While all kinds of hoopla had surrounded the move of his Brooklyn club to a new Washington Park
in 1898, by 1912 Charles Ebbets was dissatisfied with the place. It could no longer hold large
enough crowds, and was aging fast.
Ebbets looked around for alternative sites, and began to buy up lots in Pigtown, a small slum
area within the Flatbush neighborhood, as quietly as possible. Soon he had accumulated all of
the block bounded by Bedford Avenue, Sullivan Place, Cedar Place (now McKeever Place), and
Montgomery Street. Architect Clarence Randall Van Buskirk (a distant cousin of BrooklynBallPark.com's
own Andrew Ross) was asked to design a monument to the game
of baseball, and produced a breathtaking result. The stadium was built by Castle Brothers, at a cost of
$750,000, in time for the 1913 season. Its stands had room for 25,000 people.
The first game,
a view of and from the upper deck
The first game was an exhibition against the Yankees on April 3, which the Robins won 3-2. Beginning
on April 9, Brooklyn officially started life at Ebbets field with three 1-0 losses to
Philadelphia, and a 2-1 loss to the same team, before finally winning 5-3 over the Giants on
April 26.
While fans admired the beautiful arches of the stadium's grandiose exterior, and the chandelier in
the stylish rotunda that formed the entrance foyer, sports journalists were less pleased. The
one element forgotten in the original design was somewhere to seat the press.
A temporary press facility was created, but no permanent one was built until 1929. This was the first of a
series of modifications to Ebbets Field. Originally
the park had stands only along the first and third base lines. Left field stands were built
in 1932, increasing capacity to 32,000. Smaller details were continually altered through the life of the stadium.
The field dimensions changed in 1932 and 1948. Lights were first used on June 15, 1938, an event celebrated
by the visiting Reds as Johnny Vander Meer blanked the Dodgers in pitching his second consecutive
no-hitter. The Reds also played the Dodgers in the first televised professional baseball game, in
August 1939.
The press room in 1941, fans wait before a 1920 World Series game
Before long, Ebbets Field achieved its own character and iconic status. The good times were very good-
the Dodgers won nine National League pennants and the 1955 World Series while playing at Ebbets Field.
The bad times, however, saw three Dodger runners meet at third base and other such disasters. While the team had many
ups and downs, its home park remained an important Brooklyn landmark, and one that brought all
the different communities of the borough together in what writer Pete Hammill has called "the rough
democracy of the upper deck." Ebbets was home to such unique
fans as the members of the Dodger Sym-phony and Hilda the cowbell lady (although she was often seen at Dexter
Park, too).
Hot
dogs tasted just as good near the ritzy or plain sides of Ebbets Field
Ebbets Field was generally a hitter's park, but it was particularly deadly to opposing right
fielders. One reason was left hander Duke Snider's ability to pull the ball. Another was the
bizarre construction of the fence and scoreboard. In 1950, Pee Wee Reese legged out an inside the park
home run while the ball bobbled around on a ledge on the right field wall.
Dodger right fielder Carl Furillo once appeared in a photo essay in Collier's magazine
demonstrating the 14 different ways the ball could bounce off the scoreboard.
After World War 2 the Schaefer Beer sign was added at the top of the scoreboard. An
H would light up for a hit, an E for an error. At the bottom was an advertisement for
Abe Stark's clothing store on Pitkin Avenue. In a gimmick widely imitated in ballparks to this day, it
proclaimed "HIT SIGN, WIN SUIT." Players rarely did, but the promise was always honored.
The right field scoreboard, the grandiose entrance
Despite all this mythology, by 1956 the days of Ebbets Field were numbered. Dodger owner Walter
O'Malley wanted to move- to a site at Atlantic and Flatbush which is now the Atlantic Center
shopping mall, or elsewhere completely. The fate of the park was sealed when the Dodgers finally
announced that they would be heading west to Los Angeles. In their last game at Ebbets Field,
on September 24, 1957, the Dodgers defeated Pittsburgh 2 to 0.
Ebbets Field was not only home to the Dodgers. The Negro League Brooklyn Eagles played there in 1935,
before being merged with the Newark club. The Bay Parkways semipro team played annual charity matches
at Ebbets Field in the late 1930s. The Brooklyn Brown Dodgers called Ebbets Field home in 1945 and 1946.
High school sports finals, both football and baseball, were also often held at
Ebbets Field, as well as occasional soccer matches.
Three extremely unsuccessful professional Brooklyn football franchises
(Lions, Dodgers who became Tigers, and another Dodgers who merged with the Yankees) used the field
during various autumns between 1926 and 1948, as did the minor league Brooklyn Eagles. Another minor
league football team, the Brooklyn Brooks, called Ebbets Field home, but never got to play there- the
club folded after four road games. The Long Island University football team also played at Ebbets Field in 1939 and
1940, compiling an 8-3 home record. This probably makes them the finest football team to call
Ebbets Field home.
Ebbets
Field from above Drawing courtesy Jeff Suntala, from his Historic
Ballparks series
The last regular baseball team to call Ebbets Field home was Long Island University, in 1959.
Roy Campanella's Brooklyn Stars, an exhibition squad of local black and hispanic players, also
played several games there. On August 23, 1959, 4,000 fans saw the Kansas City Monarchs defeat
the Brooklyn Stars 3 to 1, with home runs from Red Moore and Don Bonner. Then, in the second game
of the double header, Monarch first baseman and manager Herm Green hit a home run off Satchel Paige
of the Havana Cubans. Havana won, 6 to 4. Paige dressed in a Chicago White Sox uniform given to
him by Bill Veeck. This was the last game of baseball played at Ebbets Field.
The stadium was demolished in 1960 and replaced two years later by Ebbets Field Apartments, a
monolithic, sad monument to the departed baseball palace. Only a small granite plaque, half hidden
behind a hedge, commemorates the site. Jackie Robinson High School, next door, hosts the Brooklyn
Dodger Hall of Fame. The Ebbets Field flagpole still stands at an American Legion hall in Canarsie.
Ebbets Field today
The memory of Ebbets Field has found ironic new life in recent years as the poster child for
baseball tradition. It is invariably cited by any club wishing to have its city pay for a new "retro"
mallpark designed by the architects at HOK. The new Mets park, in progress in the parking lot of Shea
Stadium, has an exterior wall which is a giant sized copy of the one at Ebbets Field, right down to the acute
angle of Sullivan Street and McKeever Place. Throwback jerseys and
caps are available from Ebbets Field Flannels. Books about the place have become an industry of their own.
We'd rather have the real stadium and team back than all this posthumous worship, but we have to content ourselves
with Keyspan Park.
