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It had been over two decades since the Dodgers won the 1920 National League pennant. Most of those years were spent in the second division. By 1937 the Dodgers were in dire straits financially. They were $700,000 in debt to their bank, the Brooklyn Trust Company, “$470,000 on a refinanced mortgage for Ebbets Field. (The […]

Nine games into his managerial career and Leo Durocher already had the Brooklyn Dodgers feeling, for the first time in years, relevant. General manager Larry MacPhail vowed that Durocher would instill some much-needed “up-and-at-’em fight” in the moribund Dodgers franchise, and people took him at his word.1 Preseason predictions were cautiously optimistic and early attendance […]

In the midst of the best game of his career, the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Fred Frankhouse was just four outs away from every pitcher’s dream – a no-hitter – when Mother Nature intervened. Pacing in the clubhouse, “fuming with impatience,” reported the New York Times, Frankhouse wondered if he’d get the chance to etch his name […]

“We’re just a couple of natural born pitchers from down Texas way,” bantered Paul “Daffy” Dean about himself and his famous brother Dizzy. “Two good natured ordinary fellers who God gave perfect pitchin’ bodies.”1 After Dizzy worked on a no-hitter for 7⅓ innings in the first game of a doubleheader, Daffy upstaged his loquacious older […]

A steady rain was pouring down on Ebbets Field in the bottom of the ninth inning. His team clinging to a 6-4 lead, Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Fidgety Phil Collins loaded the bases with four erratic pitches to the Brooklyn Dodgers’ Johnny Frederick, prompting Phillies manager Burt Shotton to come to the mound. Shotton’s struggling Phillies […]

Heavy hitters for the 1930 Brooklyn Robins (L to R): RF Babe Herman (.393, 35 HRs, 130 RBIs), CF Johnny Frederick (.334, 17 HRs, 76 RBIs), 2B Jake Flowers (.320, 2 HRs, 50 RBIs), 1B Del Bissonette (.336, 16 HRs, 113 RBIs), and C Al Lopez (.309, 6 HRs, 57 RBIs). (Photo: SABR-Rucker Archive)   […]

When Ebbets Field locker-room attendant Dan Comerford arrived at work on the morning of July 12, 1929, several packages were waiting for him at the clubhouse door. The five boxes – each containing a dozen new baseballs – had been sent from the office of National League President John Heydler. Seeing the parcels did not […]

Hard-throwing Dazzy Vance was in agony. Brooklyn sportswriter Thomas W. Meany reported that Vance suffered from serious inflammation in his right shoulder caused by warming up too quickly six days earlier against the Pittsburgh Pirates.1 According to Robins beat reporter Thomas S. Rice, Vance’s right arm was “blue from the rupturing of a blood vessel,” […]

Good-looking matchups on paper sometimes fail to deliver anywhere close to anticipated results. Two pitchers who would wind up among baseball’s immortals squared off in an early summer game. One would hurl a complete-game win, while the other would fail to retire a single batter. Burleigh Grimes and Rube Marquard had faced each other in […]

It takes a great deal of effort to secure 25 hits in a baseball game and manage to lose it. In the case of the Pittsburgh Pirates in their game in Brooklyn on the damp afternoon of June 21, 1922, it was a poor defensive effort that contributed to their demise at the hands of […]