estate Event” organized by real-estate agency My Home in Israel, which markets property in Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, in London, Britain, June 14, 2026. (Toby Shepheard)
Riot police, equipped with shields and body armor, tried to contain the crowds as they clashed with people launching fireworks and throwing debris. One video also appeared to show an officer down.
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It’s unknown what happened to the officer who was down on the asphalt or how he was injured.
Fans waved Moroccan flags in the middle of the streets, which held up traffic. Some even jumped on top of vehicles trying to get through the area.
Moroccan fans in the stands before a FIFA World Cup 2026 quarterfinal match between France and Morocco at Boston Stadium July 9, 2026, in Foxborough, Mass. (Richard Sellers/SportsphotoAllstar)
Similar scenes unfolded after Egypt’s World Cup exit, when Argentina rallied for a controversial 3-2 victory that featured several disputed officiating decisions.
Paris, on the other hand, looked more like a city celebrating than one on the brink of a riot. Supporters of both France and Morocco flooded the streets, slowing traffic in several parts of the city.
One video showed horns blasting from cars with French and Moroccan flags out the windows on the L’avenue des Champs-Élysées in Paris. Supporters on the side of the road, waving their own flags, joined in on the celebration.
France’s Kylian Mbappé scored his eighth goal of this World Cup, which ties him for the most with Argentina’s Lionel Messi. Ousmane Dembélé also scored in the second half for France in the 2-0 win over Morocco.
It’s the third straight semifinal appearance for France, while Morocco still made World Cup history despite the loss. After becoming the first African country to reach the quarterfinals and semifinals in World Cup history in 2022, Morocco added to that by becoming the first-ever African nation to reach more than one quarterfinal.
Moroccan fans react while attending a watch party for the World Cup round of 8 match between France and Morocco in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 9, 2026. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP)
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Morocco’s exit means there are no more African nations alive in the World Cup. France will be taking on the winner of Spain and Belgium, while England and Norway and Argentina and Switzerland face off in the quarterfinals.
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LONDON — A local boy sleeps in his own bed, plays in front of a king and queen and makes a Cinderella run to the Wimbledon semifinals. Sounds like a Hollywood script that might never see the silver screen.
But it’s no fairy tale — it’s Arthur Fery’s out-of-nowhere performance over the last 10 days.
Fery, a virtually unknown British wild card with a triple-digit ranking, has become the emotional heartbeat of Wimbledon while legitimately diverting some national attention from England’s World Cup quest.
The royal treatment at his matches across the All England Club has come in more ways than one.
Fery, who grew up five minutes from Wimbledon and is staying at home during the tournament, first played before grass-court king Roger Federer, Wimbledon’s eight-time singles champion, during Monday’s fourth-round victory. Two days later, he beat No. 9 seed and French Open runner-up Flavio Cobolli of Italy in the quarterfinals 6-4, 7-6 (4), 6-0 in front of Queen Camilla.
Ranked 114th, Fery had never reached the semifinals of an ATP Tour event, let alone a major, before his brief chat with the queen following the match.
“She just said, ‘Congratulations, keep going,’” 23-year-old Fery told reporters later. “I told her it was my birthday on Sunday, so it would be great to play the Wimbledon final on my birthday.”
That’s still a match away. To get there, Fery will have to get past one of the hottest players on tour: No. 2 seed Alexander Zverev, who is fresh off his first Grand Slam title at the French Open. Looming on the other side of the draw is a highly anticipated showdown between defending champion Jannik Sinner against 24-time major winner Novak Djokovic.
If Fery can continue his magical run to the end, he would become the first British wild card to win a Wimbledon title.
Arthur Fery reacts after defeating Flavio Cobolli in the Wimbledon quarterfinals on Wednesday.
(Maja Smiejkowska / Associated Press)
Born in France, Fery’s family moved to Wimbledon when he was an infant. His mother played professional tennis. He was a top British junior but chose to sharpen his game for three years in the U.S. collegiate system at Stanford, as many of his compatriots have done.
“I came out with a lot of hunger coming out of that, and I was ready to attack the pro circuit,” Fery said.
After struggling with bone bruising in his arm that limited him to playing mostly on the lower-tier Challenger circuit in recent years, Fery is finally healthy and playing consistently.
His path to the last four in London has been a masterclass in clutch come-from-behind performances. The Brit has stared down near-certain elimination in multiple matches, repeatedly breaking his opponents’ momentum with Houdini-like on-court acts.
At 5-foot-9, Fery possesses a skill set perfectly suited for low-bounding grass.
His compact strokes, low center of gravity, and elite movement allow him to hug the baseline, take time away from opponents, and confidently execute delicate volleys at the net, according to ESPN analyst Chris Eubanks.
“He defends well,” said Eubanks, a 2023 Wimbledon quarterfinalist. “He can scrap. He can claw. He can dig his way back into points. And when he ventures forward, he’s very, very comfortable at the net. This is a picture-perfect example of someone whose game is built for the surface.”
Still, it’s hard to fathom the multitude of milestones for Fery, who briefly reached the No. 1 ranking in college and earned 2023 Pac-12 Singles Player of the Year honors before leaving early to pursue a pro career.
He arrived at Wimbledon with just one main-draw victory at a major, a losing record as a professional, and only one previous ATP quarterfinal, at Queen’s Club last month. He’s now 11-8, won his first two five-set matches, and is the first British wild card to reach the Wimbledon men’s semifinals in the Open Era. The only other men’s wild-card semifinalist was Goran Ivanisevic, who won the title as a wild card in 2001.
Fery, who started the season ranked No. 185 and will climb to at least No. 36 after the tournament, said there were a “lot of first times” as he reflected on his unprecedented run. “First five-setter, longest match that I’ve ever played, first time breaking into the top 100, first second week in a slam, all at home, five minutes from where I grew up. It’s a great story for me,” he said.
The gap with his fellow semifinalists is understandably massive.
Entering Wimbledon, Djokovic, Sinner and Zverev’s combined records include 29 Grand Slam titles, 2,088 match wins and 155 tour-level titles. Fery was 6-8 in tour-level matches with zero titles.
But he has singlehandedly lifted the tournament for locals. With top hopes Jack Draper and Emma Raducanu withdrawing before the tournament and the rest of Britain’s singles prospects falling one by one — 18 men and women were eliminated by the third round — Fery became the nation’s last knight standing.
If his first name inevitably evokes Arthurian legend, Fery’s march through the draw gave Britain reason to believe again. No sword, no Round Table, just world-class shot-making, a lion’s heart and a Centre Court crowd thrilled to rally behind him.
“This is really quite something to see on home soil,” said Russell Fuller, the BBC’s tennis correspondent, who compared it with Raducanu’s stunning U.S. Open win in 2021 as a qualifier.
Fery earned every bit of it.
In the first round against Damir Dzumhur, Fery dropped the opening set and trailed by a break in the second before surging back. Against Zizou Bergs in the third round, he faced a 4-1 deficit with a double break in the fourth set, and again fell behind 4-1 in the fifth, before somehow surviving.
Then, stepping onto Centre Court for the first time against former top-10 stalwart Grigor Dimitrov of Bulgaria in the fourth round, Fery clawed out of a 2-sets-to-1 hole and a break down in the fourth set to clinch the victory in a fifth-set tiebreak.
“He carries himself with humility, but he’s a fierce competitor, and he’s got a ton of belief in himself,” said Stanford men’s coach and former top-60 player Paul Goldstein, who flew to England Tuesday to see his former charge compete against Cobolli.
While Fery attempts to outmaneuver Zverev on Friday, the other semifinal features a 2025 Wimbledon semifinal rematch between seven-time Wimbledon winner Djokovic and top-ranked Sinner, who defeated the Serb in straight sets on his way to the title. It’s also their second Grand Slam semifinal meeting in 2026. At January’s Australian Open on hard courts, Djokovic bested 24-year-old Sinner in five sets before falling to now-injured Carlos Alcaraz in the Melbourne final.
Arthur Fery hits a return during his Wimbledon quarterfinal win over Flavio Cobolli on Wednesday.
(Clive Brunskill / Getty Images)
Djokovic, 39, enters the match after surviving a grueling five-set, 5-hour-plus quarterfinal slugfest against No. 3 Félix Auger-Aliassime that concluded just minutes before Wimbledon’s 11 p.m. curfew. But the seventh-seeded Serb has a way of defying Father Time and he has had two days to recover on a surface where points are shorter and generally less taxing on the body.
Italy’s Sinner, who defeated Alcaraz in last year’s Wimbledon final, has been efficient if not at the level that saw him capture five consecutive titles before crashing out in the second round at the French Open. After a first-round scare here, the four-time Grand Slam champion has dominated opponents behind his improving serve, winning 80% of his first-serve points. He hasn’t dropped a set since the opening round. Sinner leads the head-to-head with Djokovic 6-5.
According to Eubanks, Djokovic must disrupt Sinner’s movement to break his rhythm, and take his chances.
“He’s got to play similar to how he played in Australia, where it was just all-out aggression,” Eubanks said.
For Sinner, he added: “His serve can be a neutralizing force for what Novak is going to try to do.”
On the other side of the ledger, Fery’s poise under pressure and deft use of the home crowd will be paramount to continue his surprise run against Germany’s Zverev, whom he called a “step up again” from his last five matches. Zverev, 29, is seeking his fifth major final and first at Wimbledon.
“I’m ready for it,” Fery said. “I have nothing to lose. I’m just going to go out there and … put my game on the court, do what I’ve done, believe in myself. We’ll see where that takes me.”
Home has never been closer to Centre Court. Nor has Arthur Fery ever been closer to tennis history.
Sports
Pirates star pitcher makes unfortunate history after being taken out in middle of perfect game bid
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Jared Jones was flirting with Major League Baseball history on Wednesday night — he got it, but it was not what he originally envisioned.
The Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher retired the first 18 batters he faced, but he was taken out in the middle of his perfect game bid after six innings.
Now, the Pirates certainly have their reasons — the 24-year-old Jones hasn’t thrown more than 81 pitches in eight starts since returning May 20 after missing all of last season while undergoing ulnar collateral ligament internal brace surgery on May 21, 2025. He was yanked with 77 pitches and likely would have needed more than 100 pitches to record the 25th perfect game in MLB history.
Jared Jones of the Pittsburgh Pirates pitches during the first inning against the Atlanta Braves at PNC Park on July 8, 2026, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Joe Sargent/Getty Images)
However, Jones left the game after getting zero run support, so when the Atlanta Braves tacked on three runs late for a 3-0 victory, Jones instead found himself in the wrong chapter of the history books.
According to Opta Stats, Jones became the first pitcher in the modern era (since 1920) to pitch at least six perfect innings and not record a win.
“It does suck. Something’s cool coming on, but I’m on what? My eighth start off of surgery? I completely understand it, and it is what it is,” Jones told reporters after the game.
Pittsburgh Pirates starting pitcher Jared Jones (17) makes his way to the field to warm up before pitching against the Atlanta Braves at PNC Park. (Charles LeClaire/Imagn Images)
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Jones said he didn’t entertain attempting to complete the perfect game.
“Not with the pitch count,” he said. “Not really ever expecting to go nine right now, so that was never in my head.”
Joey Bart, traded to the Braves from the Pirates on June 18, followed a double by Mike Yastrzemski with a 422-foot, two-run homer to left-center field off a slider from Dennis Santana. Drake Baldwin added an RBI single to center in the ninth for good measure.
It was the second time in less than a week that a pitcher was taken out of the game with a perfect bid through six innings — the Miami Marlins took Eury Perez out after seven innings in which he had 92 pitches. Perez, too, is in the midst of returning from injury and has surprisingly found himself right in the postseason mix.
He was pulled for Lake Bachar to start the eighth, and the Marlins allowed eight runs to the Athletics in the final two innings, but held on to win 9-8.
Jared Jones (17) of the Pittsburgh Pirates delivers a pitch during a MLB game against the Cincinnati Reds on June 27, 2026, at PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. (Joe Robbins/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
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The Pirates are 4.0 games out of the final wild card spot, which is held by the Marlins.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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