Ebbets Field

Lore & Background

After locating the prospective new site to build a permanent stadium to replace the old wooden Washington Park, Dodgers' owner Charles Ebbets acquired the property over several years, starting in 1908, by buying lots until he owned the entire block. Ebbets Field was bounded by Bedford Avenue to the east, Sullivan Place to the South, Cedar Street (renamed McKeever Place in 1932) to the west, and Montgomery Street to the north. The land included the site of a garbage dump called Pigtown, so named because of the pigs that once ate their fill there and the stench that filled the air. At the groundbreaking, the site was described as containing several old houses, shanties, goats, and tomato cans, and although the streets bordering the field were mapped, two of them had not been built yet. Construction began on March 4, 1912. The cornerstone, a piece of Connecticut granite that held newspapers, pictures of baseball players, cards, telegrams, and almanacs, was laid on July 6, 1912. At the laying ceremony, Ebbets said that the ballpark was going to be ready for play on September 1, and that Brooklyn was going to win the National League pennant in 1913. Neither of Ebbets' predictions was correct: on August 29, 1912, as the deadline drew near and it was obvious that due to an ironworker's strike the ballpark was not even close to being finished, it was announced that Ebbets had sold a 50% interest in the team to brothers Stephen W. and Edward J. McKeever, who had built their fortune in contracting and were able to speed along the construction. Though the sale led to management troubles years later, by early 1913 Ebbets Field was ready, and would become the home of some of baseball's greatest dramas. Newspaper coverage in the spring of 1913 was filled with glowing praise about the new park, calling it "A Monument to the National Game" and predicting it could last 200 years: in the end it only lasted 47 years, failing to survive the exit of the Dodgers for Los Angeles in 1958.

In Their Own Story

The air hung heavy with the scent of roasted peanuts and damp concrete as the final out was recorded in September 1957. The roar that once defined these stands had faded into a somber murmur; there were no cheers for the victory, only the thick silence of a community bidding farewell to its soul. He stared out at the empty diamond where he'd watched Robinson steal home and Snider launch moonshots into the bleachers. One by one, the lights flickered off, casting long, dying shadows across the infield dirt, sealing the fate of a place destined to become nothing but memory and parking spaces.

Reader's Guide

The first game played was an inter-league exhibition game against the New York Yankees on April 5, 1913, played before an overcapacity of 30,000 fans, with 5,000 more who had arrived but were not able to get in. After a loss against the Yankees in another exhibition game on April 7 in front of about 1,000 fans on a very cold day, the first regular season game was played on April 9 against the Philadelphia Phillies, with Brooklyn losing, 1–0. When the park was opened it was discovered that an American flag, keys to the bleachers, and a press box had all been forgotten. The press box level was not added until 1929. The original double-decked seating covered all of right field, rounded home plate, and extended past third base, with an open concrete bleacher stand continuing to the left field wall. The ballpark was built on a sloping piece of ground, raised above street level in right field, which resulted in short foul line there of just 301 feet (92 m). When it opened, the field was very large for its time in both left field (419 feet (128 m)) and center (508 feet (155 m)); with additional seating the playing field shrunk to 356 feet (109 m) in left, 406 feet (124 m) in center, and 297 feet (91 m) to right, which gained a screen above its fence and a scoreboard. At its peak it had a capacity of around 32,000. As with Boston's Fenway Park and Detroit's Tiger Stadium, two ballparks that had opened one year earlier than Ebbets Field, the intimate configuration of some of each park's dimensions prompted some baseball writers to also refer to Ebbets Field as a "cigar box" or a "bandbox."

Did You Know?

• Jackie Robinson played for the Dodgers from 1947 through 1956, but the source notes that during the last two years in Brooklyn the Dodgers played several games each year at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, so Robinson d