Ebbets Field’s legacy continues to live on, 100 years later

From Evan Drellich at MLB.com on April 9, 2013, with mention of SABR members Mark Langill, John Thorn and Dick Bresciani:

Ron Schweiger, the official historian of Brooklyn with a rabbinical demeanor, had never met Bob McGee when a reporter called to invite them both to lunch.

Schweiger and McGee are both Brooklynites. Schweiger never left, but McGee, an urbane spokesman for a local utility company who recites poetry at the table then apologizes for doing so, lives in suburban Westchester County and works in Manhattan.

They were already kindred spirits, through a mutual childhood love and their time at Brooklyn College. Once a newspaper man, McGee moonlights as an author. He wrote a canonical history of Ebbets Field, the ballpark of his childhood, and the work cites Schweiger. Still, they remained strangers until March. In near caricature, Schweiger chose a diner along Flatbush Avenue for gab.

“April 12, it comes out,” said Schweiger, who has pristine replicas of the original blueprints of Ebbets Field in his memorabilia-filled home. “The coming attractions, I can’t believe — did you see?”

“They make Ebbets Field look like Ebbets Field,” McGee said. “I don’t know how they did it. It must have been computer-generated. It had to be, how did they do it?”

“I mean, when I saw this, when the actor who’s playing Jackie,” Schweiger went on, “he’s walking up the ramp, and he gets to the top — there’s Ebbets Field. There’s the inside of the ballpark.'”

“That’s the way Ebbets field looked,” McGee said. “Exactly the same.”

They’re talking about “42,” the Jackie Robinson biopic that opens in theaters on Friday. Most anyone for whom Ebbets Field was a cathedral will have similar feelings — deity of talk Larry King, for one. The stadium in the movie was indeed computer-generated, using a stadium in Chattanooga, Tenn., as the backdrop.

Read the full article here: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20130408&content_id=44232810&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb



Originally published: April 9, 2013. Last Updated: April 9, 2013.