In the modern (post-1903) era, the team, then known as the Robins, won league pennants in 1916 and 1920, losing the World Series both times, first to Boston and then Cleveland. In 1941, as the Dodgers, they captured their third National League pennant, only to lose again to the New York Yankees. This marked the onset of the Yankees–Dodgers rivalry, as the Dodgers would face them in their next six World Series appearances. Led by Jackie Robinson, the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era, and three-time National League Most Valuable Player Roy Campanella, also signed out of the Negro Leagues, the Dodgers captured their first World Series title in 1955 by defeating the Yankees for the first time.
Following the 1957 season, the team left Brooklyn. In just their second season in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won their second World Series title, beating the Chicago White Sox in six games in 1959. Spearheaded by the dominant pitching style of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, the Dodgers captured three pennants in the 1960s and won two more World Series titles in 1963, sweeping the Yankees in four games, and 1965, edging the Minnesota Twins in seven. The 1963 sweep represented their second victory against the Yankees and first against them as a Los Angeles team. The Dodgers won three more pennants in 1974, 1977 and 1978, but lost in each World Series appearance. They went on to win the World Series again in 1981, thanks to pitching sensation Fernando Valenzuela. The early 1980s were affectionately dubbed "Fernandomania." In 1988, another pitching hero, Orel Hershiser, again led them to a World Series victory, aided by one of the most memorable home runs of all time, by their injured star outfielder Kirk Gibson coming off the bench to pinch hit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of game 1, in his only appearance of the series.
The Dodgers share a fierce rivalry with the San Francisco Giants, the oldest rivalry in baseball, dating back to when the two franchises played in New York City. Both teams moved west for the 1958 season. The Brooklyn Dodgers and Los Angeles Dodgers have collectively appeared in the World Series eighteen times, as have the New York Giants and San Francisco Giants collectively. (In this way both are tied with the Saint Louis Cardinals, which has, however, always remained in Saint Louis.) The Dodgers and Giants have also in this way won the same number of World Series (6) and share the record for most National League pennants (21). Although the two franchises have enjoyed near equal success, the city rivalries are rather lopsided and in both cases, a team's championships have predated to the other's only one in that particular location. When the two teams were based in New York, the Giants won five World Series championships, and the Dodgers one. After the move to California, it has been the reverse—the Dodgers have won five in Los Angeles, the Giants won one in San Francisco.
Team history
History of the Brooklyn Dodgers
The Dodgers were originally founded in 1883 as the Brooklyn Atlantics, taking the name of a defunct team that had played in Brooklyn prior to them. The team joined the American Association in 1884 and won the AA championship in 1889 before joining the National League in 1890. They promptly won the NL Championship their first year in the League. The team was known alternatively as the Bridegrooms, Grooms, Superbas, Robins, and Trolley Dodgers before officially becoming the Dodgers in the 1930s.
In Brooklyn, the Dodgers won the NL pennant several times (1890, 1899, 1900, 1916, 1920, 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956) and the World Series in 1955. After moving to Los Angeles, the team won World Series championships in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988. Altogether, the Dodgers have appeared in 18 World Series.
Jackie Robinson
For most of the first half of the 20th century, no Major League Baseball team employed an African American player. Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play for a Major League Baseball team when he played his first major league game on April 15, 1947, as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It happened mainly due to General Manager Branch Rickey's efforts. The deeply religious Rickey's motivation appears to have been primarily moral, although business considerations were also present. Rickey was a member of The Methodist Church, the antecedent denomination to The United Methodist Church of today, which was a strong advocate for social justice and active later in the Civil Rights movement.
This event was the harbinger of the integration of professional sports in the United States, the concomitant demise of the Negro Leagues, and is regarded as a key moment in the history of the American Civil Rights movement. Robinson was an exceptional player, a speedy runner who sparked the team with his intensity. He was the inaugural recipient of the Rookie of the Year award, which is now named the Jackie Robinson award in his honor. The Dodgers' willingness to integrate, when most other teams refused to, was a key factor in their 1947–1956 success. They won six pennants in those 10 years with the help of Robinson, three-time MVP Roy Campanella, Cy Young Award winner Don Newcombe, Jim Gilliam and Joe Black. Robinson would eventually go on to become the first African-American elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
Move to Los Angeles
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 Branch Rickey and the late John L. Smith. Before long he was working to buy new land in Brooklyn to build a more accessible and better arrayed ballpark than Ebbets Field. Beloved as it was, Ebbets Field had grown old and was not well served by infrastructure, to the point where the Dodgers could not sell the park out even in the heat of a pennant race (despite largely dominating the league from 1946 to 1957).
O'Malley wanted to build a new, state of the art stadium in Brooklyn. But City Planner Robert Moses and other New York politicians refused to let him build the Brooklyn stadium he wanted. During the 1955 season he announced that the team would play seven regular season games and one exhibition game at Jersey City's Roosevelt Stadium in 1956. He expected that this move would put pressure on the city's politicians to build the Dodgers the park he wanted in Brooklyn. Yet Moses and the others considered this an empty threat, and did not believe O'Malley would go through with moving the team from New York City. That is when Los Angeles came into the picture.
Former Dodger greats adorn the exterior of Dodger Stadium
Construction on Dodger Stadium was completed in time for Opening Day 1962. With its clean, simple lines and its picturesque setting amid hills and palm trees, the ballpark quickly became an icon of the Dodgers and their new California lifestyle, and it remains one of the most highly-regarded stadiums in baseball even today. Despite the fact that the Dodgers have played in Dodger Stadium longer than they had played in Ebbets Field, the stadium remains surprisingly fresh. O'Malley was determined that there would not be a bad seat in the house, achieving this by cantilevered grandstands that have since been widely imitated. More importantly for the team, the stadium's spacious dimensions, along with other factors, gave defense an advantage over offense, and the Dodgers moved to take advantage of this by assembling a team that would excel with its pitching.
The Dodgers in Los Angeles won nine more National League Championships and five World Series rings.
2011 Dodgers ownership dispute
On April 20, Baseball commissioner Bud Selig announced that MLB would be appointing a representative to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Dodgers. His statement said that he took that action because of his "deep concerns for the finances and operations" of the Dodgers.
On June 27, one week after the commissioner refused to approve a proposed television contract that would have pumped much needed funding into the club, the Dodgers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.
On November 1, Frank McCourt agreed to sell the Los Angeles Dodgers, Dodger Stadium, and the surrounding area to MLB to be sold at auction.
Other historical notes
Historical statistics
First MLB team to employ and start a African-American in the 20th century (Jackie Robinson in 1947)
First baseball team to win championships in different leagues in consecutive years (1889–1890)
First TV broadcast (1939)
First use of batting helmets (1941)
First West Coast team (1958) – along with the San Francisco Giants
First MLB team to open an office in Asia (1998)
Largest home-opener crowd (78,762 in 1958)
Largest attendance: 93,103 (1959) and 115,300 (2008) *World Record
MLB record for home start going 13–0 (2009)
The team's nickname
By 1890, New Yorkers (Brooklyn was a separate city until it became a borough in 1898) routinely called anyone from Brooklyn a "trolley dodger," due to the vast network of street car lines criss-crossing the borough as people dodged trains to play on the streets. When the second Washington Park burned down early in the 1891 season, the team moved to nearby Eastern Park, which was bordered on two sides by street car tracks. That's when the team was first called the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers. That was soon shortened to Dodgers.[9] Possibly because of the "street character" nature of Jack Dawkins, the "Artful Dodger" in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist, sportswriters in the early 20th Century began referring to the Dodgers as the "Bums."
Other team names used by the franchise which would finally be called the Dodgers were the Atlantics, Grays, Grooms, the Bridegrooms, the Superbas and the Robins. All of these nicknames were used by fans and sportswriters to describe the team, but not in any official capacity. The team's legal name was the Brooklyn Base Ball Club.However, the Trolley Dodger nickname was used throughout this period, simultaneously with these other nicknames, by fans and sportswriters of the day. The team did not use the name in any formal sense until 1932, when the word "Dodgers" appeared on jerseys for the team. The "conclusive shift" came in 1933, when both home and road jerseys for the team bore the name "Dodgers".
Examples of how the many popularized names of the team were used are available from newspaper articles from the period before 1932. A New York Times article describing a game the Dodgers played in 1916 starts out by referring to how "Jimmy Callahan, pilot of the Pirates, did his best to wreck the hopes the Dodgers have of gaining the National League pennant", but then goes on to comment "the only thing that saved the Superbas from being toppled from first place was that the Phillies lost one of the two games played". What is interesting about the use of these two nicknames is that most baseball statistics sites and baseball historians generally now refer to the pennant-winning 1916 Brooklyn team as the Robins. A 1918 New York Times article does use the nickname Robins in its title "Buccaneers Take Last From Robins", but the subtitle of the article reads "Subdue The Superbas By 11 To 4, Making Series An Even Break".
Another example of the fluidity of use of the different nicknames is found on the program issued at Ebbets Field for the 1920 World Series, which identifies the matchup in the series as "Dodgers vs. Indians", despite the fact that the Robins nickname had been in consistent usage at this point for around six years.[13] The "Robins" nickname was derived from the name of their Hall Of Fame manager, Wilbert Robinson, who led the team from 1914 to 1937
Uniforms
The Dodgers' uniforms have remained relatively unchanged for 70 years.
The Dodgers uniforms have remained relatively unchanged for over 70 years. The home jersey is white with Dodgers written in script across the chest in blue. The word Dodgers was first used on the front of the team's home jersey in 1933, and the uniform was white with red pinstripes and the Brooklyn stylized B on the left shoulder. The Dodgers also wore green outlined uniforms and green caps throughout the 1937 season but reverted to a blue template the following year. Since 1952 the team has had a red uniform number under the Dodgers script. The road jersey is gray with Los Angeles written in script across the chest in blue. The road jerseys also have a red uniform number under the script. The Dodgers have worn the current uniforms on the field since 1939 with only minor cosmetic changes. The most obvious of these is the removal of "Brooklyn" from the road jerseys and the replacement of the stylized "B" with the interlocking "L.A." on the caps in 1958. In 1970 the Dodgers removed the city name from the road jerseys and had Dodgers on both the home and away uniforms. The city script returned to the road jerseys in 1999. Also in 1999 the tradition rich Dodgers flirted with an alternate uniform for the first time since 1944 (when all blue satin uniforms were introduced). These 1999 alternate jerseys had a royal blue top with the Dodgers script in white across the chest and the red number on the front. These were worn with white pants and a new Dodger cap complete with a silver brim, silver top button and silver Dodger logo. These alternates proved unpopular and the team abandoned them after only one season just as they did 55 years earlier with the blue satin uniforms.
Asian players
Chan Ho Park
The Dodgers have been groundbreaking in their signing of players from Asia; mainly, Japan, Korea, Iran, Iraq, and Taiwan. Former owner Peter O'Malley began reaching out in 1980 by starting clinics in China and Korea, building baseball fields in two Chinese cities, and in 1998 becoming the first major league team to open an office in Asia. The Dodgers were the second team to start a Japanese player in recent history, pitcher Hideo Nomo, the first team to start a Korean player, pitcher Chan Ho Park, and the first Taiwanese player, Chin-Feng Chen. In addition, they were the first team to send out three Asian pitchers, from different Asian countries, in one game: Park, Hong-Chih Kuo of Taiwan, and Takashi Saito of Japan. In the 2008 season the Dodgers had the most Asian players on its roster of any major league team with five. They included Japanese pitchers Takashi Saito and Hiroki Kuroda; South Korean pitcher Chan Ho Park; and Taiwanese pitcher Hong-Chih Kuo and infielder Chin-Lung Hu. Furthermore in 2005, the Dodgers' Hee Seop Choi became the first Asian player to compete in the Home Run Derby.
Rivalries
The Dodgers' rivalry with the San Francisco Giants dates back to the 19th century, when the two teams were based in New York; the rivalry with the New York Yankees took place when the Dodgers were based in New York, but was revived with their East Coast/West Coast World Series battles in 1963, 1977, 1978, and 1981. The Dodgers also had a heated rivalry with the Cincinnati Reds during the 1970s, 80's and early 90's. The rivalry with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and the San Diego Padres dates back to the Angels' and Padres' respective inaugural seasons (Angels in 1961, Padres in 1969). Regional proximity is behind the rivalries with both the Angels and the Padres.
San Francisco Giants
Dodgers–Giants rivalry
The Dodgers–Giants rivalry is the longest-standing and one of the most storied rivalries in the history of baseball.
The feud between the Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants began in the late 19th century when both clubs were based in New York City, with the Dodgers playing in Brooklyn and the Giants playing at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan. After the 1957 season, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley decided to move the team to Los Angeles for financial reasons, among others.Along the way, he managed to convince Giants owner Horace Stoneham (who was considering moving his team to Minnesota) to preserve the rivalry by bringing his team to California as well. New York baseball fans were stunned and heartbroken by the move. Given that the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco have long been competitors in economic, cultural, and political arenas, the new venue in California became fertile ground for its transplantation.
Each team's ability to have endured for over a century while leaping across an entire continent, as well as the rivalry's growth from a cross-city to a cross-state engagement, have led to the rivalry being considered one of the greatest in sports history.
Unlike many other historic baseball match-ups in which one team remains dominant for most of their history, the Dodgers–Giants rivalry has exhibited a persistent balance in the respective successes of the two teams. While the Giants have more wins in franchise history, both National League West teams are tied for the most National League pennants with 21,and both teams have each won six World Series titles. The 2010 World Series was the Giants' first championship since moving to California, while the Dodgers' last title came in the 1988 World Series.
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
This rivalry refers to a series of games played with the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. The series takes its name from the massive freeway system in the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area, the home of both teams; one could travel from one team's stadium to the other simply by traveling along Interstate 5. The term is akin to Subway Series which refers to meetings between New York City baseball teams. The term "Freeway Series" also inspired the official name of the regions' NHL rivalry: the Freeway Face-Off.
Yankees–Dodgers rivalry and Subway Series
The Yankees–Dodgers rivalry is one of the most well-known rivalries in Major League Baseball. The two teams have met 11 times in the World Series, more times than any other pair of teams from the American and National Leagues. The initial significance was embodied in the two teams' proximity in New York City, when the Dodgers initially played in Brooklyn. After the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958, the rivalry retained its significance as the two teams represented the dominant cities on each coast of the United States, and since the 1980s, the two largest cities in the United States.
Although the rivalry's significance arose from the two teams' numerous World Series meetings, the Yankees and Dodgers have not met in the World Series since 1981. They would not play each other in a non-exhibition game until 2004, when they played a 3-game interleague series.Their last meeting was in June 2010.
Fan support
A fan waves a rally towel during the 2008 NLCS
The Dodgers have a loyal fanbase, evidenced by the fact that the Dodgers were the first MLB team to attract more than 3 million fans in a season (in 1978), and accomplished that feat six more times before any other franchise did it once.[24] The Dodgers have drawn in at least 3 million fans for the past 15 consecutive seasons, the longest such streak in all of MLB. On July 3, 2007, Dodgers management announced that total franchise attendance, dating back to 1901, had reached 175 million, a record for all professional sports. In 2007, the Dodgers set a franchise record for single-season attendance, attracting over 3.8 million fans. In 2009, the Dodgers led MLB in total attendance. The Dodger baseball cap is consistently top three in sales. Given the team's proximity to Hollywood, numerous celebrities can often be seen attending home games at Dodger Stadium.
The Dodgers also recently set the world record for the greatest attendance for a single baseball game during an exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in honor of the Dodgers 50th anniversary in Los Angeles with over 115,000 fans in attendance. All proceeds from the game benefitted the official charity of the Dodgers, ThinkCure! which supports cancer research at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, and City of Hope.
Los Angeles Dodgers Radio Network
Legendary Hall of Fame Dodgers broadcaster Vin Scully
Vin Scully has called Dodgers games since 1950. His longtime partners were Jerry Doggett (1956–1987) and Ross Porter (1977–2004). In 1976, he was selected by Dodgers fans as the Most Memorable Personality (on the field or off) in the team's history. He is also a recipient of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasters (inducted in 1982). He currently is in his 60th year with the team. Unlike the modern style in which multiple sportscasters have an on-air conversation (usually with one functioning as play-by-play announcer and the other(s) as color commentator), Scully, Doggett and Porter generally called games solo, trading with each other inning-by-inning. In the 1980s and 90s, Scully would call the entire radio broadcast except for the 3rd and 7th inning; allowing the other Dodger commentators to broadcast an inning.
When Doggett retired after the 1987 season, he was replaced by Hall-of-Fame Dodgers pitcher Don Drysdale, who previously broadcast games for the crosstown California Angels. Drysdale died in his hotel room following a heart attack before a game in 1993, resulting in a very difficult broadcast for Scully and Porter, who were told of the death but could not mention it on-air until Drysdale's family had been notified and the official announcement of the death made. He was replaced by former Dodgers outfielder Rick Monday. Porter's tenure was terminated somewhat controversially after the 2004 season, after which the current format of play-by-play announcers and color commentators was installed, led by newcomer Charley Steiner and Monday. Scully, however, continues to announce solo.
Today, Scully calls a limited schedule of games (all home games and road games in NL West ballparks) for both flagship radio station KABC and television outlets KCAL-TV and Prime Ticket. Scully is simulcast for the first three innings of each of his appearances, then announces only for the TV audience.
If Scully is calling the game, Charley Steiner takes over play-by-play on radio beginning with the fourth inning, with Rick Monday as color commentator. If Scully is not calling the game, Eric Collins and Steve Lyons call the entire game on television while Steiner and Monday do the same on radio.
In the event the Dodgers are in post-season play, Scully calls the first three and last three innings of the radio broadcast alone; with Charley Steiner and Rick Monday handling the middle innings.
The Dodgers also broadcast on radio in Spanish, and the play-by-play is handled by another Ford C. Frick Award winner, Jaime Jarrin. Jarrin has been with the Dodgers since 1959. The color analyst for some games is former Dodger pitcher Fernando Valenzuela, for whom Jarrin once translated post-game interviews. The Spanish-language flagship is KTNQ.
Live traffic reports pertaining to Dodger Stadium are broadcast from the Dodgers Transportation Center inside the ballpark. KABC radio's Captain Jorge Jarrin (son of Dodger broadcaster Jaime Jarrin) and Doug Dunlap handle those duties during the pre-game and post-game shows as well as during Dodger Talk following the game.
In 2006, the Dodgers introduced an on demand channel on Time Warner Cable called "Dodgers on Demand", hosted by Tony Kinkela.
Currently, Steiner has been converted to radio-only with Rick Monday. Jerry Reuss was removed from his broadcast position, though he is still with the club to serve in other aspects. Steve Lyons will be retained as a color-commentator, and the Dodgers recently hired ESPN broadcaster Eric Collins as a play-by-play announcer to replace Steiner on road games for television.
Dodgers games are also aired on former flagship KTTV Channel 11 as part of the Major League Baseball on Fox package, as well as on ESPN and TBS. KTTV was the flagship station of the Dodgers during the team's first 36 seasons in Los Angeles. KTLA would broadcast Dodger games from 1993 to 2001 and KCOP from 2002 to 2005.
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