In honor of the last of the ‘Boys of Summer’

They were imprinted in graphic fashion when Erskine’s father, Matt, took him to Marion, Ind., in 1930, the morning after a mob stormed a prison and hanged two black inmates. Matt Erskine wanted his son to see the consequences of hatred.

The sight of a bare tree branch and a remnant of a noose has been etched in Carl Erskine’s consciousness ever since. In a state that once had some 30 percent of the male population as dues-paying members of the Ku Klux Klan, Erskine grew up with a black best friend, Johnny Wilson — an accolade, he said, that wouldn’t earn him special awards.

“I lived in a mixed neighborhood and knew a lot of excellent black families, hard-working families, and Johnny was a buddy,” Erskine said. “I ate at his house, he ate at my house, and we were just really, really close. I never paid attention to the color of the skin. It never played a role in our relationship. So it’s hard for me to take any credit for that because it just came naturally to me.

On the top shelf of a closet in the Erskines’ living room is a figurine Wilson gave to his old friend: two boys—one black, one white—on a couch in baseball uniforms. Behind it is Wilson’s note: “Like when we were young.”

Wilson passed away in 2019. Roger Craig, the last Dodger besides Erskine to play in that 1955 World Series, passed away last month. Two of Erskine’s children, Gary and Susie, will represent him in Cooperstown, part of a sprawling family that includes five grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren, including a girl named Brooklyn.

Erskine’s name will be on permanent display in the Hall of Fame at the Buck O’Neil statue, down a hallway and around the corner from the plaque gallery. That room honors the most sacred of Brooklyn names – Robinson, Campanella, Snider, Reese, Hodges and more – and sends to Erskine a subtle yet powerful message that he’s been promoting all his life.

“There’s one key factor regarding the plaques around that room in the Hall of Fame,” Erskine said. They’re all bronze. They all have the same color.”