Los Angeles Dodgers
0 Buy/Sell
From WikiCollectables, Buy • Sell • Collect • Wiki
View the top articles!
The Los Angeles Dodgers are a Major League Baseball team based in Los Angeles, California, USA. The team is in the Western Division of the National League. Established in 1883, the team originated in Brooklyn, New York, where it was known as the Brooklyn Dodgers, before moving to Los Angeles before the 1958 season.
Contents |
[edit] Team History
[edit] Early Brooklyn baseball
Brooklyn was home to outstanding baseball clubs in the mid-1850s. Eight of 16 participants in the first convention were from Brooklyn, including the Atlantic, Eckford and Excelsior clubs that combined to dominate play for most of the 1860s. Brooklyn helped make baseball commercial, as the locale of the first paid admission games, a series of three all star contests matching New York and Brooklyn in 1858. Brooklyn also featured the first two enclosed baseball grounds, the Union Grounds and the Capitoline Grounds; enclosed, dedicated ballparks accelerated the evolution from amateurism to professionalism.
Despite the success of Brooklyn clubs in the first Association, officially amateur until 1869, they fielded weak teams in the succeeding National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, the first professional league formed in 1871. The Excelsiors no longer challenged for the amateur championship after the war and never entered the professional NA. The Eckfords and Atlantics declined to join until 1872 and thereby lost their best players; Eckford survived only one season and Atlantic four, with losing teams.
The National League replaced the NA in 1876 and granted exclusive territories to its eight members, excluding the Atlantics in favor of the New York Mutuals who had shared the same home grounds. When the Mutuals were expelled by the League, the Hartford Dark Blues club moved in, changed its name to The Brooklyn Hartfords [1] and played its home games at Union Grounds in 1877 before disbanding. They were also the Brooklyn Superbas during the late 1890's and early 1900's.[2]
[edit] Brooklyn Dodgers
The Brooklyn baseball club that eventually became the NL Dodgers was established in 1883, and the team joined the upstart American Association the following year. Originally the Brooklyn team was known as the "Atlantics" (a reference to the earlier National Association team), and later as the "Grays." After several of the team's players were married in succession in 1888, the press began referring to the team as the "Brooklyn Bridegrooms." The Bridegrooms won the AA pennant in 1889. Upon switching to the National League in 1890, the franchise became the first of only three major league sports teams, and the only major league baseball team, to win championships in different leagues in consecutive years. (The other two sports teams to win consecutive sufis in different leagues were the 1948-1949 Minneapolis Lakers and the 1949-1950 Cleveland Browns.) Eight years passed before any more success followed. Because of joint ownership between the two clubs, several Hall of Fame players were sold to Brooklyn by the soon-to-be-defunct Baltimore Orioles, along with their manager, Ned Hanlon. This catapulted Brooklyn to instant contention, and "Brooklyn Superbas" (as the team was known in the late 1890s because the manager shared a surname with "Hanlon's Superbas," a popular acrobatic troupe at the time) lived up to their name, winning pennants in 1899 and 1900.[2] The club also engaged in a series of mergers during this period, acquiring the New York Metropolitans in 1888 for territorial protection and star contracts, merging with the Brooklyn Wonders in 1891 as part of the Players League settlement, and merging with the Baltimore Orioles in 1900 as part of the National League's consolidation of clubs.
In 1902, Hanlon expressed his desire to buy a controlling interest in the team and move it (back, effectively) to Baltimore. His plan was blocked by a lifelong club employee, Charles Ebbets, who put himself heavily in debt to buy the team and keep it in the borough.[3] Ebbets' ambition did not stop at owning the team. He desired to replace the dilapidated Washington Park with a new ballpark, and again invested heavily to finance the construction of Ebbets Field,[3] which would become the Dodgers' home for 45 seasons starting in 1913 and ending after the 1957 season.
[edit] Move to California
Real estate businessman Walter O'Malley had acquired majority ownership of the Dodgers in 1950, when he bought the shares of his co-owners, the estate of the late John L. Smith and Branch Rickey. Before long he was working to buy new land in Brooklyn to build a more accessible and better arrayed ballpark than Ebbets Field. Beloved as it was, Ebbets Field had grown old and was not well served by infrastructure, to the point where the Dodgers could not sell the park out even in the heat of a pennant race (despite largely dominating the league from 1946 to 1957).
New York City Construction Coordinator Robert Moses, however, sought to force O'Malley into using a site in Flushing Meadows, Queens – the site for what eventually became Shea Stadium. Moses' vision involved a city-built, city-owned park, which was greatly at odds with O'Malley's real-estate savvy. When it became clear to O'Malley that he was not going to be allowed to buy any suitable land in Brooklyn, he began thinking elsewhere.
Meanwhile, non-stop transcontinental air travel had become routine during the years since the Second World War, and teams were no longer bound by much slower railroad timetables. Because of these transportation advances, it became possible to locate teams further apart – as far west as California – while maintaining the same game schedules.
When Los Angeles officials attended the 1956 World Series looking to entice a team to move to the City of Angels, they were not even thinking of the Dodgers. Their original target had been the Washington Senators (who would in fact move 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 would not: a chance to buy land suitable for building a ballpark, and own that ballpark, giving him complete control over all its revenue streams.
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 would have 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 June 24, 2007 spectators at KeySpan Park in Brooklyn, home of the New York Mets Single-A team, the Brooklyn Cyclones, watched Danny McDevitt, who threw the last pitch for the Brooklyn Dodgers re-enact that moment with his catcher Joe Pignatano, who caught McDevitt's ball in 1957. 'Brooklyn' Dodgers Celebrate 50th Anniversary
On April 18, 1958, the Los Angeles Dodgers played their first game in LA, defeating the former New York and now new San Francisco Giants, 6-5, before 78,672 fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
A 2007 HBO film, Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush, is a documentary covering the Dodgers history from early days to the beginning of the Los Angeles era.
[edit] Baseball Hall of Famers
|
|
|
Since 1997, Robinson's #42 has been retired throughout Major League Baseball in honor of his breaking the color barrier in 1947. Robinson is the only major league baseball player to have this honor bestowed upon him. He spent his entire career with the Dodgers, who retired his number in 1972.
Because the MLB decided to grandfather the use of the number 42 out of the game, New York Yankees closer Mariano Rivera still wears the number as he is the only active player who wore the number before it was retired across all of Major League Baseball.
Koufax, Campanella, and Robinson were the first Dodgers to have their numbers retired. They were all retired in a ceremony at Dodger Stadium on June 4, 1972.
Gilliam died suddenly in 1978 at the age of 49, after a 28-year career with the Dodgers organization. The Dodgers retired his number two days after his death, prior to Game 1 of the 1978 World Series, making him the only non-Hall-of-Famer to have his number retired by the Dodgers.
[edit] See also
- All-Time roster
- List of Los Angeles Dodgers people
- Los Angeles Dodgers Season-by-Season Records
- 1988 Los Angeles Dodgers
- Freeway Series - Dodgers-Angels interleague rivalry
- Dodger Dog
- Dodgers award winners and league leaders
- Dodgers statistical records and milestone achievements
- List of Los Angeles Dodgers broadcasters
- Managers and ownership of the Los Angeles Dodgers
- 2008 Los Angeles Dodgers season
- Los Angeles Dodgers Minor League Affiliations
[edit] References
[edit] External links
- Current records and standings
- Los Angeles Team Building - Dodger's Mentoring
- Los Angeles Dodgers Baseball Reference
