Ebbets Field
Brooklyn, New York
Groundbreaking: March 14, 1912
First National League game: April 9, 1913
First night game: June 15, 1938 (No-hitter by Reds' Johnny Vander Meer)
Last National League game: September 24, 1957
Largest crowd: 41,209, May 30, 1934, against the New York Giants
First home run: Casey Stengel, Brooklyn Dodgers, April 26, 1913
Last home run: Duke Snider, Brooklyn Dodgers, September 22, 1957
Demolition began: February 23, 1960
Surface: Grass
Capacity: 18,000 (1913), 26,000 (1924), 28,000 (1926), 34,219 (1940), 31,902 (1952)
Architect: Clarence Randall Van Buskirk
Construction: Castle Brothers, Inc.
Owner: Brooklyn Dodgers
Original Cost: $750,000
Year: LF CF RF
1913: 419 450 301
1914: 410 450 300
1921: 419 450 296
1926: 384 450 301
1930: 383 466 296
1931: 384 461 296
1932: 353 399 296
1934: 356 399 296
1938: 365 402 297
1939: 357 400 297
1940: 365 400 297
1942: 356 400 297
1947: 357 399 297
1948: 343 384 297
1953: 348 384 297
1955: 343 393 297
1957: 348 393 297
Left field to left-center: 20 ft. (1913); 10 ft. (1931)
Center field: 20 (1913); 10 ft. to 15 ft. (1931)
Right-center: 9 ft. (1913); 13 ft. (1931)
Right-center to right field: 9 ft. (1913); 38 ft. (19 ft. screen on top of 19 ft. wall, bent at midpoint: top half - vertical, bottom half - angled [1931])
Hosted All-Star Game: 1949
Hosted World Series: 1916, '20, '41, '47, '49, '52, '53, '55, '56
On March 14, 1912, Ebbets shoveled the first spade of dirt for the new park. While the park was under construction Ebbets encountered some financial storm clouds. To solve his problem, he offered a half intrest in the club to Steve and Ed McKeever, local contractors, in exchange for $100,000.
The first game in Ebbets showplace was an exhibition between the Dodgers and the NY Highlanders, forerunners of the Yankees, on a cold wintery day. When the press arrived for the official opening on April 9, they discovered a glaring deficiency - there was no provision for a press box. The problem was corrected by removing two rows of seats from the front row of the upper deck. A full-scale press box wasn't built until 1929. The 25,000 who jammed the park for the inaugural saw a double-decked stand from the right-field wall to just beyond third base. Beyond that a single-deck concrete bleacher section extended to the left field wall, 419 feet from home plate. The right field wall, rising nine feet, was 301 feet away. The wall in straight-away center was a distant 450 feet from home. Besides the press box, two other things were forgotten on opening day: No one could get into the left-field bleachers because they were locked up and no one had a key. And although a gleaming new flagpole was erected in center-field, no one had remembered to bring Old Glory to christen it.
When the working-class Brooklynites showed up at Ebbets Field for the first time to cheer on the Dodgers, they were amazed at the opulent palace of baseball they now had before them - entering the ballpark through an 80-foot-wide rotunda, walking across a floor of Italian marble decorated like the stitching on a baseball, their path illuminated with light from a mammoth chandelier featuring 12 arms shaped like baseball bats.
Despite its being constructed on land that was being used as a shanty-town - dotted with make-shift trash dumps, Ebbets Field had a great location. Flatbush Avenue was the main drag through Brooklyn, and two subway/rail stations were located within three blocks of the ballpark. The area was served by nine trolley lines that connected to 32 others. (This is how the Dodgers got their name: Brooklyn residents were forever dodging the trolley cars.) Nobody drove to a Dodgers game: most came by foot.
Ebbets Field underwent two major renovations before settling into a final configuration. In 1924, outfield bleachers were added to left field in front of the the fences. Before the 1932 season, the grandstand was extended all the way down the left-field line, across to left field and then to center field. This pushed the capacity to 32,000, but more importantly it dramatically changed the nature of the ballpark and the playing field. Whereas Ebbets Field began life as a pitchers' park because of the generous dimensions in left field, it had become a hitter's paradise by 1932: it was 348 feet down the left-field line, 389 feet to dead center, and 297 feet down the right-field line. The power alleys were also similarly hitter-friendly: only 360 feet to left and 315 to right.
Add to those dimensions a number of quirks, and you've got a nightmare for opposing outfielders. A19-foot screen in right field sitting on top of a 19-foot fence kept a number of balls in play, and the weird right-field wall -- which was crooked away from the playing field -- led to a number of odd bounces over the years. Because the Dodgers were used to playing under such odd conditions, they quickly gained a home-field advantage.
But the odd dimensions and the cozy configuration wasn't why Ebbets Field was so beloved in its day or so fondly remembered today. Much of this nostalgia has to do with the very nature of Brooklyn and its relationship to the rest of New York City.
During the heyday of the Dodgers, Brooklyn was the melting pot of New York City. The swells lived in Manhattan, and the working class lived in Brooklyn. This particular working class had a collective chip on its shoulder as big as the Ritz: Brooklynites were permanently underdogs and dared the rest of the city -- and the world -- to knock it off. Yes, they may be bums, but they're the Brooklyn Bums. The Dodgers took this notion to heart and reveled in it: Dem Bums became the team's rallying cry, and the team commissioned New York World-Telegram artist Willard Mullin to put his archetypal Brooklyn Bum on the cover of team publications. Thought the average Brooklynite may have felt marginal in the grand scheme of things, he was king at Ebbets Field, entering through the grand rotunda and then occupying a seat close to the action. (Of course, in a ballpark so small, all the seats were close to the action: "The fans, you joked with them on a first-name basis," said Pee Wee Reese. "You were friends.") And the typical crowd could only have come from the neighborhoods of Brooklyn. Hilda Chester is still renowned in baseball circles as the ultimate Dodgers fan: she sat out in the left-center-field bleachers with her cowbell (her doctor forbade her to yell after she suffered a heart attack). (The cowbell was actually a scaled-back instrument for her: she began by banging a frying pan with an iron ladle.) The Brooklyn Sym-phony Band, whose enthusiasm way outpaced their musical skill, still exists to this day: consisting of a trumpet, trombone, cymbals, bass drum and snare drum, the band roamed through Ebbets Field.
Even the outfield ads were legendary: the Abe Stark sign at the base of the right-field Schaefer Beer scoreboard (the Schaefer lettering was functional: the h would light up for a hit, while the e lit up for an error) promised a suit to anyone who hit the sign, but few did -- the sign was low to the ground, which meant that the right fielder usually caught the ball before it could hit the sign.
Many memorable events were played out in Ebbets Field. Certainly the most important one was Branch Rickey's signing of Jackie Robinson as the first African-American player in the major leagues in the 20th century. On-field moments are legendary, such as Mickey Owens passed ball in the '41 World Series; when a fan slugged umpire George Magerkurth in 1940; Where Billy Martin made a game-saving catch of a pop-up in the '52 Series; Where Gil Hodges and Joe Adcock each hit four homers in games; Where Babe Herman and Dazzy Vance slid into third base, passing Chick Fewster on the way; Where yellow baseballs were tested in a game in '38; Where Dick Sisler homered to clinch the pennant for the Phillies in '50; Where the Cardinals' Jim Bottomley drove in 12 runs in '24... and many others.
In addition, Ebbets Field was the location of the first television broadcast of a major-league game. On August 26, 1939, views of the NBC television network saw the first game of a Saturday doubleheader featuring the Cincinnati Reds and the Dodgers. A young Red Barber called the game.
And opposing players made their mark in Ebbets Field as well. It was here in 1918 that Casey Stengel famously tipped his hat to the Brooklyn crowd, letting a bird fly out as a salute to his old home crowd after being traded to Pittsburgh. Johnny Vander Meer threw his second consecutive no-hitter at Ebbets Field in the first night game ever played at Ebbets.
By the 1950s, however, Walter O'Malley grew dissatisfied with Ebbets Field, first proposing a new stadium for the Dodgers elsewhere in Brooklyn and then elsewhere in New York City. City officials, led by the legendary Robert Moses, weren't too thrilled about building a new stadium for the Dodgers or even giving some desirable real estate for a privately funded stadium; instead, Moses offered a tract of land in Queen's Flushing Meadows. (No, O'Malley replied: "We'll not be the Brooklyn Dodgers if we're in Queens.") But in the end, O'Malley threw in the towel when Los Angeles made an offer he couldn't refuse: free land and a ton of civic support. Brooklyn didn't give up on the Dodgers (attendance in 1957 was well over a million -- pretty good for its day); the Dodgers gave up on Brooklyn.
After O'Malley moved the Dodgers in 1958 to play first at the Los Angeles Coliseum and then at Chavez Ravine, Ebbets Field sat empty while New York grappled with the issue of the future of baseball in the city with the defection of both the Dodgers and the New York Giants; suddenly the center of the baseball universe had no National League team to call it home. To fill the voice, the Continental League looked at establishing operations in New York, but this effort ended when the National and American Leagues agreed to expand by four team. When the New York Mets settled into the Polo Grounds and groundbreaking occurred at Shea Stadium, it was clear that Ebbets Field had no future as a ballpark. The park was demolished in 1960 (later the same baseball-painted wrecking ball would also be used to demolish the Polo Grounds), with the light poles moved to Downing Stadium on Randall's Island. In its place was constructed a block of high-rise apartment buildings, the Ebbets Field Apartments; down the block is a school named after Jackie Robinson.
Ebbets Field - the one-time palace of Brooklyn baseball.
Washington Park
Brooklyn, New York
Final version Opened: April 30, 1898
Last Dodger game: October 5, 1912
Surface: Grass
Capacity: 18,800
Dimensions: Left field: 335 ft. (1898), 376 ft. (1908), 300 ft. (1914); Left center: 500 ft. (1898), 444 ft. (1908); Center field: 445 ft. (1898), 425 ft. (1908), 400 ft. (1914); Right center: 300 ft. (1898); Right field: 215 ft. (1898), 295 ft. (1899), 302 ft. (1908), 275 ft. (1914)
Fences: Left and center field: 12 feet; Right field: 42 feet.
This was the third ballpark to stand on the site. Other versions were in use between 1884 and 1890.
Part of the clubhouse wall still stands. It is now the 3rd Avenue wall to the Con Edison yard at 222 1st Street in Brooklyn.
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