I’m an anniversary guy. Nothing gets me to daydreaming faster than when I find out that something important happened on this date however many years ago. This month, we passed another anniversary that I really didn’t hear much about. April 9th was the 100th anniversary of the opening of Ebbets Field; home of the Brooklyn Dodgers. Oh, I’m sure the New York newspapers covered it, but it didn’t seem to generate much interest in Indiana.
Unlike the famous ballparks that celebrated a centennial last year (Fenway Park) and will celebrate one next year (Wrigley Field), Ebbets Field is long gone. The home of “Dem Bums” met the wrecking ball in 1960, just three years after the Dodgers deserted Brooklyn for Los Angeles after four decades of play in Ebbets Field. In 1962 it was replaced by a 1,318 unit high rise apartment complex of the same name. On the wall near the Bedford Avenue entrance of the boring beige-brick 20-story building is the only evidence of the spot’s former glory. A concrete marker with the year date 1962 in the sweet spot of a baseball above the inscription, “This Is the Former Site of Ebbets Field.” Sadly, the apartment complex has occupied the spot longer than its fabled ancestor.
On April 9, 1913 the Brooklyn Dodgers met the Philadelphia Phillies in the first regular season game ever played at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York. Located in the “Flatbush” section of Brooklyn along Bedford Avenue and Cedar Place, the team brought a long colorful history with them to match their surroundings.
In 1884 the Brooklyn baseball club became part of the newly founded American Association where they played in the original Washington Park located at 3rd St. & 4th Ave. One of the team’s early rivals was our own Indianapolis Indians. Over their first 30 years the Dodgers had a variety of names including the Atlantics, Grays, Bridegrooms, Grooms, Superbas and Trolley Dodgers. The team joined the National League in 1890 and began playing their games at Washington Park, a wooden ballpark that could seat up to 18,000.
Charlie Ebbets, who worked his way up from bookkeeper to President & General Manager, bought the Dodgers in the early 1900s. Ebbets viewed Washington Park as a fire hazard and soon after acquiring the team, he began purchasing land in an area in the slums of Brooklyn. The locals called it “Pigtown” after the garbage dump located there that drew wild pigs from all around the area to root through the stinking piles. Ebbets bought 1,200 parcels of land in total, enough to build his new steel and concrete ballpark.
Ebbets Field cost approximately $750,000 to build (a modest $17.4 million in today’s money), and one newspaper reported the new ballpark this way: “Brooklyn fans have much to boast of now on their ball plant. President Charles Ebbets has skipped no expense in trying to find the model ball yard, and the awe-inspiring grandstands, a field as level as the proverbial billiard table and other ideal niceties which appeal to fan and player alike round out an athletic enclosure second to none in the land.”
Prior to the start of the regular season, an exhibition game took place on April 5, when the Brooklyn Dodgers tangled with the New York Yankees. Over 30,000 fans jammed into Ebbets Field and 5,000 more mingled outside the ballpark, unable to get inside for what would eventually become the greatest cross-town rivalry in baseball history. The Dodgers beat the Yankees, ironically on a game winning base hit by future legendary Yankees manager Casey Stengel.
Perhaps as an ominous portent, Opening Day turned out to be a very cold one in Brooklyn. The thermometer in the Brooklyn dugout read 37 degrees at game time. One newspaper reported that fans had to “chip their way through the frozen atmosphere” to get to the ballpark and “braved pneumonia” by watching it. Another newspaper stated that the crowd “shivered in the face of the strong wind which blew across the field.” The extreme cold kept attendance well below a capacity crowd. Only 10,000 frozen fans were there to witness baseball history in the making.
The obligatory festivities preceding that inaugural ballgame succeeded more in irritating the frigid fans than in entertaining them. A brass marching band led players from both teams out to the centerfield flagpole. There Old Glory was raised by specially rigged ropes pulled by the entire squads of both teams. Two large floral horseshoes were presented to the Brooklyn club — one for the players and one for owner Charles Ebbets. Brooklyn team captain Jake Daubert received a gold bat from admiring fans. NL President Thomas Lynch was in attendance, as was Phillies’ President William Locke. Albert E. Steers, president of the Brooklyn borough, threw out the ceremonial first pitch to umpire Bill Klem rather than to the catcher of the home team as is the custom today.
With pre-game festivities finally over with, the clubs got down to the business of playing baseball. One reporter, obviously annoyed by the long cold delay, said, “When these pleasing little side functions had been completely wiped off the map, the two clubs buckled down to the serious side of life, namely, to annihilate one another for the day.”
Phillies’ centerfielder George “Dode” Paskert got the first hit in the new ballpark by lacing a hot grounder past the outstretched glove of Brooklyn shortstop Bobby Fisher. Paskert, a lifetime .268 hitter, swung at the very first regular season pitch thrown at Ebbet’s Field but was thrown out trying to stretch his single into a double on a nifty throw by eventual Hall of Famer Zack Wheat. The Phillies spoiled the grand opening for hometown fans by beating Brooklyn 1-0 in a game that took one hour and thirty minutes to play. True to the “Bums” reputation, that run was unearned.
Ebbets Field no longer exists; nor do the Brooklyn Dodgers. This year, the team most New Yorkers consider to be the reincarnation of the Bums, the Mets, opened their new ballpark; Citi Field. The main entrance’s rotunda and exterior façade are meant to be remind Gothamites of Ebbets Field, and like the Dodgers back in 1913, the Mets lost their inaugural home opener. But, the similarities between the ballparks and games end there. Oh, I almost forgot, Citi Field cost $800 million to build.
The “Bums’’ would not bring home a pennant until 1941, when they fell to the mighty Yankees in a five-game World Series. They also suffered World Series defeats at the hands of the Bronx Bombers in 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953 and 1956. Their lone World Series triumph came in 1955, in a seven-game classic against the hated Yankees, that sent a borough into delirium. Two years later, the Brooklyn Dodgers left Flatbush for La-La-Land.
Ironically, a few years later, the very same wrecking ball used to knock down Ebbets Field would be used to demolish the Polo Grounds, home of the New York Giants, after they to fled to the city by the bay, San Francisco. Stranger still, Washington Park, the ballpark abandoned by the Dodgers for Ebbet’s Field, would be remodeled in brick and lived on for awhile in the Federal League. The new old Washington Park took on a modern appearance; a near duplicate of Chicago’s Wrigley Field.
In 1914, Washington Park became home to the Brooklyn Tip-Tops or “BrookFeds” of the Federal League, the only major league team ever named for a loaf of bread. When the league folded in 1915, Washington Park was abandoned. However, part of the outfield wall of Washington Park still exists on the eastern side of 3rd Avenue in what’s now a Con Edison yard. So a part of the park that Charlie Ebbets fled for fear of fire has outlived the storied ballpark named in his honor.
It’s hard to properly express a baseball history fan’s love of Ebbet’s Field. I believe that Anderson, Indiana native and former Brooklyn Dodger pitcher, Carl Erskine, expressed it best when he said, “Ebbets Field, it wasn’t beautiful but it sure was home.” Erskine posed for reporters beside the massive crane and the comically “pitching” the attached whitewashed wrecking ball that was painted with red stitches to mock the seams of a baseball. “Oisk” was there on Feb. 25, 1960, the day Ebbets Field died, and watched as the demolition began with the visitors’ dugout.
“When they dropped that ball and it crashed through the roof and all the way down to the dugout, it was too much,’’ said Erskine. “I caught a cab and went back to the hotel.’’ Erskine could not stand seeing that wrecking ball swing more than once. “It certainly signified the end of an era, it really did, watching the demolition of that magnificent shrine was too much.’’
“I knew the ushers at Ebbets Field by their first name,’’ Erskine said. “I knew the cops. I knew the grounds crew. I knew the ticket-takers. They were all part of the scene. They all meant a lot to me.’’ The celebrated right hander, who threw two no-hitters at Ebbets Field — against the Cubs on June 19, 1952, and the New York Giants on May 12, 1956 — kept in touch with Kenny Smith, an usher in the upper deck in right field, long after he had thrown his last fastball. “He probably would have ushered for nothing,’’ Erskine said. That was the magic of Ebbets Field.
Al Hunter is the author of “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Indiana National Road” and “Haunted Irvington” book series. Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
