My dads favorite ball player. I was lucky enough to get him an autographed ball one year for his birthday. RIP Duke.
RIP Duke... my father's favorite player as well. I feel for my Dad today and will give him a call later in the day to share some stories. Something about Duke never appealed to me, perhaps I'm too young and can only remember the Dodgers as the enemy no matter how fondly my Dad spoke about them. We had the 1955 WS Champs poster framed up in our living room and I heard the stories all the time... strangely enough I always thought if I were in NY in the 30/40/50's I would have been a NY Giants fan despite my whole family being Dodgers fans. With that said, All the best to the Duke and his family... and all the old school NY baseball fans out there. Respect.
My parents were huge Brooklyn Dodgers fans being that they were born n raised in Brooklyn. My mother has a baseball signed by Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella she had signed at Ebbetts Field.
The last year that he played for the Mets he lived in the house I grew up in (before my family owned it) in RVC. When I was a kid we went to go see him at a paid autograph signing at Whitey Ford's batting cages. We told him the story and showed him a bunch of pictures of the house. He ended up giving us about 10 free autographs and hung out with me and my cousins for about an hour just talking baseball. Total class act. RIP Duke.
