Former Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers star and baseball Hall of Famer Duke Snider has died at age 84, the team announced Sunday.

Snider, a Los Angeles native, had his best season in 1955 when the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the New York Yankees in the World Series, overcoming years of post-season futility and earning the franchise its first-ever championship.

That year, Snider hit .309 with 42 homers, 136 RBI and scored 126 runs, finishing second in National League MVP voting to teammate Roy Campanella.

Snider also won a World Series with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1959.

For his 18-year career, Snider batted .295 with 407 home runs and 1,333 RBI in 2,143 games and still remains the Dodgers’ all-time leader in home runs (389) and RBI (1,271).

He was elected to the Hall of Fame in 1980 and the Dodgers retired his uniform number (4) that season.

“Duke was one of the truly legendary Dodgers who made his mark first in Brooklyn and then in his hometown of Los Angeles,” Dodgers owner and Chairman Frank McCourt said. “I had the pleasure of spending time with him on several occasions and he was a truly wonderful man.”

By Eric Stephen – Editor

Read More: Juan Castro (3B – PHI), Aaron Miles (2B – LOS), Xavier Paul (LF – LOS), Los Angeles Dodgers

Follow , and Like SB Nation Los Angeles on Facebook.

Feb 28, 2011 - The Los Angeles Dodgers began their spring training schedule over the weekend, making this the first full week of Cactus League action for the boys in blue. The week ahead for the Dodgers brings us three televised games. Here is a look ahead at what to watch this week at Camelback Ranch in Glendale, Arizona.

Schedule (all times PST)

• Today: vs. White Sox, 12:05 p.m. (Prime Ticket): Clayton Kershaw makes his first start of the spring
• Tuesday at Cleveland, 12:05 p.m.: Chad Billingsley gets the start
• Wednesday vs. Kansas City, 12:05 p.m. (Prime Ticket, plus MLB Network on delay): Ted Lilly makes his spring debut
• Thursday at Cincinnati, 6:05 p.m.: The Dodgers play their first night game of the spring, as Hiroki Kuroda makes his second start
• Friday vs. San Francisco, 6:05 p.m.: Jon Garland makes his spring debut
• Saturday vs. Cincinnati, 12:05 p.m.
• Sunday at Cubs, 12:05 p.m. (WGN)

It is still early in camp, so there are still several non-roster invitees that will get their share of playing time. For the most part, starting position players are only playing four to five innings anyway to start the spring, so there is plenty of playing time to go around for the 30 position players in major league camp, plus the occasional minor leaguer. In fact, Don Mattingly has laid out a plan in which Andre Ethier, Matt Kemp, James Loney, and Marcus Thames will play two games followed by a day off, while Rafael Furcal, Casey Blake, and Juan Uribe will play every other day in the early part of spring, per Dylan Hernandez of the LA Times. That leads to days like today, when all seven of those regulars are off on the same day, giving us this lineup today against the White Sox:

Tony Gwynn RF
Aaron Miles 2B
Dioner Navarro C
Xavier Paul DH
Trayvon Robinson CF
Gabe Kapler LF
Russ Mitchell 1B
Juan Castro 3B
Justin Sellers SS

Position Battles

The Dodgers essentially have one bench spot open, likely to go to a middle infielder. Three of the four candidates for that role — Miles, Castro, and Sellers — are in today’s lineup. Ivan DeJesus, Jr. is also in the mix as well, though it wouldn’t surprise me to see one of the veterans, Miles or Castro, claim the role.

In addition, Xavier Paul is out of options and fighting for an outfield spot, although he will likely have to beat out Jay Gibbons for the roster spot. Gibbons is battling the flu, having missed all weekend, and will likely not play until Wednesday, giving Paul the chance to get a leg up in the competition.

Clayton Kershaw, the Dodgers’ opening day starter, will make his first appearance of the spring today, and is scheduled to throw about 45 pitches today. Also scheduled to pitch for the Dodgers today are Jonathan Broxton, Matt Guerrier, Ron Mahay, and Travis Schlichting.

For more news and information on the Dodgers, be sure to read True Blue LA.

PHOENIX — In the Los Angeles Dodgers’ clubhouse Sunday afternoon, a rectangular bulletin board posted information on report times, lineups and workout schedules. Standard stuff for a baseball team in spring training.

But one sheet of paper was anything but standard. It read, simply, “Duke 4.”

Edwin Donald “Duke” Snider, a Brooklyn Dodgers’ icon who contributed mightily to the “Golden Age” of New York baseball — while wearing uniform number 4 — died Sunday at the Valle Vista Convalescent Hospital in Escondido, Calif. He was 84.

“He was a winner,” former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda said at Camelback Ranch after the Dodgers defeated the Angels in a Cactus League game. “It’s a tremendous loss for our Dodgers and for his family, and I’m proud to say that I was a teammate and a friend of his.”

Added longtime Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully, in a statement released by the team: “When he had a chance to run and move defensively, he had the grace and the abilities of DiMaggio and Mays and of course, he was a World Series hero that will forever be remembered in the borough of Brooklyn. Although it’s ironic to say it, we have lost a giant.”

In the early-to-mid 1950s, New York baseball fans were consumed by a debate for the ages: Who was the best centerfielder in town? Was it Willie Mays, who played for the rival Giants (hence Scully’s “irony”)? The Yankees’ Mickey Mantle? Or Snider, also known as “The Duke of Flatbush”? Opinions will vary eternally, yet the three players — all members of the Baseball Hall of Fame — enhanced their fame by being part of “Willie, Mickey and the Duke.”

Snider, the last of the trio to be inducted into the Hall, in 1980, put up statistics that were not the equal of his contemporaries, yet that didn’t diminish his status among Dodgers faithful. He leads the Dodgers all-time in home runs (389) and runs batted in (1,271), and he hit four home runs in the 1955 World Series, when the Dodgers finally defeated the hated Yankees to win their first championship.

He played for the Dodgers from 1947 through 1962; the team moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. He returned to New York to play with the nascent Mets in 1963, and he completed his career with the transplanted Giants in San Francisco in 1964. In all, he hit 407 homers, tying him for 46th all-time with current Yankees outfielder Andruw Jones.

“Duke was one of the truly legendary Dodgers who made his mark first in Brooklyn and then in his hometown, Los Angeles,” Dodgers owner and chairman Frank McCourt said. “I had the pleasure of spending time with him on several occasions and he was a truly wonderful man.”

After his retirement, Snider returned to the Dodgers organization, managing in the minor leagues from 1965 through 1967. He spent the 1972 season as a minor-league manager in the San Diego Padres organization, and he later worked for the Montreal Expos as a hitting coach and broadcaster.

Snider spent his final years as a Dodgers dignitary, appearing at events, until an unspecified illness struck, according to Lasorda. The team didn’t announce Snider’s cause of death.

“There comes a time in everybody’s life when you get in a position when they get very ill, you just pray that they go. You don’t want them to suffer,” Lasorda said. “ … That was the case with Duke.”

Added Lasorda: “I’ll remember him hitting those balls out of Ebbets Field (in Brooklyn), trotting around the bases. He just was a great guy.”

———

Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com/.

PHOENIX — In the Los Angeles Dodgers’ clubhouse Sunday afternoon, a rectangular bulletin board posted information on report times, lineups and workout schedules. Standard stuff for a baseball team in spring training.

But one sheet of paper was anything but standard. It read, simply, “Duke 4.”

Edwin Donald “Duke” Snider, a Brooklyn Dodgers’ icon who contributed mightily to the “Golden Age” of New York baseball — while wearing uniform number 4 — died Sunday at the Valle Vista Convalescent Hospital in Escondido, Calif. He was 84.

“He was a winner,” former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda said at Camelback Ranch after the Dodgers defeated the Angels in a Cactus League game. “It’s a tremendous loss for our Dodgers and for his family, and I’m proud to say that I was a teammate and a friend of his.”

Added longtime Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully, in a statement released by the team: “When he had a chance to run and move defensively, he had the grace and the abilities of DiMaggio and Mays and of course, he was a World Series hero that will forever be remembered in the borough of Brooklyn. Although it’s ironic to say it, we have lost a giant.”

In the early-to-mid 1950s, New York baseball fans were consumed by a debate for the ages: Who was the best centerfielder in town? Was it Willie Mays, who played for the rival Giants (hence Scully’s “irony”)? The Yankees’ Mickey Mantle? Or Snider, also known as “The Duke of Flatbush”? Opinions will vary eternally, yet the three players — all members of the Baseball Hall of Fame — enhanced their fame by being part of “Willie, Mickey and the Duke.”

Snider, the last of the trio to be inducted into the Hall, in 1980, put up statistics that were not the equal of his contemporaries, yet that didn’t diminish his status among Dodgers faithful. He leads the Dodgers all-time in home runs (389) and runs batted in (1,271), and he hit four home runs in the 1955 World Series, when the Dodgers finally defeated the hated Yankees to win their first championship.

He played for the Dodgers from 1947 through 1962; the team moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles after the 1957 season. He returned to New York to play with the nascent Mets in 1963, and he completed his career with the transplanted Giants in San Francisco in 1964. In all, he hit 407 homers, tying him for 46th all-time with current Yankees outfielder Andruw Jones.

“Duke was one of the truly legendary Dodgers who made his mark first in Brooklyn and then in his hometown, Los Angeles,” Dodgers owner and chairman Frank McCourt said. “I had the pleasure of spending time with him on several occasions and he was a truly wonderful man.”

After his retirement, Snider returned to the Dodgers organization, managing in the minor leagues from 1965 through 1967. He spent the 1972 season as a minor-league manager in the San Diego Padres organization, and he later worked for the Montreal Expos as a hitting coach and broadcaster.

Snider spent his final years as a Dodgers dignitary, appearing at events, until an unspecified illness struck, according to Lasorda. The team didn’t announce Snider’s cause of death.

“There comes a time in everybody’s life when you get in a position when they get very ill, you just pray that they go. You don’t want them to suffer,” Lasorda said. “ … That was the case with Duke.”

Added Lasorda: “I’ll remember him hitting those balls out of Ebbets Field (in Brooklyn), trotting around the bases. He just was a great guy.”

———

Visit Newsday online at http://www.newsday.com/.

He played at the Los Angeles Coliseum with the Dodgers in 1958, though he didn’t play as much as squint at the right-field fence, which seemed closer to the Harbor Freeway than home plate.

He was there when Dodger Stadium opened in 1962, but just for that year before he took a victory lap in New York with the Mets and then, clothed in irony, a final year in a San Francisco Giants uniform.

He spent most of his career in Brooklyn, where he earned the “Duke of Flatbush” nickname, where he was one of the “Boys of Summer,” where he won the 1955 World Series, Brooklyn’s one and only, and where he became part of the New York center-field trilogy of “Willie, Mickey and the Duke.”

The passing of Duke Snider on Sunday morning at 84 is one of those moments when everyone associated with the national pastime feels some ache, be it a tear or a twinge. Baseball has lost a Hall of Famer and a two-coast icon who hit .295 with 407 home runs in his career, but his passing also means all seven everyday starters for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1949 to 1957 have died: Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Billy Cox, Carl Furillo and now Duke.

It all started here.

Duke Snider was born in Boyle Heights, was a resident of Lynwood and then Compton, and a regular on all the ball fields from the South Bay to Long Beach to South Los Angeles.

He went to Compton’s Washington Elementary, Enterprise Junior High and eponymous high

school, where he was a three-sport star who pitched a no-hitter, quarterbacked a win over Poly with a late, long touchdown pass, and led the Coast League in scoring in basketball.

He played summers with semipro teams out of Compton and Montebello. His Dodgers tryout in 1943 was held at Rec Park in Long Beach, the old dusty field that now is Blair Field. If you dig through newspaper archives deep enough, you’ll find a few stories on Duke Snider’s high school exploits were written by a schoolmate and close friend from Compton who grew up to be NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle.

“We played all over, most often at Compton Crestview Park, which became Gonzalez Park,” Snider said in an interview when the Dodgers honored the 50th anniversary of the 1955 team. “I played on the same semipro team out of Montebello as Gene Mauch, and in youth leagues in Compton and Long Beach. Even during the offseason, I’d play Sunday doubleheaders all over the area.”

His years in Brooklyn were epic. He hit 316 home runs in his career there – nine years full-time, parts of two others – including 40 or more five straight years (53-57), an achievement neither Willie Mays nor Mickey Mantle ever matched.

He scored 100-plus runs six times and had 198 or more hits three times. He is the first National League player to hit four home runs in a World Series. He did it twice – 1952 and 1955 – the only player to do that. His 11 career World Series home runs is still the NL record and fourth all-time behind guys named Mantle, Ruth and Gehrig. He ranked eighth all-time in home runs when he retired.

Los Angeles never got to see the Duke Snider who played in Brooklyn. He was just 31 when the team moved to L.A. and the Coliseum. People joked about the short Chinese Wall in left field, but the real joke was on Snider.

He didn’t see the park layout until Opening Day – 425 feet to dead center field, expanding to 440 feet in right center and then 395 in straightaway right, before a quick ducktail to the foul pole that seemed to smirk at him when he played right field. Willie Mays saw it and said “Duke, they buried you.”

Snider hit just 15 home runs in 1958, and not one of them to right field at the Coliseum, an epic statistical anomaly.

If the Dodgers had never moved, or the right-field dimensions weren’t so absurd, Snider probably would have 500 career home runs rather than the 407 he ended with. But he never blamed the stadium.

“The Coliseum did take some away. I hit a lot of 400-foot outs,” Snider said. “But I can’t look at it that way. I lost a lot more to my knee injuries. If I had stayed healthy and been able to play every day until I was 37 instead of sporadically as I did, I might have reached those numbers. In 1958, I was probably 70 percent of the player I was in 1957.

“Injuries are part of the game. Mickey Mantle would have had more if not for a bad knee, and Sandy Koufax’s career was cut short by arthritis. I think my numbers are pretty good given what I dealt with those last years.”

The fences were moved in a bit in 1959, and Snider hit .308, had .400 on-base percentage, hit 23 home runs and drove in 88 runs to help the Dodgers win their second World Series and first in Los Angeles.

The “Duke of Compton” helped plant the seeds of success that made the Dodgers as beloved here as they were in Brooklyn.

“He was an extremely gifted talent and his defensive abilities were often overlooked because of playing in a small ballpark, Ebbets Field. When he had a chance to run and move defensively, he had the grace and the abilities of DiMaggio and Mays,” Vin Scully said through the Dodgers. “He was a World Series hero that will forever be remembered in the borough of Brooklyn. Although it’s ironic to say it, we have lost a giant.”

GLENDALE, Ariz. (AP)—Don Mattingly is looking for progress more than victories early in spring training.

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ new manager was happy to get both Sunday.

Mattingly got his first Cactus league victory with a 5-0 win over the Los Angeles Angels.

“Everything looks pretty good right now,” said Mattingly, 1-1 in Cactus League play after working a 4-1 split-squad loss Saturday to the Angels. “We just want to stay on this path.”

The Dodgers kept the Angels from scoring a single run with some effective pitching and timely defense. It began with right-hander John Ely(notes), who started and picked up the victory with two innings of work. He gave up one hit and struck out three.

The Dodgers are looking for consistency from Ely, who was impressive early last season. From May 6 to June 1 in 2010, Ely was impressive in six starts. However, he struggled after that to a 4-10 record with a 5.49 ERA.

“He kept us in games early last season,” Mattingly said before Ely threw his first pitch. “But it seems like his command wasn’t nearly as good as it was early on. He has to show us he can be as consistent as he was early.”

Through two innings, at least, Mattingly saw the Ely he hopes to see throughout this season.

“He looked good,” Mattingly said. “He attacked, tossed strikes. He looked like he did early last year.”

Six pitchers picked up where Ely left off, allowing the Angels only three more hits and protecting an early lead.

The Dodgers’ bats went to work in the first inning. Center fielder Matt Kemp(notes) got things started in with a two-RBI single, scoring shortstop Rafael Furcal(notes) and third baseman Casey Blake(notes).

In the second, first baseman James Loney(notes) and left fielder Marcus Thames(notes) each singled. Then, Hector Gimenez(notes), a catcher getting in some work as a designated hitter, drove Loney home on a sacrifice fly.

In the fifth, it was Rod Barajas’(notes) turn. He added a fourth run to the Dodgers’ total by launching a homer off Angels lefty Trevor Reckling(notes) first pitch over the left-field fence and into a crowd of picnickers perched on a lawn overlooking the park.

In the eighth, there was some insurance. Veteran infielder Jamey Carroll(notes) walked, stole second and moved to third on a routine ground-out. Then, he scored on a Xavier Paul(notes) sacrifice.

“I thought we attacked the strike zone,” Mattingly said.

Notes: Dodgers LHP Clayton Kershaw(notes) is scheduled to start Monday against the Chicago White Sox, who will counter with right-hander Gavin Floyd(notes). … When the Dodgers opened camp on Feb. 16, Mattingly announced that Kershaw was his Opening Day starter on March 31 against the San Francisco Giants. … Angels LHP Dallas Braden(notes) is scheduled to start Monday against Oakland A’s right-hander Joel Pineiro(notes). … Mattingly knew that veteran INF Jamey Carroll is from his hometown, Evansville, Ind. But everything else about Carroll has surprised Mattingly. “Yeah, I was surprised at how good he is,” Mattingly said of Carroll, who last season hit .291 and led the Dodgers with a .379 on-base percentage.