Ebbets Field blueprints soon to go on display in Brooklyn
From Sophia Hollander at the Wall Street Journal on April 16, 2012, with quotes from longtime SABR members John Zinn, Bob McGee and Marty Adler:
They were presumed lost, one more casualty from a move that broke a borough’s heart.
But this week, a century-long odyssey will come to an end when the original 1912 blueprints for Ebbets Field, the iconic home of the beloved, bedeviling Brooklyn Dodgers, will be displayed in public for the first time in decades.
They will be the centerpiece of an exhibit on the Dodgers at Brooklyn College set to open on Thursday. Three of the 18 plans will be on display, alongside team photographs, cartoons and one of the last home plates used at Ebbets Field—one with a memorable dedication to the owner who moved the team to Los Angeles after the 1957 season: “May Walter O’Mally [sic] roast in hell.”
The Dodgers played for 45 seasons in Ebbets Field, where baseball’s first televised game took place, in 1939, and Jackie Robinson became the first African-American to play a Major League game, in 1947. The field was torn down in 1960 and replaced by a public-housing project, but its cozy design remains an enduring standard for elegance and intimacy that modern architects have emulated.
“You might say that these blueprints are one of the holy grails of baseball memorabilia,” said Ron Schweiger, Brooklyn’s official historian and a rabid Dodgers fan.
Read the full article here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304299304577345920613196782.html
Originally published: April 17, 2012. Last Updated: April 17, 2012.