JULY: THE BASEBALL GURU ARTICLE FROM

ONEMOREINNING

 

DEY LOVED DEM BUMS: HILDA CHESTER/DODGERS SYM-PHONY

  Way before Freddy sez there was HILDA CHESTER. She too had a frying pan and an iron ladle. Later on she graduated to a cowbell. Sitting in the bleachers at Ebbets Field, screaming at the top of her voice, clanging her bell, she became the epitome of the Brooklyn fan.

   She cut quite a figure, heavy set, hair flying every which way, a ruddy, bulbous nose, arms and bell waving  in the air, you could point her out from anywhere in Ebbets field. She started out by going to the Dodgers games when she was a teenager in the ‘20s. After her first heart attack, she stopped yelling and started using the pot and ladle. By the ‘30s she had become so well known that the Dodgers gave her a special cow bell to ring. She put it to good use.

   While in the hospital with her second heart attack Leo Durocher and the team came to visit her. She had become so enamored of Durocher that she defended him when he appeared in court after having brass knuckled a fan. Telling a lie  in his defense, she claimed that Leo had defended her after the fan had called her a cocksucker.

   Even though the Dodgers had given her a lifetime pass to sit in the grandstand, Hilda stayed with her fellow rowdies in the bleachers, cheering on her beloved Dodgers until the end.

   ….Which brings us to another Brooklyn phenomenon. Not only did “Dem Bums” have the fabled Hilda Chester, there was also the, DODGER SYM-PHONY.

   In 1941 the amateur musician Louis Dallojacono took his snare drum, got together with trumpeter Phil Caccavale, bass drummer Paddy Palma, trombonist Al Alfaro, Pete Della Lacono who played cymbals, and formed an amateur group called the, The Dodger Sym-phony.

   During Dodgers games they would move up and down the aisles playing horribly. When an Umpire made a bad call you could hear them play, “Three Blind Mice.” When Brooklyn had something going they played,”CHAAAARGE.” When the opposing player made out and sat down in the dugout, Della Lacona would clang his cymbals. Sometimes an opposing player going back to the bench would hear the Funeral March in the background.

   For over twenty years they played their awful but dedicated music and along with Hilda Chester  have become part of the legend of “Dem Bums.”