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Returning from a road trip on which they won 8 of 11 games, the Dodgers still trailed the league-leading Philadelphia Phillies by 6½ games. Back at Ebbets Field, they hoped to continue their solid playing and gain some ground on Philadelphia. If they could beat the Boston Braves, their first opponent, they could put some […]

Sunday games were the big games for Negro League teams, when Black fans of both genders, often coming from church still dressed to the nines, would head for the ballpark for social as much as athletic entertainment. To see the game, of course, each of them had to buy a ticket, making Sunday games financial […]

By the middle of June 1949, the National League pennant race came down to two teams, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Brooklyn Dodgers. From that point on, those two battled for the top spot.1 On July 22, the first-place Dodgers hosted a four-game series against the Cardinals. This wound up a 21-game road trip […]

Few names are as synonymous with the development of Negro League baseball as Abe and Effa Manley. The couple is most commonly associated with the Newark Eagles, which they owned from 1936 until they disbanded the club in 1948, one year after Jackie Robinson integrated the White major leagues, thus signaling the end of the […]

The 1931 Cincinnati Reds started the season with a dismal 2-17 record and after only 10 games found themselves in last place in the National League, a position they would hold for the rest of the season. On May 18 the Reds (6-18) played the final game of a three-game series against the seventh-place Brooklyn […]

“I was a damn effective pitcher. It pains me to be remembered for one unfortunate pitch — and, unfairly, a pitch surreptitiously signaled to the hitter — as opposed to a hurler who, for a number of years, had good stuff.” — Ralph Branca1   The young Brooklyn Dodgers fan raced home from school on […]

Franchise moves were the talk of New York City in 1957 with both the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants being wooed by West Coast interests. On May 28 the National League owners voted unanimously to allow both the Giants and Dodgers to move to the West Coast but with the stipulation that both teams […]