La Dodgers
Los Angeles had the best record in the West Division when play was stopped and was declared the first-half division winner. The Dodgers had the second best record in the division when considering the entire season, four games behind Cincinnati.
- In 1994, a players' strike wiped out the last eight weeks of the season and all post-season.
Los Angeles was in first place by three and a half games in the West Division when play was stopped. No official titles were awarded in 1994.
Owner(s): Frank McCourt
Manager: Joe Torre
General Manager: Ned Colletti
"Dodgers" and "Brooklyn Dodgers" redirect here.
For the Eastern Basketball Association team, see Brooklyn Dodgers (basketball).
The Los Angeles Dodgers are a Major League Baseball team based in Los Angeles, California, USA. 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.
The Dodgers are the current National League West champions.
Team History
Early Brooklyn baseball
Brooklyn was home to numerous 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. 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 and played its home games at Union Grounds in 1877 before disbanding.
They were also the Brooklyn Superbas during the late 1890s and early 1900s.
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.
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.
Teams of this era played in two principal ballparks, Washington Park and Eastern Park.
They first earned the nickname "Trolley Dodgers," later shortened to Dodgers, while at Eastern Park during the 1890s because of the difficulty fans (and players) had in reaching the ballpark due to the number of trolley lines in the area. The name "Trolley Dodgers" is recorded separately in two newspapers on September 3, 1895. 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 (NL) 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. Ebbets' ambition did not stop at owning the team. When both franchises moved to California in 1958, the rivalry was easily transplanted with them, as the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco have long been rivals in economic, cultural, and political arenas throughout the history of the State of California.
“Uncle Robbie” and the “Daffiness Boys”
Manager Wilbert Robinson, another former Oriole, popularly known as “Uncle Robbie,” restored the Brooklyn team to respectability, with his “Brooklyn Robins” winning pennants to reach the 1916 and 1920 World Series, losing both, but contending perennially for several seasons.
Charles Ebbetts and Ed McKeever died within a week in 1925, and Robbie was named president while still field manager. Upon assuming the title of president, however, Robinson’s ability to focus on the field declined, and the teams of the late 1920s were often fondly referred to as the “Daffiness Boys” for their distracted, error-ridden style of play.
After his removal as club president, Robinson returned to managing, and the club’s performance rebounded somewhat.
When Robinson retired in 1931, he was replaced as manager by Max Carey. In 1934, Giants player/manager Bill Terry was asked about the Dodgers’ chances in the coming pennant race and cracked infamously, “Is Brooklyn still in the league?” Managed now by Casey Stengel (who played for the Dodgers in the 1910s and would go on to greatness managing another team), the 1934 Dodgers were determined to make their presence felt.
Stengel led his Bums to the Polo Grounds for the showdown and they beat the Giants twice to knock them out of the pennant race. The “Gashouse Gang” Cardinals nailed the pennant by beating the Cincinnati Reds those same two days.
One key development during this era was the 1938 appointment of Leland Stanford MacPhail — better known as Larry MacPhail — as the Dodgers' general manager.
MacPhail, who brought night baseball to MLB as general manager of the Reds, also introduced Brooklyn to night baseball and ordered the successful refurbishing of Ebbets Field. He also brought Reds voice Red Barber to Brooklyn as the Dodgers' lead announcer in 1939, just after MacPhail broke the New York baseball executives' agreement to ban live baseball broadcasts, enacted because of the fear of what effect the radio calls would have on the home teams' attendance.
MacPhail remained with the Dodgers until 1942, when he returned to the Armed Forces for World War II.
(Lee MacPhail) and surviving grandson Andy MacPhail also became MLB execs.
The first major-league baseball game to be televised was Brooklyn’s 6-1 victory over Cincinnati at Ebbets Field on August 26, 1939. Batting helmets were introduced to Major League Baseball by the Dodgers in 1941.
Breaking the color barrier
For most of the first half of the 20th century, no Major League Baseball team employed an African American player.
A parallel system of Negro Leagues developed, but most of the Negro League players were denied a chance to prove their skill before a national audience. The annual ritual of building excitement, followed in the end by disappointment, became a common pattern to the long suffering fans, and “Wait ’til next year!” became an unofficial Dodger slogan.
While the Dodgers generally enjoyed some success during this period, in 1951 they fell victim to one of the largest collapses in the history of baseball. On August 11, Brooklyn led the National League by an enormous 13½ games over their archrivals, the Giants.
The Giants took Game 1 by a score of 3-1 before being shut out by the Dodgers' Clem Labine in Game 2, 10-0. Brooklyn fans had their memory of triumph, and soon that would be all they were left with – a victory that decades later would be remembered in the Billy Joel single "We Didn't Start the Fire," which included the line, "Brooklyn's got a winning team."
Move to California
Walter O'Malley
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.
Their original target had been the Washington Senators (who would in fact move to Bloomington, Minnesota to become the Minnesota Twins in 1961). 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. The Coliseum's dimensions were not optimal for baseball, and the best way to fit a baseball diamond into the oval-shaped stadium was to lay the third-base line parallel to the short axis of the oval, and the first-base parallel to the long axis.
A 40-foot high screen was erected to prevent home runs from becoming too trivial to hit. The Baseball Hall of Fame reports that Brooklyn photos and broadcasts are the museum's second biggest sellers behind the Yankees, Ebay lists close to 1,000 items a day relating to the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the Library of Congress has over 100 books on the teams, third only to the Yankees and Red Sox.
The 1960s: Pitching, defense, and speed
Construction on Dodger Stadium was completed in time for Opening Day 1962.
Despite the fact that the Dodgers have played in Dodger Stadium longer than they had played in Ebbett's Field, the stadium remains surprisingly fresh. Top pitching also came from Claude Osteen, an aging Johnny Podres, and reliever Ron Perranoski.
Seasons of over 150 RBI are quite rare by a player in modern-day pro baseball. The youthful left-hander, speaking only Spanish but sporting a devastating screwball, became a sensation.
Plagued by arm troubles that were widely blamed on his being overused by Lasorda, his effectiveness faded before he turned 30. McCourt immediately hired Paul DePodesta as his new general manager, replacing Dan Evans.
Another key move was handing the closer's role to rookie (but Japanese League veteran) Takashi Saito, where he flourished, notching 24 saves in 26 opportunities while posting a 2.07 ERA.
After a heated pennant race, in which the most memorable moment occurred when the Dodgers hit four consecutive home runs on September 18 to tie the score in the ninth inning and then won the game on a tenth-inning walk-off homer by Nomar Garciaparra, the Dodgers entered the 2006 playoffs in the National League's Wild Card spot, having tied the San Diego Padres for the division lead but having lost 13 of 18 head-to-head meetings with the Padres. After a hitting slump, the Dodgers fell to 60-59, and seven games out of first place in the N.L.
The last few weeks of the season were disrupted further by public complaints in the media by some of the veteran ballplayers about the lack of respect afforded them by some of the younger players on the team. To bolster a lineup of mostly young players, Ned Colleti made trades for shortstop Angel Berroa, third-baseman Casey Blake, and on July 31, 2008 the Los Angeles Dodgers acquired outfielder Manny Ramirez from the Boston Red Sox in a 3-way deal that sent third baseman Andy LaRoche and single-A prospect pitcher Bryan Morris to the Pittsburgh Pirates and all-star outfielder Jason Bay to the Red Sox.
For the majority of the season, the club has hovered around a .500 record. If Scully is not calling the game, Steiner and Steve Lyons call the entire game on television while Monday (now as play-by-play) and Jerry Reuss do the same on radio.
The Dodgers also broadcast on radio in Spanish, and the play-by-play is handled by another Ford C.