As the Dodgers play the Series, thinking back to their tolerant glory days

Jumping ahead to the real heart of this article:

Will O'Toole  . . . "The Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees are squaring off once again in the Fall Classic, the first time the league and one-time city rivals face off in the World Series since the strike season of 1981. It’s their 12th meeting.

"Interestingly, the Yankees and Dodgers matchups have had some historical meaning. In 1947, Jackie Robinson became not just the first African American to break the color barrier in the National League for the then-Brooklyn Dodgers but became the first to play in the World Series.

"Robinson handled the pressure, stress, and anxiety with professionalism, tact, and class. Then-Dodger’s manager Branch Rickey’s choice in his pursuit of integrating baseball was a deliberate “social engineering,” a strategy that paid off with more and more black players moving from the Negro Leagues to Major League Baseball over the course of the late 1940s and 1950s." . . .

 . . ."Today, when thinking of the Dodgers, many baseball fans cannot help but think of the incident last season when the Dodgers hosted an Anti-Catholic group, “The Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” to their stadium. In that one brief inglorious moment, LA management forgot its past tolerance.

The Dodgers invited a group that blasphemed the tenets, beliefs and protocols of a religion and people that have had a bond with the franchise since its days in Brooklyn. This would never have occurred under the leadership of owner Walter O’Malley, the same man who respected Koufax’s faith.

According to The Angelus, the Catholic newspaper of Los Angeles, Walter O’Malley credited his Catholic faith for his success. Named “Brooklyn’s Catholic Man of the Year” in 1952, O’Malley was a daily Mass attender.

"Nor would this have occurred until the leadership of Branch Rickey or Tommy Lasorda.

"True, the Dodgers retreated, performed a “corporate mea culpa,” and engaged its Christian fans with “their own night” to celebrate a “Faith and Family Night” in Chavez Ravine. Still, for a franchise long held in esteem for its “progressive and social justice ways,” the damage has been done. Their hypocrisy is just another sad reflection on the state of sports.

"A franchise that portrayed itself as pristine, pure and perfect in all manners, methods and machinations forgot its roots not just logistical but culturally."