Brooklyn Dodgers
Brooklyn Dodgers | |
---|---|
Information | |
League | National League (1890–1957) |
Ballpark | Ebbets Field (1913–1957) |
Established | 1883 |
Folded | 1957 (moved to Los Angeles, California in 1958) |
Nickname(s) | Dem Bums |
National League pennant | 12 (1890, 1899, 1900, 1916, 1920, 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956) |
World Series championships | 1 (1955) |
Former name(s) | |
Former league(s) | American Association (1884–1889) |
Former ballparks | |
Colors | Dodger blue, white, red |
Manager | See list |
The Brooklyn Dodgers were a
The team's name derived from the reputed skill of Brooklyn residents at evading the city's trolley streetcars. The name is a shortened form of one of their former names, the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers, and they later earned the respectful nickname Dem Bums. The Dodgers played in two stadiums in South Brooklyn, each named Washington Park, and at Eastern Park in the neighborhood of Brownsville before moving to Ebbets Field in the neighborhood of Crown Heights in 1912. The team is noted for signing Jackie Robinson in 1947 as the first black player in the modern major leagues.[1]
Early Brooklyn baseball
Many of the clubs represented at the first convention of the
Despite the early success of Brooklyn clubs in the NABBP, which were officially amateur until 1869, they fielded weak teams in the succeeding National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), the first professional league formed in 1871. The Excelsiors no longer challenged for the amateur championship after the Civil War (1861–1865) and never entered the professional NAPBBP (aka NA). The Eckfords and Atlantics declined to join until 1872 and thereby lost their best players; the Eckfords survived only one season and the Atlantics four, with losing teams.
The National League (NL) replaced the NAPBBP in 1876 and granted exclusive territories to its eight members, excluding the Atlantics in favor of the Mutual Club of New York who had shared home grounds with the Atlantics. When the Mutuals were expelled by the league, the Hartford club moved in, the press dubbing them The Brooklyn Hartfords,[2] and played its home games at Union Grounds in 1877 before disbanding.
Origin of the Dodgers
The team currently known as the Dodgers was formed in 1883 by real estate magnate and baseball enthusiast Charles Byrne, who convinced his brother-in-law Joseph Doyle and casino operator Ferdinand Abell to start the team with him. Byrne arranged to build a grandstand on a lot bounded by Third Street, Fourth Avenue, Fifth Street, and Fifth Avenue, and named it Washington Park in honor of first president George Washington.[3]
Nicknamed by reporters the "Grays" for their uniforms, the team played in the minor level
After winning the American Association league championship in 1889, the Brooklyn club (very occasionally now nicknamed the Bridegrooms or Grooms, for six players having wed during the 1888 season) moved to the competing older
In 1899, most of the original
Nicknames
The name Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers was first used to describe the team in 1895.[7] The nickname was still new enough in September 1895 that a newspaper reported that "'Trolley Dodgers' is the new name which eastern baseball cranks [fans] have given the Brooklyn club."[8] In 1895, Brooklyn played at Eastern Park, bounded by Eastern Parkway (now Pitkin Avenue), Powell Street, Sutter Avenue, Van Sinderen Street,[3] where they had moved early in the 1891 season when the second Washington Park burned down.[9]
Some sources erroneously report that the name "Trolley Dodgers" referred to pedestrians avoiding fast cars on street car tracks that bordered Eastern Park on two sides. However, Eastern Park was not bordered by street-level trolley lines that had to be "dodged" by pedestrians.[9] The name "Trolley Dodgers" implied the dangers posed by trolley cars in Brooklyn generally, which in 1892, began the switch from horse-power to electrical power, which made them much faster, and were hence regarded as more dangerous.[7][10] The name was later shortened to Brooklyn Dodgers.[11]
Other team names used to refer to the franchise that finally came to be called "the Dodgers" were the Atlantics (1884, not directly related to the earlier Brooklyn Atlantics), Bridegrooms or Grooms (1888–1898),[12] Ward's Wonders,[13] the Superbas (1899–1910),[14] and the Robins (1914–1931).[15] All of these nicknames were used by fans and newspaper sports writers to describe the team, often concurrently, but not in any official capacity. The team's legal name was the Brooklyn Base Ball Club.[16]
The "Trolley Dodgers" nickname was used throughout this period, along with other nicknames, by fans and sports writers of the day. The team did not use the name in a formal sense until 1916, when the name was printed on home World Series programs. The word "Dodgers" appeared on team jerseys in 1932.[17] The "conclusive shift" came in 1933, when both home and road jerseys for the team bore the name "Dodgers".[18]
Examples of how the many popularized names of the team were used interchangeably are available from newspaper articles from the period before 1932. A
Most baseball statistics sites and baseball historians generally now refer to the pennant-winning 1916 Brooklyn team as the Robins; on the other hand, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle used "Superbas" in its box scores that season. A 1918 New York Times article used the nickname Robins in its title "Buccaneers Take Last From Robins", but the subtitle of the article reads "Subdue The Superbas By 11 To 4, Making Series An Even Break".[20][21] Space-conscious headline writers still used "the Flock" (derived from "Robins") during the Dodgers' last decade in Brooklyn.[22]
Another example of the interchangeability of different nicknames is found on the program issued at Ebbets Field for the 1920 World Series, which identifies the matchup in the series as "Dodgers vs. Indians", despite the fact that the Robins nickname had been in consistent usage at this point for around six years.[23]
Rivalry with the Giants
The historic and heated rivalry between the Dodgers and the
"Uncle Robbie" and the "Daffiness Boys"
Manager
Outfielder Babe Herman was the leader both in hitting and in zaniness. The signature Dodger play from this era occurred when three players – Dazzy Vance, Chick Fewster, and Herman – ended up at third base at the same time. The play is often remembered as Herman "tripling into a triple play", though only two of the three players were declared out and Herman was credited with a double rather than a triple.[27] Herman later complained that no one remembered that he drove in the winning run on the play. The incident led to the popular joke:
- "The Dodgers have three men on base!"
- "Oh, yeah? Which base?"[28]
After his removal as club president, Robinson returned to managing, and the club's performance rebounded somewhat.[26]
When Robinson retired in 1931, he was replaced as manager by Max Carey.[26] Although some suggested renaming the "Robins" the "Brooklyn Canaries", after Carey, whose last name was originally "Carnarius", the name "Brooklyn Dodgers" returned to stay following Robinson's retirement.[26] It was during this era that Willard Mullin, a noted sports cartoonist, fixed the Brooklyn team with the lovable nickname of "Dem Bums". After hearing his cab driver ask, "So how did those bums do today?", Mullin decided to sketch an exaggerated version of famed circus clown Emmett Kelly to represent the Dodgers in his much-praised cartoons in the New York World-Telegram. Both image and nickname caught on, so much so that many a Dodger yearbook cover, from 1951 through 1957, featured a Willard Mullin illustration of the Brooklyn Bum.
Perhaps the highlight of the Daffiness Boys era came after Wilbert Robinson left the dugout.[26] In 1934, Giants player/manager Bill Terry was asked about the Dodgers’ chances in the coming pennant race and cracked infamously, "Is Brooklyn still in the league?" Managed then by Casey Stengel, who played for the Dodgers in the 1910s and went on to greatness managing the New York Yankees,[26] the 1934 Dodgers were determined to make their presence felt. As it happened, the season entered its final games with the Giants tied with the St. Louis Cardinals for the pennant, with the Giants’ remaining games against the Dodgers. Stengel led his Bums to the Polo Grounds for the showdown, and they beat the Giants twice to knock them out of the pennant race.[26] The "Gashouse Gang" Cardinals nailed the pennant by beating the Cincinnati Reds those same two days.[26]
One key development during this era was the 1938 appointment of Leland "Larry" MacPhail as Dodgers' general manager.[26] MacPhail, who brought night games to Major League Baseball as general manager of the Reds, also started night baseball in Brooklyn and ordered the successful refurbishing of Ebbets Field.[26] He also brought Reds voice Red Barber to Brooklyn as the Dodgers' lead announcer in 1939, just after MacPhail broke the New York baseball executives' agreement to ban live baseball broadcasts, enacted because of the fear of the effect of radio calls on the home teams' attendance.
MacPhail remained with the Dodgers until 1942, when he returned to the Armed Forces for World War II. He later became one of the Yankees' co-owners, bidding unsuccessfully for Barber to join him in the Bronx as announcer.
The first major-league baseball game to be televised was Brooklyn's 6–1 victory over Cincinnati at Ebbets Field on August 26, 1939. Batting helmets were introduced to Major League Baseball by the Dodgers in 1941.
Breaking the color barrier
For most of the first half of the 20th century, no Major League Baseball team employed a black player. A parallel system of Negro leagues developed, but most of the Negro league players were denied a chance to prove their skill before a national audience. Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play Major League baseball in the 20th century when he played his first major league game on April 15, 1947, as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson's entry into the league was mainly due to General Manager Branch Rickey's efforts.[29]
The deeply religious Rickey's motivation appears to have been primarily moral, although business considerations were also present. Rickey was a member of
Besides selecting Robinson for his exceptional baseball skills, Rickey also considered Robinson's outstanding personal character, his UCLA education and rank of captain in the U.S. Army in his decision, since he knew that boos, taunts, and criticism were going to be directed at Robinson, and that Robinson had to be tough enough to withstand abuse without attempting to retaliate.[30]
The inclusion of Robinson on the team also led the Dodgers to move its spring training site. Prior to 1946, the Dodgers held their spring training in Jacksonville, Florida. However, the city's stadium refused to host an exhibition game with the Montreal Royals – the Dodgers’ own farm club – on whose roster Robinson appeared at the time, citing segregation laws. Nearby Sanford similarly declined. Ultimately, City Island Ballpark in Daytona Beach agreed to host the game with Robinson on the field. The team traveled to Havana, Cuba for spring training in 1947, this time with Robinson on the big club. Although the Dodgers ultimately built Dodgertown and its Holman Stadium further south in Vero Beach, and played there for 61 spring training seasons from 1948 through 2008, Daytona Beach renamed City Island Ballpark to Jackie Robinson Ballpark in his honor.
This event marked the continuation of the integration of professional sports in the United States, with professional football having led the way in 1946, with the concomitant demise of the
"Wait ’til next year!"
After the wilderness years of the 1920s and 1930s, the Dodgers were rebuilt into a contending club first by general manager Larry MacPhail and then the legendary Branch Rickey. Led by Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, and Gil Hodges in the infield, Duke Snider and Carl Furillo in the outfield, Roy Campanella behind the plate, and Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, and Preacher Roe on the pitcher's mound, the Dodgers won pennants in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, and 1953, only to fall to the New York Yankees in all five of the subsequent World Series. The annual ritual of building excitement, followed in the end by disappointment, became a common pattern to the long suffering fans, and "Wait ’til next year!" became an unofficial Dodger slogan.
While the Dodgers generally enjoyed success during this period, in 1951 they fell victim to one of the largest collapses in the history of baseball.[31] On August 11, 1951, Brooklyn led the National League by an enormous 13+1⁄2 games over their archrivals, the Giants. While the Dodgers went 26–22 from that time until the end of the season, the Giants went on an absolute tear, winning an amazing 37 of their last 44 games, including their last seven in a row. At the end of the season the Dodgers and the Giants were tied for first place, forcing a three-game playoff for the pennant.
The Giants took Game 1 by a score of 3–1 before being shut out by the Dodgers' Clem Labine in Game 2, 10–0. It all came down to the final game, and Brooklyn seemed to have the pennant locked up, holding a 4–2 lead in the bottom of the ninth inning. Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson, however, hit a stunning three-run walk-off home run off the Dodgers' Ralph Branca to secure the NL Championship for New York. To this day Thomson's home run is known as the Shot Heard 'Round The World.
In 1955, by which time the core of the Dodger team was beginning to age, "next year" finally came. The fabled "Boys of Summer" shot down the "Bronx Bombers" in seven games,[32] led by the first-class pitching of young left-hander Johnny Podres, whose key pitch was a changeup known as "pulling down the lampshade" because of the arm motion used right when the ball was released.[33] Podres won two Series games, including the deciding seventh. The turning point of Game 7 was a spectacular double play that began with left fielder Sandy Amorós running down Yogi Berra's long fly ball, then throwing to shortstop Pee Wee Reese, who relayed to first baseman Gil Hodges to double up a surprised Gil McDougald to preserve the Dodger lead. Hank Bauer grounded out and the Dodgers won 2–0.
Although the Dodgers lost the World Series to the Yankees in 1956 during which the Yankees pitcher Don Larsen pitched the only World Series perfect game in baseball history and the only post-season no-hitter for the next 54 years, it hardly seemed to matter. Brooklyn fans had their memory of triumph, and soon that was all they were left with – a victory that was remembered decades later in the Billy Joel single "We Didn't Start the Fire", which included the line, "Brooklyn's got a winning team."
Move to California
Real estate businessman Walter O'Malley had acquired majority ownership of the Dodgers in 1950, when he bought Rickey's 25 percent share of the team and secured the support of the widow of another equal partner, John L. Smith. Soon O'Malley was working to buy new land in Brooklyn for a new, more accessible and better ballpark than Ebbets Field. Beloved as it was, Ebbets Field had grown old and was not well served by vehicular infrastructure, to the point where the Dodgers could not "sell out" the park to maximum capacity even in the heat of a pennant race, despite dominating the league from 1946 to 1957.
New York City Construction Coordinator
O'Malley was free to purchase land of his own choosing, but wanted Robert Moses to condemn a parcel of land along the
What O'Malley wanted was for Moses to use Title I authority, rather than to pay market value for the land. With Title I the city via Robert Moses could have sold the land to O'Malley at a below market price. Moses refused to honor O'Malley's request and responded, "If you want the land so bad, why don't you purchase it with your own money?".[34]
Meanwhile, non-stop transcontinental airline travel had become routine during the years since the Second World War. Teams were no longer bound by much slower railroad infrastructure. Because of advances in civil aviation, it became possible to locate teams farther apart – as far west as California – while maintaining the same busy game schedules.
When Los Angeles officials attended the 1956 World Series looking to entice a team to move there, they were not even thinking of the Dodgers. Their original target had been the Washington Senators franchise, which eventually moved to Bloomington, Minnesota to become the Minnesota Twins in 1961. At the same time, O'Malley was looking for a contingency in case Moses and other New York politicians refused to let him build the Brooklyn stadium he wanted, and sent word to the Los Angeles officials that he was interested in talking. Los Angeles offered him what New York did not: a chance to buy land somewhat suitable for building a ballpark, and the chance to own that ballpark, giving him complete control over all its revenue streams. At the same time, the National League was not willing to approve the Dodgers' move unless O'Malley found a second team willing to join them out west, largely out of concern for travel costs.[35]
Meanwhile, Giants owner Horace Stoneham was having similar difficulty finding a replacement for his team's antiquated home stadium, the Polo Grounds. Stoneham was considering moving the Giants to Minneapolis, but was persuaded instead to move them to San Francisco, ensuring that the Dodgers had a National League rival closer than St. Louis. So the two arch-rival teams, the Dodgers and Giants, moved out to the West Coast together after the 1957 season.
The Brooklyn Dodgers played their final game at Ebbets Field on September 24, 1957, which the Dodgers won 2–0 over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
On April 18, 1958, the Los Angeles Dodgers played their first game in L.A., defeating the former New York and newly moved and renamed San Francisco Giants, 6–5, before 78,672 fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.[36] Catcher Roy Campanella, left partially paralyzed in an off-season automobile accident on January 28, 1958, was never able to play for the Dodgers in Los Angeles.
A
Notes
- ^ Sunday games only.
References
- ^ a b Jackson, Kenneth T. (2010).The Encyclopedia of New York City, Second Edition pp. 176–77
- ^ "1877 Hartford Dark Blues – Statistics and Roster". Retrieved 2008-09-22.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-8027-1562-3. Retrieved 14 September 2016.
- ISBN 9780786416400– via Google Books.
- ISBN 0395361451.
- ^ Spalding's Official Base Ball Guide 1894. Chicago: A. G. Spalding and Bortothers 1894, p. 26
- ^ a b Brown, Peter Jensen (7 April 2014). "The Grim Reality of the Trolley Dodgers". Early Sports 'n Pop-Culture Blog. Retrieved 13 June 2014.
- ^ "Sports of All Sorts". The Roanoke Times. September 13, 1895. p. 2. Retrieved 23 November 2012.
- ^ a b Brown, Peter Jensen (13 April 2014). "Rail Service to Eastern Park Brooklyn". Early Sports 'n Pop-Culture Blog. Retrieved 13 June 2014.
- ^ Other sources report that "trolley dodgers" was a mocking term used of Brooklynites by residents of Manhattan, whose trolleys had mostly been replaced by underground subways.
- ^ "Dodgers Timeline". Los Angeles Dodgers. Retrieved 2008-09-22.
- ^ "Eight Straight Games". Brooklyn Eagle. 3 June 1888. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
- ^ "Wants More About the Brooklyn Team and Less About Ward". Brooklyn Eagle. 21 April 1892. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
- ^ "Hits from the Diamond". Brooklyn Eagle. 12 August 1899. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
- ^ "Braves Win in 13th". New York Times. 3 June 1914. Retrieved 5 November 2015.
- ^ "Brooklyn Ball Parks". BrooklynBallParks.com. Retrieved 2008-10-09.
- ^ "Dressed to the Nines Uniform Database". National Baseball Hall of Fame. Retrieved 2008-10-08.
- ^ Bernado, Leonard; Weiss, Jennifer (2006). Brooklyn By Name: From Bedford-Stuyvesant to Flatbush Avenue, And From Ebbets Field To Williamsburg. New York: New York University Press. p. 81.
- ^ "Buccaneers Rout Sleepy Superbas" (PDF). The New York Times. 1916-09-14. Retrieved 2008-10-08.
- ^ "Buccaneers Take Last From Robins" (PDF). The New York Times. 1918-05-19. Retrieved 2008-10-08.
- ^ "Baseball History Book". NYTStore.
- ^ Sullivan, C.J. (29 March 2018). "Remembering the Brooklyn Dodger Who Hijacked a Plane". The Daily Beast. Retrieved 9 July 2018.
- ^ "English: The cover of a program from the 1920 World Series". 5 January 2019 – via Wikimedia Commons.
- ^ "Dodgers Timeline". Los Angeles Dodgers. Retrieved 2008-09-22.
- ^ "Dodgers Timeline". Los Angeles Dodgers. Retrieved 2008-09-22.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j "Dodgers Timeline". Los Angeles Dodgers. Retrieved 2008-09-22.
- ^ Vidmer, Richards (August 16, 1926). "Robins in Form, Win Two in Day - Take Double-Header From the Braves by 4 to 2 and 11 to 3 Before Starting West – Vance Pitches the Opener – Jess Barnes Keeps Up Victory Pace In Second – Batsmen Rouse From Their Slump". The New York Times. p. 11. Retrieved 11 September 2016.
- ]
- ^ a b "Branch Rickey, 83, Dies in Missouri". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-12-29.
- Goldstein, Richard(1991). Superstars and Screwballs: 100 Years of Brooklyn Baseball. New York: Dutton.
- ^ Silver, Nate (2007-09-27). "Lies, Damned Lies". Baseball Prospectus. Retrieved 2008-09-22.
- ^ "1955 World Series: Rare, Never-Seen". LIFE.com. Archived from the original on 2010-10-27. Retrieved 2010-10-28.
- ^ "Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball". 2006. Archived from the original on October 5, 2008. Retrieved 2008-09-22.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-19-504366-2.
- ^ Borzi, Pat (June 17, 2005). "The Giants Almost Headed Not Quite So Far West". The New York Times. Retrieved February 12, 2018.
The next day, according to Johnson, San Francisco officials met with Stoneham. By then the Dodgers were looking hard at Los Angeles. O'Malley needed the Giants because National League owners, concerned about travel costs, would not approve only one team going across the country.
- ^ "Giants 5 Dodgers 6 (Boxscore)". Baseball Reference. Retrieved 2009-11-10.
Further reading
- D’Agostino, Dennis; Crosby, Bonnie. Through a Blue Lens: The Brooklyn Dodgers Photographs of Barney Stein, 1937–1957. Triumph Books.
- Prince, Carl E. (2011). Brooklyn's Dodgers: The Bums, the Borough, and the Best of Baseball, 1947–1957. ISBN 9780195115789.
- Sullivan, Neil J. (1987). The Dodgers Move West : The Transfer of the Brooklyn Baseball Franchise to Los Angeles. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-504366-9.