Biography

Hit the last home run at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn on September 22, 1957.

Uniform number 4 retired by the Dodgers.

Inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, 1980. Played for the National League's Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers (1947-1962), New York Mets (1963) and San Francisco Giants (1964).

Was sold to the New York Mets just before the start of the 1963 season, where he was a huge sentimental favorite.

Wore number 11 initially when he joined the Mets, then switched back to his familiar number 4 when Charley Neal, who refused to give it up, was traded to Cincinnati.

"The Mets are wonderful but you can't take the Dodgers out of Brooklyn." (on Duke Snider Night at the Polo Grounds in 1963)

Today's baseball players are walking conglomerates. They have fantastic salaries, multiple investments, but we had one thing they don't have today: the train ride. We didn't always like it, but those rides kept us close as a team and as friends. Something you can't get on a two hour plane ride that used to take you fifteen hours on a train.

The sport to which I owe so much has undergone profound changes, but it's still baseball. Kids still imitate their heroes on playgrounds. Fans still ruin expensive suits going after foul balls that cost five dollars. Hitting streaks still make the network news and hot dogs still taste better at the ballpark than at home.

Man, if I made one million dollars I would come in at six in the morning, sweep the stands, wash the uniforms, clean out the office, manage the team and play the games.

On Jackie Robinson: "He knew he had to do well. He knew that the future of blacks in baseball depended on it. The pressure was enormous, overwhelming, and unbearable at times. I don't know how he held up. I know I never could have."