AS a youth in Brooklyn, he was helpless when the lords of baseball moved his beloved Dodgers to Los Angeles - a calamity, he jokes today, that "precipitated the decline of American civilization."

One sad night in April 1987, Al Campanis, the Chief, shot himself in the foot on national television, mumbling things about racial equality that were totally inconsistent with his character and his career, but which made him a liability to his beloved Dodgers.

With 1943's Keystone Kids, Tunis returned to his beloved Dodgers, again addressing anti-Semitism, this time as manager and shortstop Spike Russell struggles to get his brother, and the rest of the team, to accept star catcher Jocko Klein.

That did not mean that he had forgotten how the Yankees beat his beloved Dodgers in the 1977 and 1978 World Series, or that he was suddenly embracing New York's decidedly anti-L.A. approach to life, which he suggested might be described as arrogance.

On Thursday Fred Wilpon, co-owner of the Mets, held a press conference to tell us about his dream - a brand new stadium for his beloved Mets that is modeled on Ebbets Field, the park that housed his beloved Dodgers.

And Doris could now watch, as well as imagine, every move of her beloved Dodgers, whose rivalry with the Giants and the Yankees kept Rockville Centre happily stirred up.

"When they left Brooklyn it took the heart out of me," he said of his beloved Dodgers.

He leveled much of this criticism at Branch Rickey, the general manager of his beloved Dodgers.

Ehrhardt attended a game between the Mets and his once beloved Dodgers.