Los Angeles Dodgers

Lore & Background

Founded in 1883 in Brooklyn, New York, the team joined the NL in 1890 as the Brooklyn Bridegrooms and used other names before becoming the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1932. The Dodgers broke the baseball color line in 1947 with the debut of Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play in the Major Leagues since 1884. From the 1940s through the mid-1950s, the Dodgers had a fierce crosstown rivalry with the New York Yankees. The clubs have faced each other in the World Series a record 12 times, with the Dodgers losing the first five matchups before winning the franchise's first title (and only one in Brooklyn) in 1955. After 68 seasons in Brooklyn, Dodgers owner and president Walter O'Malley moved the franchise to Los Angeles before the 1958 season. The team played their first four seasons at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before moving to their current home of Dodger Stadium in 1962. The Dodgers found immediate success in Los Angeles, winning the 1959 World Series. Success continued into the 1960s; their ace pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale helped win titles in [years not specified in source]. In 1956, Don Newcombe became the first player to win the Cy Young Award and be named NL MVP in the same season. In [year not specified in source], rookie pitcher Fernando Valenzuela became a sensation and led the team to a championship; he remains the only player to win the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards in the same season. The Dodgers were once again victorious in [year not specified in source], upsetting their heavily favored opponent in each series and becoming the only franchise to win multiple titles in the 1980s. The Dodgers later made 12 postseason appearances in a 17-year span, and they ended the championship drought in [year not specified in source]. Two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani joined the Dodgers in 2024. With Ohtani, the Dodgers won consecutive World Series titles in [years not specified in source], accomplishing a feat not seen since the Yankees' three-peat from [years not specified in source]. The O'Malley family owned the Dodgers for 48 years before selling the club to Rupert Murdoch's Fox Group in 1998. Frank and Jamie McCourt bought the team in 2004; amid their divorce and the franchise's debts, Major League Baseball took over day-to-day operations and the Dodgers filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011. Guggenheim Baseball Management

In Their Own Story

The lights at Shea Stadium hummed with an electric tension as the seventh inning began. The air was thick with humidity and anticipation, a classic New York summer night. In the dugout, the Mets players watched the Los Angeles lineup step up to the plate. It wasn't just another game; it felt like settling a score from decades past. Every crack of the bat echoed the history of Brooklyn fans who had once cheered for both sides.

Reader's Guide

The club was formed as the Brooklyn Baseball Association in 1883, playing that season in the Interstate League. It joined the major league American Association in 1884 — the season it played as the Brooklyn Atlantics, borrowing the name of a defunct team that had played in Brooklyn before them — won the American Association championship in 1889, and joined the National League in 1890, promptly winning the National League pennant in its first season in the league. The franchise was organized in 1883 by a group that included the Brooklyn real estate man Charles Byrne and Ferdinand Abell, a Rhode Island casino operator who supplied most of the capital and held a controlling interest through the 1890s. Charles Ebbets, who had joined the club in its first season as a bookkeeper and scorecard salesman and worked for it for 42 years, succeeded Byrne as president upon Byrne's death in January 1898 and spent the following decade accumulating stock, buying out Abell and the remaining outside interests in November 1907. Ebbets bought 25 to 30 parcels of land in secrecy so that word of the plan would not drive prices up, and to finance construction he sold half the club in August 1912 to the Brooklyn contractors Edward and Stephen McKeever, who took 25 percent each. Ebbets Field opened for the National League opener on April 9, 1913; the park seated about 24,000. Late that year the club hired Wilbert Robinson as manager. He held the job for 18 seasons, and the team became widely known as the Robins after him. Brooklyn won the National League pennant in 1916 at 94–60 and lost the World Series to the Boston Red Sox in five games. A second pennant followed in 1920, a 93–61 season that drew an unprecedented 809,000 spectators to Ebbets Field, second best in the National League; Brooklyn lost that World Series to the Cleveland Indians, five games to two. Ebbets died on April 18, 1925, and Edward McKeever died eleven days after his funeral, leaving the Ebbets and McKeever heirs holding exactly half the stock apiece and deadlocking the board for more than a decade. Robinson served as club president as well as manager from 1925 to 1929, years in which the team became known as the 'Daffy Dodgers'. After finishing second in 1924, a game and a half back, Brooklyn placed sixth in each of the next five seasons, and Robinson was replaced by Max Carey after the 1931 season. The club a

Did You Know?

• The Dodgers broke the baseball color line in 1947 with the debut of Jackie Robinson.
• The Dodgers have won nine World Series championships and a record 26 National League pennants.
• Eight Dodger pitchers have won a total of 12 Cy Young Awards, the most of any MLB franchise.
• The Dodgers boast 18 Rookie of the Year Award winners, twice as many as the next club.