THE FATHER JUDD USED TO LIVE AROUND THE CORNER FROM PREACHER ROE:

When Players Like Duke Snider Were Also Neighbors (MANNY FERNANDEZ, 2/28/11, NY Times)

[Florence] Cozzolino lived a few houses down from Duke Snider, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ center fielder who died on Sunday at the age of 84. These days, no one brags about living next door to professional baseball players, because the only people who can afford to live next to them have too much money to brag about that sort of thing. But in the 1950s in Bay Ridge, Dodgers fans lived next door to Dodgers players.

Mr. Snider and a few of his teammates who lived in the neighborhood — like Pee Wee Reese or Carl Erskine — would car-pool together to their home games at Ebbets Field or the Polo Grounds, where their National League rivals, the New York Giants, played. Mr. Snider used to go to his neighbor Gus Barwood’s block parties in the summer, used to greet the children and teenagers waiting for him outside 178 Marine Avenue after a game.

“He would always tell us to keep out of trouble,” said Mrs. Cozzolino, 69, a retired public school teacher who has lived in a house on 97th Street all her life. “We just got used to it. A friend of mine used to walk Pee Wee Reese’s daughter to school. They were so unpretentious. They really were. Baseball was different then. They weren’t playing for the multimillions.”

To most New Yorkers, Mr. Snider was the Duke of Flatbush, the Hall of Fame player who hit the last home run at Ebbets Field. To longtime residents on and around Marine Avenue, Mr. Snider was a friend and neighbor. He played for the Dodgers for 11 seasons, from 1947 to 1957. For several years in the 1950s, Mr. Snider, his wife and his children rented the house on Marine Avenue during the baseball season.