Los Angeles Dodgers

The Dodgers were founded in 1883 as the Brooklyn Atlantics, borrowing the name of a defunct team that had played in Brooklyn before 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 Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1930s.

In Brooklyn, the Dodgers won the NL pennant twelve 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 National League pennants in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1988, 2017, 2018, and 2020, with World Series championships in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988, and 2020. In all, the Dodgers have appeared in 21 World Series: 9 in Brooklyn and 12 in Los Angeles.

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.[19] This was 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 a factor. 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 American Civil Rights Movement.[20]

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.

Former Dodger greats who played in both Brooklyn and Los Angeles adorn the exterior of Dodger Stadium.

Real estate investor Walter O'Malley acquired majority ownership of the Dodgers in 1950, when he bought the 25 percent share of co-owner Branch Rickey and became allied with the widow of another equal partner, Mrs. John L. Smith. Shortly afterwards, he was working to buy new land in Brooklyn to build a more accessible and profitable ballpark than the aging Ebbets Field. Beloved as it was, Ebbets Field was no longer well-served by its aging infrastructure and the Dodgers could no longer sell out the park even in the heat of a pennant race, despite largely dominating the National 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 New York politicians refused to grant him the eminent domain authority required to build pursuant to O'Malley's plans. To put pressure on the city, during the 1955 season, O'Malley announced that the team would play seven regular season games and one exhibition game at Jersey City's Roosevelt Stadium in 1956.[21] Moses and the City considered this an empty threat, and did not believe O'Malley would go through with moving the team from New York City.

After teams began to travel to and from games by air instead of train, it became possible to include locations in the far west. Los Angeles officials attended the 1956 World Series looking to the Washington Senators to move to the West Coast. When O'Malley heard that LA was looking for a club, he sent word to the Los Angeles officials that he was interested in talking. LA offered him what New York would not: a chance to buy land suitable for building a ballpark, and own that ballpark, giving him complete control over all revenue streams. When the news came out, NYC Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. and Moses made an offer to build a ballpark on the World's Fair Grounds in Queens that would be shared by the Giants and Dodgers. However, O'Malley was interested in his park only under his conditions, and the plans for a new stadium in Brooklyn seemed like a pipe dream. O'Malley decided to move the Dodgers to California, convincing Giants owner Horace Stoneham to move to San Francisco instead of Minneapolis to keep the Giants-Dodgers rivalry alive on the West Coast.[21]

The Dodgers played their final game at Ebbets Field on September 24, 1957, which the Dodgers won 2–0 over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

New York remained a one-team town with the New York Yankees until 1962, when Joan Payson founded the New York Mets and brought National League baseball back to the city. The blue background used by the Dodgers, was adopted by the Mets, honoring their New York NL forebears with a blend of Dodgers blue and Giants orange.[22]

The Dodgers were the first Major League Baseball team to ever play in Los Angeles. On April 18, 1958, the Dodgers played their first LA game, defeating the former New York and now new San Francisco Giants, 6–5, before 78,672 fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Catcher Roy Campanella, left partially paralyzed in an off-season accident, was never able to play in Los Angeles.

The 1959 World Series was played partially at the LA Coliseum while Dodger Stadium was being built.

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. 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.

Since moving to Los Angeles, the Dodgers have won 12 more National League Championships and six more World Series rings.[23]

• First baseball team to win championships in different leagues in consecutive years (1889–1890)
• First television broadcast (1939)
• First use of batting helmets (1941)
• First MLB team to employ and start an African-American player in the 20th century (Jackie Robinson, 1947)
• First MLB team to have numbers on the front of their uniforms (1952)
• First West Coast team (1958) – along with the San Francisco Giants
• First Western team to win a World Series (1959)
• First MLB team to allow a female sports journalist into a locker room (Anita Martini, 1974)
• First MLB team to establish a baseball academy in the Dominican Republic when they opened the doors to Campo Las Palmas (1987)
• Largest home-opener attendance: 78,672 (1958) (since broken by the Colorado Rockies in 1993)
• Largest single game attendance: 93,103 (1959) and 115,300 (2008) *World Record
• First MLB team to open an office in Asia (1998)
• Longest MLB record for home start going 13–0 (2009)
• North American record for the buying of a sports team ($2 billion, 2012)
• Most no-hitters (26)
• Most Cy Young award winners (12)
• First MLB team to employ a female lead trainer (Sue Falsone, 2012)
• 11,000 franchise wins 8-30-2020 (vs Texas)
• Most runs scored in a single inning of a postseason game (11 runs in 2020 NLCS Game 3, 2020)
• Most Rookie of the Year awards (18)
• First team to draw 3 million fans

The Dodgers' official history reports that the term "Trolley Dodgers" was attached to the Brooklyn ballclub due to the complex maze of trolley cars that weaved its way through the borough of Brooklyn.[24]

In 1892, the city of Brooklyn (Brooklyn was an independent city until annexed by New York City in 1898) began replacing its slow-moving, horse-drawn trolley lines with the faster, more powerful electric trolley lines.[25] Within less than three years, by the end of 1895, electric trolley accidents in Brooklyn had resulted in more than 130 deaths and maimed well over 500 people.[26] Brooklyn's high profile, the significant number of widely reported accidents, and a trolley strike in early 1895, combined to create a strong association in the public's mind between Brooklyn and trolley dodging.[25]

Sportswriters started using the name "Trolley Dodgers" to refer to the Brooklyn team early in the 1895 season.[27] The name was shortened to, on occasion, the "Brooklyn Dodgers" as early as 1898.[28]

Sportswriters in the early 20th century began referring to the Dodgers as the "Bums", in reference to the team's fans and possibly because of the "street character" nature of Jack Dawkins, the "Artful Dodger" in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist. Newspaper cartoonist Willard Mullin used a drawing of famous clown Emmett Kelly to depict "Dem Bums": the team would later use "Weary Willie" in promotional images, and Kelly himself was a club mascot during the 1950s.

Other team names used by the franchise were the Atlantics, Grays, Grooms, Bridegrooms, Superbas and 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.[29] 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 team jerseys.[3] The "conclusive shift" came in 1933, when both home and road jerseys for the team bore the name "Dodgers".[4]

Examples of how the many popularized names of the team were used are available from newspaper articles before 1932. A New York Times article describing a game in 1916 starts out: "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".[30] 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 uses the nickname 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".[31]

Another example of the use of the many 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 use for around six years.[32] The "Robins" nickname was derived from the name of their Hall of Fame manager, Wilbert Robinson, who led the team from 1914 to 1931.[33]

The Dodgers' home uniform has remained relatively unchanged for 80 years.

The Dodgers' uniform has remained relatively unchanged since the 1930s. The home jersey is white with "Dodgers" written in script across the chest in royal. The road jersey is gray with "Los Angeles" written in script across the chest in royal. The word "Dodgers" was first used on the front of the team's home jersey in 1933; the uniform was then white with red pinstripes and a stylized "B" on the left shoulder.[34] The Dodgers also wore green outlined uniforms and green caps throughout the 1937 season but reverted to blue the following year.

The current design was created in 1939, and has remained the same ever since with only cosmetic changes. Originally intended for the 1951 World Series for which the ballclub failed to qualify, red numbers under the "Dodgers" script were added to the home uniform in 1952.[35] The road jersey also has a red uniform number under the script. When the franchise moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, the city name on the road jersey changed, and the stylized "B" was replaced with the interlocking "LA" 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, and 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 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 cap with silver brim, top button and Dodger logo. These alternates proved unpopular and the team abandoned them after only one season. In 2014, the Dodgers introduced an alternate road jersey: a gray version with the "Dodgers" script instead of the city name.[36] In 2018, the Dodgers wore their 60th anniversary patch to honor the 60 years of being in Los Angeles.[37][38]

• 
  Los Angeles Dodgers Script on Dodger Blue

Chan Ho Park

The Dodgers have been groundbreaking in their signing of players from Asia; mainly Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. Former owner Peter O'Malley began reaching out in 1980 by starting clinics in China and South 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 South 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. In 2005, the Dodgers' Hee Seop Choi became the first Asian player to compete in the Home Run Derby.[39] For the 2013 season, the Dodgers signed starting pitcher Hyun-Jin Ryu with a six-year, $36 million contract, after posting a bid of nearly $27 million to acquire him from the KBO's Hanhwa Eagles. For the 2016 season, the Dodgers signed starting pitcher Kenta Maeda with an eight-year, $25 million contract, after posting a bid of $20 million to acquire him from the NPB's Hiroshima Toyo Carp.

The Dodgers–Giants rivalry is one of the longest-standing rivalries in U.S. baseball.[40][41]

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 moved the team to Los Angeles for financial and other reasons.[42] 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.[42] New York baseball fans were stunned and heartbroken by the move.[42][43] Given that the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco have been bitter rivals in economic, cultural, and political arenas for over a century and a half, the new venue in California became fertile ground for its transplantation.

Each team's ability to endure for over a century while moving across an entire continent, as well as the rivalry's leap from a cross-city to a cross-state engagement, have led to the rivalry being considered one of the greatest in American sports history.[44][45][46]

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, the Dodgers have the most National League pennants at 24, with the Giants following close behind at 23. The Giants have won eight World Series titles, while the Dodgers have won seven. The 2010 World Series was the Giants' first championship since moving to California, while the Dodgers had won six World Series titles since their move, their last title coming in the 2020 World Series.[47][48]

This rivalry refers to a series of games played with the Los Angeles Angels.[49] The Freeway 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.[50] The term "Freeway Series" also inspired the official name of the region's NHL rivalry: the Freeway Face-Off.

Animosity between the team's fanbases grew stronger in 2005, when the Angel's new team owner Arte Moreno changed the name of his ball club from the 'Anaheim Angels', to the 'Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim'.[51] Since the city of Anaheim is located roughly 30 miles from Downtown Los Angeles, the Angels franchise was ridiculed throughout the league for the contradictory nature surrounding the name, especially by Dodgers owner Frank McCourt, who filed a formal complaint to commissioner Bud Selig.[52] Once the complaint was denied, McCourt devised a t-shirt mocking the crosstown rivals reading 'The Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles', which remains popular amongst the fanbase to this day.[53]

The Dodgers–Yankees rivalry is one of the most well-known rivalries in Major League Baseball.[54] The two teams have met eleven times in the World Series, more times than any other pair from the American and National Leagues.[54] 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,[54] the Yankees and Dodgers have not met in the World Series since 1981.[54] They would not play each other in a non-exhibition game until 2004, when they played a three-game interleague series.[54] Their last meeting was in August 2019, when the Yankees won two out of three games in Los Angeles.[55]

• Leo Durocher 1938–1941
• Pee Wee Reese 1950–1958
• Duke Snider 1962
• Maury Wills 1963–1966
• Davey Lopes 1978–1979

Pee Wee Reese SS Coach Retired July 1, 1984 Tommy Lasorda P Coach, Mgr, GM Retired August 15, 1997 Duke Snider CF   Retired July 6, 1980 Jim Gilliam 2B, 3B Coach Retired October 10, 1978 Don Sutton P   Retired August 14, 1998 Walter Alston Mgr   Retired June 5, 1977 Sandy Koufax P   Retired June 4, 1972 Roy Campanella C   Retired June 4, 1972 Jackie Robinson 2B   Retired June 4, 1972 Don Drysdale P   Retired July 1, 1984

Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax

Koufax, Campanella, and Robinson were the first Dodgers to have their numbers retired, in a ceremony at Dodger Stadium on June 4, 1972. This was the year in which Koufax was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame; Robinson and Campanella were already Hall-of-Famers.

Alston's number was retired in the year following his retirement as the Dodgers manager, six years before he was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Gilliam died suddenly in 1978 after a 28-year career with the Dodgers organization. The Dodgers retired his number two days after his death, prior to Game 1 of the 1978 World Series. As of 2018, he is the only non-Hall-of-Famer to have his number retired by the Dodgers (Alston's number was retired before he was elected to the Hall of Fame).

Beginning in 1980, the Dodgers have retired the numbers of longtime Dodgers (Snider, Reese, Drysdale, Lasorda, and Sutton) during the seasons in which each was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

In 1997, 50 years after he broke the color barrier and 25 years after the Dodgers retired his number, Robinson's No. 42 was retired throughout Major League Baseball. Robinson is the only major league baseball player to have this honor bestowed upon him. Starting in the 2007 season, Jackie Robinson Day (April 15, commemorating Opening Day of Robinson's rookie season of 1947) has featured many or all players and coaches wearing the number 42 as a tribute to Robinson.

The Dodgers have not issued the number 34 since the departure of Fernando Valenzuela in 1991, although it has not been officially retired.

• Charlie Byrne (1883–1897)
• Charles Ebbets (1898–1925)
• Edward McKeever (1925, interim)
• Wilbert Robinson (1925–1929)
• Frank B. York (1930–1932)
• Stephen McKeever (1933–1938)
• Larry MacPhail (1939–1942)
• Branch Rickey (1943–1950)
• Walter O'Malley (1950–1970)
• Peter O'Malley (1970–1997)
• Bob Graziano (1998–2004)
• Jamie McCourt (2004–2009)
• Dennis Mannion (2009–2010)
• Stan Kasten (2012–present)

Since 1884, the Dodgers have used a total of 31 Managers, the most current being Dave Roberts, who was appointed following the 2015 postseason, after the departure of Don Mattingly.

Over the nearly 43 years from 1954 to mid-1996, the Dodgers employed only two managers, Walter Alston and Tommy Lasorda, both of whom are in the Hall of Fame. During this entire time period of extraordinary stability, the Dodgers were family owned by Walter O'Malley and then his son Peter O'Malley. It was during this era that the Dodgers won 11 of their 24 pennants, and all six of their World Series championships.

The managers of the Los Angeles Dodgers (1958–present) are as follows:

• Walter Alston (1958–1976) (in Brooklyn since 1954)
• Tommy Lasorda (1976–1996)
• Bill Russell (1996–1998)
• Glenn Hoffman (1998)
• Davey Johnson (1999–2000)
• Jim Tracy (2001–2005)
• Grady Little (2006–2007)
• Joe Torre (2008–2010)
• Don Mattingly (2011–2015)
• Dave Roberts (2016–present)

• Larry MacPhail (1938–1942)
• Branch Rickey (1943–1950)
• Buzzie Bavasi (1950–1968)
• Fresco Thompson (1968)
• Al Campanis (1968–1987)
• Fred Claire (1987–1998)
• Tommy Lasorda (1998)
• Kevin Malone (1999–2001)
• Dave Wallace (2001)
• Dan Evans (2001–2004)
• Paul DePodesta (2004–2005)
• Ned Colletti (2005–2014)
• Farhan Zaidi (2014–2018)
• Vacant (2019–present)

From the Dodgers' move to Los Angeles from Brooklyn in 1958, the Dodgers employed a handful of well-known public address announcers; the most famous of which was John Ramsey, who served as the PA voice of the Dodgers from 1958 until his retirement in 1982; he was also well known for announcing at other venerable Los Angeles venues, including the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and Sports Arena, and the Forum. Ramsey died in 1990.

From 1958 to 1982, Doug Moore, Philip Petty, and Dennis Packer served as back-up voices for John Ramsey for the Dodgers, California Angels, Los Angeles Chargers, USC football and Los Angeles Rams. Packer was Ramsey's primary backup for the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Kings until Ramsey's retirement from the Forum in 1978. Thereafter, Packer became the public address announcer for the Lakers, Kings, indoor soccer and indoor tennis events at the Forum.

Nick Nickson, a radio broadcaster for the Los Angeles Kings, replaced John Ramsey as the Dodger Stadium public address announcer in 1983 and served in that capacity through the 1989 season to work with the Kings full-time.

Dennis Packer and Pete Arbogast were emulators of John Ramsey, using the same stentorian style of announcing Ramsey was famous for. Packer and Arbogast shared the stadium announcing chores for the 1994 FIFA World Cup matches at the Rose Bowl. Arbogast won the Dodgers job on the day that Ramsey died on January 25, 1990, by doing a verbatim imitation of Ramsey's opening and closing remarks that were standard at each game. His replacement, in 1994 was Mike Carlucci, who remained as the Dodgers' PA voice announcer until he resigned in 2002 to concentrate on his voiceover and acting career along with his Olympics announcing duties.

From 2003 to 2014, the Dodgers public address announcer was Eric Smith, who also announces for the Los Angeles Clippers and USC Trojans.[70]

On April 3, 2015 the Dodgers announced that former radio broadcaster Todd Leitz was hired to become their new public address announcer. Leitz was an anchor and news reporter in Los Angeles at KNX 1070 AM for 10 years, and a news reporter at KABC 790 for two years.[71]

From 1988 to 2015, Nancy Bea enjoyed popularity behind the Dodger Stadium keyboard similar to Gladys Goodding. Since retirement in 2015, Bea's replacement and current organist is Dieter Ruehle, who also plays at Staples Center for Los Angeles Kings games.

Vin Scully is permanently honored in the Baseball Hall of Fame's "Scribes & Mikemen" exhibit as a result of winning the Ford C. Frick Award in 1982. Frick Award recipients are not official members of the Hall.

Sue Falsone, was the first female physical therapist in Major League baseball, and from 2012 to 2013, was the first female head athletic trainer.