BrooklynDodgers

The Names

They were the Grays in 1883 and the Atlantics in 1884. Then the Bridegrooms, because half the roster got married in a single season. Then the Superbas, after a vaudeville act. Then the Robins, after manager Wilbert Robinson.

"Trolley Dodgers" began in 1895 as a joke about pedestrians outrunning streetcars in the borough's streets. It stuck. It became official in 1933.

Pigtown to a Marble Rotunda

Charles Ebbets came in as a bookkeeper and ended up owning the club. In 1913 he opened a ballpark under his own name on a Flatbush dump lot the neighborhood called Pigtown: thirty thousand seats, a marble rotunda, and a right-field wall so close that a fly ball could be a home run and the scoreboard could be a live grenade.

For decades the Dodgers were the borough's beautiful disaster, so reliably strange that "wait till next year" became a civic motto.

Then Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson. On April 15, 1947, Robinson took the field and broke a color line that had held for sixty years. The team built around him was one of the greatest ever assembled: Robinson, Roy Campanella, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges. They won pennant after pennant and lost October after October to the Yankees.

Until 1955. Johnny Podres threw a shutout in Game 7 at Yankee Stadium, Brooklyn won 2–0, and the borough got its one and only title.

Pennants

• 1889
• 1890
• 1899
• 1900
• 1916
• 1920
• 1941
• 1947
• 1949
• 1952
• 1953
• 1955 ★
• 1956

Retired in Brooklyn

• 1Pee Wee Reese
• 4Duke Snider
• 14Gil Hodges
• 19Jim Gilliam
• 24Walter Alston
• 39Roy Campanella
• 42Jackie Robinsonretired by every club, 1997

Hall of Famers

Jackie Robinson, Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Zack Wheat and Dazzy Vance all wore Brooklyn flannels. Sandy Koufax made his debut at Ebbets Field in 1955, at nineteen years old.

The Ballparks

• Washington Park1884–1890
• Ridgewood Park1886–1889
• Eastern Park1891–1897
• Washington Park II1898–1912
• Ebbets Field1913–1957
• Roosevelt Stadium1956–1957, part-time

Ebbets opened April 5, 1913. Thirty thousand got in and five thousand were turned away at the gate. The right-field pole sat 297 feet from home plate.

How It Ended

Walter O'Malley wanted a new stadium and could not get the Brooklyn land to build it. After the 1957 season he took the club to California. The Los Angeles Dodgers played their first game on April 18, 1958 and beat the San Francisco Giants 6–5 in front of 78,672 people at the Coliseum, more than double what Ebbets Field could hold.

Ebbets came down in 1960. Apartment towers stand there now. The franchise still keeps the record. Brooklyn keeps the grudge.