April 9, 1913: Ebbets Field Opens

April 9, 1913: Ebbets Field opens in Brooklyn, near Prospect Park, where the neighborhoods of Crown Heights, Bedford-Stuyvesant and Flatbush come together. It was usually considered part of Flatbush. It would be the home field of baseball's Brooklyn Dodgers for 45 seasons.

The Dodgers' story would have glory and ignominy, comedy and tragedy, the sublime and the ridiculous. And there was ridiculous on Opening Day. But the seeds of tragedy had already been sown.

Charles Henry Ebbets (not "Charles Hercules Ebbets," as he has sometimes been listed) was born on October 29, 1859 in Lower Manhattan. In 1883, when the Brooklyn Grays, the team that would become the Dodgers, began play, he was hired to sell tickets, scorecards and peanuts at their games at Washington Park. Having worked in publishing, he printed the scorecards himself.

Charles Ebbets

In 1890, he had begun buying shares in the team. By 1908, he was sole owner, and began buying lots so he could build a stadium to replace their inadequate home. On March 4, 1912, he told the press that he was ready to begin construction. When he turned the first spadeful of dirt, he was asked what he would call his ballpark. He said he hadn't thought of that. It was suggested that he name it after himself, since it was his idea, and it was "Ebbets Field" from then on.

He predicted that the Dodgers would move in on September 1, and that they would win the National League Pennant in 1913. Neither happened, and as construction delays continued, Ebbets sold shares in the team to Steve and Ed McKeever, brothers who ran a construction business. They made sure the place was ready by Opening Day 1913.

But on that Opening Day, April 5, fans were waiting outside the bleachers. They had tickets, but they couldn't get in. Someone had forgotten the keys to the doors. The keys were found. When the sportswriters looked for the press box so they could cover the game, they discovered that there wasn't one. A section of seats was roped off for them, and no press box was built until 1929. Finally, the time came to raise the American flag. Whoever was in charge of bringing the flag had forgotten that.

After the owner's daughter, Genevieve "Nan" Ebbets, threw out the ceremonial first ball, they played an exhibition game against the crosstown team from the American League, now officially calling themselves what they'd unofficially been called for their 1st 10 years: The New York Yankees. The Dodgers won, 3-2, thanks to an inside-the-park home run. The man who hit it would later bedevil the Dodgers for their arch-rivals, the New York Giants; do worse by them as their manager in the 1930s; raise the Yankees to new heights as their manager in the 1950s; and, finally, become the 1st manager of the New York Mets in the 1960s: Charles Dillon "Casey" Stengel.

The 1st game that counted would be 4 days later, on April 9, a Wednesday. The Philadelphia Phillies beat them, 1-0. A 1st inning error doomed the Brooks, and Tom Seaton pitched a 6-hit shutout, to defeat George Napoleon "Nap" Rucker.

In this case, "Scores On This Historic Day" is a bit of a misnomer: That was the only game played in the major leagues that day, and there was, as yet, no NFL, no NBA, and no NHL (although there was a National Hockey Association, but its season was over).

Ebbets was 3 years off: The Dodgers won the Pennant in 1916, and again in 1920. In 1914, he hired Wilbert Robinson, once a great catcher for the old National League version of the Baltimore Orioles, as manager. From then until 1931, his last season as manager, the team was named the Brooklyn Robins. Starting in 1932, they were the Dodgers again.

Ebbets married Minnie Broadbent in 1878. In 1903, 10 years before his ballpark opened, he began an affair with Grace Nott, the wife of a friend. Their marriage ended in 1909, after her husband found out. The following year, Ebbets left Minnie and moved in with Grace. It took Minnie until 1919 to sue for divorce, and a settlement was reached in 1922: She was to receive an annual allowance of $7,500 -- with inflation, about $122,000 today.

That was a lot of money, and in order to fulfill his obligation, Ebbets deposited his shares of the Dodgers with the Mechanics Bank. He married Grace right after the settlement, but died of a heart attack on April 18, 1925.

Grace lived on until 1959, but because her husband's shares of the team were controlled by the bank, she couldn't touch them, and couldn't sell them, and couldn't take any share of any profits the team might make. To make matters worse, it rained at Ebbets' funeral, and Ed McKeever caught a cold, which became pneumonia, and, in those days before antibiotics, he died just 11 days after Ebbets.

So now, half the ownership of the Dodgers belonged to Steve McKeever, the other half to the bank that bought out Mechanics Bank, the Brooklyn Trust Company. The team was always short of money, and, as a result, not only did Ebbets Field fall into disrepair, but the team couldn't build a proper farm system once that became something other teams did, and they couldn't pay high salaries. When fans called the Dodgers "Dem Bums," it could also have referred to the team's checks.

In 1938, Steve McKeever died. His shares went to his daughter, Elizabeth "Dearie" Mulvey, and her husband, Jim Mulvey. Desperate to keep the team afloat, Brooklyn Trust hired Larry MacPhail, general manager of the Cincinnati Reds, to come in and be President of the Dodgers. He totally rebuilt the team, including refurbishing Ebbets Field. The Dodgers finished 7th in 1938, but 3rd in 1939, 2nd in 1940, and won the Pennant in 1941.

After the 1942 season, MacPhail, who had been an Army officer in World War I, returned to be one in World War II. Branch Rickey, general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals, was hired by Brooklyn Trust as Dodger President.

In 1945, ownership of the Dodgers was finally settled. There were 4 blocks of shares, 25 percent each. Rickey got one. Another went to John L. Smith, president of Charles Pfizer & Co. (Yes, 2020s people, Pfizer, the makers of Viagra and one of the COVID-19 vaccines.) One went to Dearie and Jim Mulvey. And one went to the chief attorney for Brooklyn Trust, who thus ended their role in the team's operation.

That attorney was a 41-year-old lawyer from Queens, who had used his position at Brooklyn Trust to foreclose on people's houses during the Great Depression, and, by all accounts, loved that part of his job. By his own admission, he was a fan of the Dodgers' arch-rivals, the New York Giants. His name was Walter O'Malley.

O'Malley got the shares because Brooklyn Trust was run by George V. McLaughlin, a Democratic Party official and former Police Commissioner of the City. In 1945, McLaughlin had 2 protégés to whom he could have offered the Dodger ownership shares. The other was a 38-year-old lawyer from Washington Heights, in Upper Manhattan, who had played basketball at Georgetown University: William A. Shea.

Rickey used the Dodgers to desegregate Major League Baseball, starting with Jackie Robinson in 1947. That year, the Dodgers won the Pennant. They also won it in 1949, and fell just short in 1950. That year, John L. Smith died. O'Malley saw his opportunity. He knew the Mulveys were weak, and would vote however he wanted. So he bought out Rickey and Smith's heirs, and now owned 75 percent of the Dodgers, and effectively controlled the other 25 percent.

The Dodgers lost the 1951 Pennant in agonizing fashion. They won the Pennant in 1952 and 1953. But O'Malley saw that the returning veterans from World War II were buying houses in the suburbs, and Brooklynites in particular were moving out to Long Island. He knew they couldn't drive into Ebbets Field: There was no highway access, and there were only 750 parking spaces. And besides, the ballpark only had a little over 31,000 seats.

This picture makes clear how dire the parking situation was.

So he came up with a plan to build a new stadium at the Long Island Rail Road Terminal in downtown Brooklyn. The Brooklyn Sports Center would even have a dome, years before such a stadium was built in Houston. But he couldn't get Robert Moses, responsible for construction in New York City, to get the land cleared. So, while the Dodgers finally won the World Series in 1955, and another Pennant in 1956, rather than use his vast intellect to find a way around Moses, which would have benefited people other than himself, he looked elsewhere.

In 1957, with the Mulveys going along with it, O'Malley announced that the Dodgers were moving to Los Angeles. The last game at Ebbets Field was played on September 24, and they beat the Pittsburgh Pirates 2-0. Their last game as a Brooklyn team was on September 29, and it was against the team that had helped them open Ebbets Field, the Phillies, who won 2-1.

The Dodgers played 4 seasons at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before moving into the new Dodger Stadium in 1962. It is no longer new: Behind Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago, it is now the 3rd-oldest stadium in Major League Baseball, and the Dodgers have played there longer than they played at Ebbets Field.

Ebbets Field was demolished in 1960. In 1962, Ebbets Field Apartments was built on the site. They have since been renamed the Jackie Robinson Apartments.

Dearie Mulvey died in 1968. James Mulvey followed her in 1973. O'Malley bought their heirs out in 1975, finally becoming the official 100 percent owner. He died in 1979, and his son Peter owned the team until selling to the Fox Entertainment Group in 1998. They sold to Frank McCourt in 2004.

As with Charles Ebbets, McCourt had an affair and a messy divorce, and, rather than protect his shares with a bank, he lost so much money that he had to sell the team, doing so in 2012. The buyers were Guggenheim Baseball Management, with the majority stockholder being Los Angeles Lakers basketball legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson.

If Charles Ebbets hadn't cheated on his wife, he would have kept his money. Ebbets Field would almost certainly be long-gone anyway, but his family might still own the Dodgers to this day, and the Dodgers might even still be in Brooklyn. And hardly anybody would have ever heard the name of Walter O'Malley. The roots of Brooklyn's loss of the Dodgers can be found in Charles Ebbets, even before construction began on Ebbets Field.

On the other hand, if Ebbets had kept it in his pants, the Dodgers' ownership mess wouldn't have happened, and Branch Rickey might never have become the team's active operator, and who knows when, how, and by whom baseball would have been desegregated.

Note: Charles Henry Ebbets was not related to Charles Clyde Ebbets (1905-1978), the photographer who took the famous "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper" photo during the building of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in 1932. C.C. Ebbets did have a sports connection, though: For a while, he was the personal photographer for Heavyweight Champion Jack Dempsey.