Ebbets Field Home Stadium

Lore & Background

The ballpark was built on a sloping piece of ground, raised above street level in right field, which resulted in a short foul line there of just 301 feet. When it opened, the field was very large for its time in both left field (419 feet) and center (508 feet); with additional seating the playing field shrunk to 356 feet in left, 406 feet in center, and 297 feet to right, which gained a screen above its fence and a scoreboard. At its peak it had a capacity of around 32,000. The park's first night game was played on June 15, 1938, drawing a crowd of 38,748. Johnny Vander Meer of the visiting Cincinnati Reds pitched his second consecutive no-hitter, a feat that has never been duplicated in Major League Baseball.

In Their Own Story

The sun dipped low over Flatbush Avenue on a humid September evening in 1955. Dust motes danced in the light filtering through the grandstand roof as fans packed into the bleachers, their cheers echoing off the brick walls. In center field, the warning track was narrow, a testament to how close the crowd lived to the game. A pitcher wound up on the mound, the crack of the bat sending a ball soaring toward the short porch in left, while thousands held their breath in anticipation of history being written within these hallowed confines.

Reader's Guide

Ebbets Field was located east of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and Washington Avenue, north of Empire Boulevard, west of Bedford Avenue. It 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 stadium was sold by O'Malley to real estate developer Marvin Kratter for about $2,000,000 on October 31, 1956. The deal included a five-year lease that allowed the Dodgers to move out as soon as a proposed Downtown Brooklyn stadium was ready for business and Kratter to raze the ballpark and redevelop the land for a $25 million housing project beginning in 1961. When stadium plans fell through the team left for Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

Did You Know?

• The first game played at Ebbets Field was an inter-league exhibition game against the New York Yankees on April 5, 1913, played before a crowd of about 25,000 fans, which was at the stadium's initial capacity.
• The park's first regular season game was on April 9, 1913, against the Philadelphia Phillies, with Brooklyn losing 1–0.
• Ebbets Field hosted the 1949 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.
• The Dodgers won the 1955 World Series, their only world title, at Ebbets Field.