In the fall of 1956, Marianne Moore's poem "Hometown Piece for Messrs. Alston and Reese" appeared on the front page of the Herald Tribune on the first day of the World Series between Moore's beloved Brooklyn Dodgers and the hated New York Yankees, whom Brooklyn had finally beaten the year before to win their first World Series title. Moore's poem celebrates the "pandemonium" of "Dodgerdom / crowned" and roots the Dodgers on to another World Series victory. Unfortunately, the Dodgers lost the 1956 series in 7 games, which included the perfect game pitched by the Yankees' Don Larsen in the pivotal Game 5 with the series tied 2-2. The next year the Dodgers moved to LA, changing Brooklyn forever.

We celebrate Moore, baseball's Poet Laureate and resident of Fort Greene for 37 years, with #56 to commemorate her poem celebrating the last great year in Brooklyn baseball history and her rise to a new level of stardom in the 1950s, when she won the National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize and the Bollingen Prize and became a cultural icon.

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