September 24, 1957: Dodgers win final game at Ebbets Field

That was Phil Pepe of the New York Daily News, reminiscing 30 years later. His sentimental piece compared Ebbets Field to Never-Never Land, Oz, and Shangri-La. Pepe described the sense of loss that Brooklyn fans felt, saying, “For many of us, it was the first sign that nothing is forever.”1

Another factor kept the crowd down that Tuesday night: The pennant race was already decided. The Dodgers, defending National League champs, entered the game in third place, 10½ games behind the Milwaukee Braves. As late as August 1, Brooklyn was just 1½ games back, but the Braves went on a red-hot streak while the Dodgers slumped. In another Daily News retrospective a few days after Pepe’s, Brooklyn pitcher Clem Labine said, “That last year, there was a general foreboding. I think it kind of affected our play. We didn’t know anything for sure, but the talk about moving was a thing that was in the back of your mind. And it just didn’t go away.”2

Right fielder Carl Furillo – who died less than two years after the retrospectives – added, “I loved to play, and we always played hard, but those last games in Ebbets Field, I don’t think we really cared. I remember that last game. It was cold. And even though we hadn’t been told, we knew we were leaving. And we knew we weren’t going anywhere in the standings. There was a sadness.”3

To get the finale started, Tex Rickards, the longtime public-address announcer at Ebbets, read the starting lineups in his “familiar rasping, undeniably Brooklyn voice.”4 Dodgers captain Pee Wee Reese did not take the field at first. He did come in later, as Gil Hodges moved from third base (which he played seldom) to his more familiar post at first base. Hodges and catcher Roy Campanella were the only remaining marquee “Boys of Summer” to start that night. Gino Cimoli played center field, not Duke Snider, whose ailing left knee had ended his season two days before. Veteran Elmer Valo was subbing in right for Furillo, who’d been sidelined with a pulled hamstring since September 18.5

The game was a mercifully swift affair, over in 2 hours and 3 minutes. The Dodgers got the only run they needed in the home half of the first inning. Pittsburgh starter Bennie Daniels – making his big-league debut – walked the leadoff man, Jim Gilliam. Daniels then had Gilliam picked off, but made an error on the throw, allowing Gilliam to reach second. One out later, Valo doubled.

Dodgers chronicler Rudy Marzano also described the “funeral-like atmosphere” that night. Gladys Goodding, the ballpark’s organist, set the tone with her musical selections. After Brooklyn scored the first run, she played “After You’ve Gone” and “Am I Blue.”6

Fifty years later, Dodgers broadcasting legend Vin Scully told Los Angeles Times columnist Jerry Crowe more. By Scully’s account, the mood crossed into maudlin because Gladys Goodding – who was “known to take a drink or three” – was indulging. Scully recalled, “The very first song she played was ‘My Buddy,’ a pretty down song, and it went down from there. … The music kept getting more depressing every third out.”7

Brooklyn’s starting pitcher was another rookie, lefty Danny McDevitt (a New York City native who’d originally signed with the Yankees). McDevitt was in control throughout the game. He struck out nine, walked only one, and scattered five hits. The Pirates had a mild threat in the second when cleanup hitter Bob Skinner singled and Bill Mazeroski‘s infield hit advanced him to second one out later. However, Roberto Clemente then grounded into a 5-4-3 double play. Pittsburgh also got the leadoff man on in the third, fourth, and fifth but was unable to cash in. No other Pirates runner besides Skinner got beyond first base all night.

The game’s only other run scored in the third. Cimoli led off with a single and, after he took second on Valo’s groundout, Hodges brought him home with a single to right. That prompted Gladys Goodding to play “Don’t Ask Me Why I’m Leaving.”8 Brooklyn also managed just five hits off Daniels, who went seven innings, and Roy Face.

McDevitt struck out the side in the seventh (Brooklynite Joe Pignatano had entered as his catcher in the fifth) and set the Pirates down one-two-three in the ninth to end it. He whiffed Skinner for the third time, and then got Dee Fondy to ground to shortstop for the final out. Tex Rickards asked the fans not to go on the field, and they complied, quickly and quietly making their way out as Gladys Goodding played “Thanks for the Memories” and Auld Lang Syne.”9 By a later account, however, at least several hundred fans gathered around the Dodger dugout during “Auld Lang Syne,” and some of the broken-hearted cried.10 But there was no official ceremony. As sportswriter Dave Anderson observed, “the Dodgers … treated it as just another game because, remember, the Los Angeles deal hadn’t closed yet.”11

Phil Pepe added, “Out of respect for the dearly departed, there was no ravaging for souvenirs. The grounds crew methodically covered the infield and the pitcher’s mound with tarpaulin, as if there was to be another game the following day.”12

McDevitt echoed that view in 2007. “It was just another game, as far as I knew,” he told Jerry Crowe, “and when I think about it today, I can’t believe that was what I thought. All the older guys – Pee Wee and Duke and those guys – seemed to know.” McDevitt also recalled that Gladys Goodding played “California, Here I Come” after the game and it struck him as strange.13

Yet Roy Campanella refused to give up hope that the team would stay. “Gosh, I hope last night’s game wasn’t our last one in Brooklyn,” said Campy. But Carl Furillo acknowledged, “I’m afraid it was.” Snider called it “an eerie feeling.”14

Two weeks later, on October 8, owner Walter O’Malley made it official, announcing to the National League that he was moving the franchise to Los Angeles.15

McDevitt threw two more shutouts during his major-league career, which ended in 1962. He died in 2010. McDevitt’s daughter-in-law said the family was constantly amazed by the attention he drew throughout his life for his role in Brooklyn Dodgers history. “No matter how fast you threw a ball or how many games you won, there’s no way of doing that again,” she said. “Only one pitcher could win that last game.”16

The original home plate used in that game was later displayed at Dodger Stadium, along with a plaque describing McDevitt’s role in the contest.17 McDevitt himself presented a game ball from the finale to the Hall of Fame in 1965. That event became part of a leaflet that he sent out to autograph seekers, who began to lodge inquiries with him around the early 1990s. It became a rather lucrative income stream for the ex-pitcher.18

The Dodgers franchise closed out its last year in Brooklyn with three games on the road at Philadelphia. Yet the action was by no means done at Ebbets Field. Before it was eventually demolished in February 1960, the ballpark had a prolonged twilight of nearly 2½ years, during which it hosted various forms of sporting entertainment – including baseball. This little-known chapter of Ebbets history featured numerous future big leaguers and two Hall of Fame stars: Roy Campanella and Satchel Paige.

PHOTO CREDIT

Located in the Crown Heights section of Brooklyn, Ebbets Field was the home of the Dodgers from 1913 through the 1957 season, after which the team relocated to Los Angeles. (Photo: SABR-Rucker Archive)

NOTES

1 Phil Pepe, “The Day the Music Died at Good Old Ebbets Field,” New York Daily News, September 24, 1987.

2 Bill Farrell, “The Day ‘Dem Bums’ Hit the Road,” New York Daily News, September 27, 1987.

3 Farrell, “The Day ‘Dem Bums’ Hit the Road.”

4 Pepe, “The Day the Music Died at Good Old Ebbets Field.”

5 Roscoe McGowen, “Duke Bids Flatbush Adieu as Record-Tying HR King,” The Sporting News, October 2, 1957: 22.

6 Rudy Marzano, The Last Years of The Brooklyn Dodgers: 1950-1957 (Jefferson North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2008), 186.

7 Jerry Crowe, “The Last Pitch at Ebbets Means More to Him Now,” Los Angeles Times, September 25, 1997.

8 Marzano, The Last Years of The Brooklyn Dodgers, 186.

9 Marzano.

10 Farrell, “The Day ‘Dem Bums’ Hit the Road.”

11 Marzano, The Last Years of The Brooklyn Dodgers, 186.

12 Pepe, “The Day the Music Died at Good Old Ebbets Field.”

13 Crowe, “The Last Pitch at Ebbets Means More to Him Now.”

14 “Dodgers Sad at Thought of Leaving Their Bandbox,” Hackensack (New Jersey) Record, September 25, 1957.

15 “Timeline of Baseball’s Historic Expansion to the West Coast,” Walteromalley.com (https://www.walteromalley.com/en/features/1957-58-timeline-of-expansion-to-west-coast/October-8-1957).

16 Associated Press, “Former pitcher Danny McDevitt dies,” November 24, 2010 (https://www.espn.com/mlb/news/story?id=5847664).

17 “Pitched Last Game Dodgers Played at Ebbets Field.”

18 Claire Noland, “Danny McDevitt Dies at 78; Pitched Brooklyn Dodgers’ Last Game at Ebbets Field,” Los Angeles Times, November 24, 2010.