Kavalier and Clay

Factual Questions
1

Just now I am reading Michael Chabon’s novel The Amazing Adventures of Kavelier and Clay, and two questions vex me.

First: Chabon refers to someone “blocking” like a “back” for Sammy Clay’s “beloved Dodgers”. Joe Kavalier was a Czech immigrant and frequently puzzled by American culture. His cousin Sammy, however, surely knew the difference between baseball and football. Overlooking for the moment that it is ordinarily the line, and not the backs, who do the blocking, was there ever a football team called the Dodgers, or is there some joke here I am missing, or is this just a plain mistake which got past the editors?

Second: Chabon refers to Sammy Clay’s courage as disappearing “like Mike Campbell’s fortune”. I have found numerous citations to people named Mike Campbell on the Web, but none of them seem to be well-known for their connection to a fast-disappearing fortune. Can anyone explain this reference?

2

There was a Brooklyn Dodgers football team. This site has a pretty good history.

3

Mike Campbell is a character in The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. He is bankrupt, literally and metaphorically (morally bankrupt). At one point the main character asks how he went bankrupt and he says, “Two ways. Gradually and then suddenly.”

4

Also, football in that time frame used the single-wing formation, where the quarterback was primarily a blocking back and rarely handled the ball.

5

Typical of Chabon’s almost magical writing ability… the familiar that isn’t.

6

Direct from the NFL

What is a blocking back?