Los Angeles Dodgers
2012 Los Angeles Dodgers season
Established	1883
Based in Los Angeles since 1958
100px Team logo Cap insignia
Major league affiliations
National League (1890–present) West Division (1969–present)
Current uniform
275px
Retired numbers	1, 2, 4, 19, 20, 24, 32, 39, 42, 53
Colors
Dodger blue, white
Name
Los Angeles Dodgers (1958–present)
Brooklyn Dodgers (1932–1957) Brooklyn Robins (Unofficial) (1914–1931) Brooklyn Superbas (Unofficial) (1899–1910) Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers (Initially unofficial) (1891–1898) Brooklyn Bridegrooms/Grooms (Unofficial) (1888–1898) Brooklyn Grays (Unofficial) (1885–1887) Brooklyn Atlantics (Unofficial) (1883–1884) (1932 is the first year in which the nickname appeared on the uniforms of the Brooklyn Base Ball Club.)
Other nicknames
The Bums
Ballpark
Dodger Stadium (1962–present) Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum (1958–1961) Ebbets Field (Brooklyn) (1913–1957) Washington Park (II) (Brooklyn) (1898–1912) Eastern Park (Brooklyn) (1891–1897) Ridgewood Park (Brooklyn) – Sunday games only (1886–1889) Washington Park (I) (Brooklyn) (1884–1890)
Major league titles
World Series titles (6)	1955 1959 1963 1965 1981 1988
NL Pennants (21)	1890 1899 1900 1916 1920 1941 1947 1949 1952 1953 1955 1956 1959 1963 1965 1966 1974 1977 1978 1981 1988
AA Pennants (1)	1889
West Division titles (11) [1]	1974 1977 1978 1981 1983 1985 1988 1995 2004 2008 2009
Wild card berths (2)	1996 2006
[1] – In 1994, a players' strike wiped out the last eight weeks of the season and all post-season. Los Angeles was in first place by three and a half games in the West Division when play was stopped. No official titles were awarded in 1994.
Front office
Owner(s)	Guggenheim Baseball Management
Manager	Don Mattingly
General Manager	Ned Colletti

Jeff Pfeffer 1916 Brooklyn Robins

The Los Angeles Dodgers are a professional baseball team based in Los Angeles, California. The Dodgers are members of the National League West division of Major League Baseball (MLB). Established in 1883, the team originated in Brooklyn, New York, where it was known by a number of nicknames before becoming the Dodgers definitively by 1932.^[1][2] The team moved to Los Angeles before the 1958 season.^[3] They played their first four seasons in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before moving to their current home of Dodger Stadium, the third-oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball (trailing Fenway Park and Wrigley Field).

The Dodgers have won six World Series titles and 21 National League pennants. Eight Cy Young Award winners have pitched for the Dodgers, winning a total of ten Cy Young Awards (both MLB records). The team has also produced 12 Rookie of the Year award winners, including four back-to-back from 1979–1982 and five back-to-back from 1992–1996, the longest consecutive streaks in Major League Baseball.

History[link]

In the modern (post-1901) era, the team, then known as the Robins, won league pennants in 1916 and 1920, losing the World Series both times, first to Boston and then Cleveland. In 1941, as the Dodgers, they captured their third National League pennant, only to lose again to the New York Yankees. This marked the onset of the Dodgers–Yankees rivalry, as the Dodgers would face them in their next six World Series appearances. Led by Jackie Robinson, the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era, and three-time National League Most Valuable Player Roy Campanella, also signed out of the Negro Leagues, the Dodgers captured their first World Series title in 1955 by defeating the Yankees for the first time. This team is best remembered as it was described in Roger Kahn's acclaimed book, "The Boys of Summer."

Following the 1957 season, the team left Brooklyn. In just their second season in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won their second World Series title, beating the Chicago White Sox in six games in 1959. Spearheaded by the dominant pitching style of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, the Dodgers captured three pennants in the 1960s and won two more World Series titles in 1963, sweeping the Yankees in four games, and 1965, edging the Minnesota Twins in seven. The 1963 sweep represented their second victory against the Yankees and first against them as a Los Angeles team. The Dodgers won three more pennants in 1974, 1977 and 1978, but lost in each World Series appearance. They went on to win the World Series again in 1981, thanks to pitching sensation Fernando Valenzuela. The early 1980s were affectionately dubbed "Fernandomania." In 1988, another pitching hero, Orel Hershiser, again led them to a World Series victory, aided by one of the most memorable home runs of all time, by their injured star outfielder Kirk Gibson coming off the bench to pinch hit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of game 1, in his only appearance of the series.

The Dodgers share a fierce rivalry with the San Francisco Giants, the oldest rivalry in baseball, dating back to when the two franchises played in New York City. Both teams moved west for the 1958 season. The Brooklyn Dodgers and Los Angeles Dodgers have collectively appeared in the World Series eighteen times, as have the New York Giants and San Francisco Giants collectively. The Dodgers and Giants have also in this way won the same number of World Series (6) and share the record for most National League pennants (21). Although the two franchises have enjoyed near equal success, the city rivalries are rather lopsided and in both cases, a team's championships have predated to the other's only one in that particular location. When the two teams were based in New York, the Giants won five World Series championships, and the Dodgers one. After the move to California, it has been the reverse—the Dodgers have won five in Los Angeles, the Giants won one in San Francisco.

Team history[link]

Brooklyn Dodgers[link]

The Dodgers were originally founded in 1883 as the Brooklyn Atlantics, taking the name of a defunct team that had played in Brooklyn prior to them. The team joined the American Association in 1884 and won the AA championship in 1889 before joining the National League in 1890. They promptly won the NL Championship their first year in the League. The team was known alternatively as the Bridegrooms, Grooms, Superbas, Robins, and Trolley Dodgers before officially becoming the Dodgers in the 1930s.

In Brooklyn, the Dodgers won the NL pennant several times (1890, 1899, 1900, 1916, 1920, 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956) and the World Series in 1955. After moving to Los Angeles, the team won World Series championships in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988. Altogether, the Dodgers have appeared in 18 World Series.

Jackie Robinson[link]

For most of the first half of the 20th century, no Major League Baseball team employed an African American player. Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play for a Major League Baseball team when he played his first major league game on April 15, 1947, as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It happened mainly due to General Manager Branch Rickey's efforts. The deeply religious Rickey's motivation appears to have been primarily moral, although business considerations were also present. Rickey was a member of The Methodist Church, the antecedent denomination to The United Methodist Church of today, which was a strong advocate for social justice and active later in the Civil Rights movement.^[4]

This event was the harbinger of the integration of professional sports in the United States, the concomitant demise of the Negro Leagues, and is regarded as a key moment in the history of the American Civil Rights movement. Robinson was an exceptional player, a speedy runner who sparked the team with his intensity. He was the inaugural recipient of the Rookie of the Year award, which is now named the Jackie Robinson award in his honor. The Dodgers' willingness to integrate, when most other teams refused to, was a key factor in their 1947–1956 success. They won six pennants in those 10 years with the help of Robinson, three-time MVP Roy Campanella, Cy Young Award winner Don Newcombe, Jim Gilliam and Joe Black. Robinson would eventually go on to become the first African-American elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.

Move to Los Angeles[link]

Real estate businessman Walter O'Malley had acquired majority ownership of the Dodgers in 1950, when he bought the shares of his co-owners, Branch Rickey and the estate of James L. Smith. Before long he was working to buy new land in Brooklyn to build a more accessible and better arrayed ballpark than Ebbets Field. Beloved as it was, Ebbets Field had grown old and was not well served by infrastructure, to the point where the Dodgers could not sell the park out even in the heat of a pennant race (despite largely dominating the league from 1946 to 1957).

O'Malley wanted to build a new, state of the art stadium in Brooklyn. But City Planner Robert Moses and other New York politicians refused to let him build the Brooklyn stadium he wanted. During the 1955 season he announced that the team would play seven regular season games and one exhibition game at Jersey City's Roosevelt Stadium in 1956. He expected that this move would put pressure on the city's politicians to build the Dodgers the park he wanted in Brooklyn.^[5] Yet Moses and the others considered this an empty threat, and did not believe O'Malley would go through with moving the team from New York City. That is when Los Angeles came into the picture.

After teams began to travel to and from games by air instead of train, it became possible to include locations in the far west. When Los Angeles officials attended the 1956 World Series looking to entice a team to move to the City of Angels, they were not even considering the Dodgers. Their original target had been the then-current Washington Senators (who would in fact move to Bloomington, suburban Minneapolis, to become the Minnesota Twins in 1961). When O'Malley heard that LA was looking for a club, he sent word to the Los Angeles officials that he was interested in talking. Los Angeles offered him what New York would not: a chance to buy land suitable for building a ballpark, and own that ballpark, giving him complete control over all its revenue streams. When the news came out, Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. and Moses made a feeble effort to save the Dodgers, offering to build a ballpark on the World's Fair Grounds in Queens. Wagner was already on shaky ground, as the Giants were getting ready to move out of the crumbling Polo Grounds. However, O'Malley was interested in his park only under his conditions, and the plans for a new stadium in Brooklyn seemed like a pipe dream. Walter O'Malley was left with the difficult decision to move the Dodgers to California, convincing Giants owner Horace Stoneham to move to San Francisco instead of Minneapolis to keep the Giants-Dodgers rivalry alive on the West Coast. There was no turning back: the Dodgers were heading for Hollywood.^[5]

The Dodgers played their final game at Ebbets Field on September 24, 1957, which the Dodgers won 2–0 over the Pittsburgh Pirates.

Los Angeles Dodgers[link]

On April 18, 1958, the Los Angeles Dodgers played their first game in Los Angeles, defeating the former New York and now new San Francisco Giants, 6–5, before 78,672 fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Catcher Roy Campanella, left partially paralyzed in an off-season accident, was never able to play for Los Angeles.

Former Dodger greats adorn the exterior of Dodger Stadium

Construction on Dodger Stadium was completed in time for Opening Day 1962. With its clean, simple lines and its picturesque setting amid hills and palm trees, the ballpark quickly became an icon of the Dodgers and their new California lifestyle, and it remains one of the most highly-regarded stadiums in baseball even today^{[by whom?]}. Despite the fact that the Dodgers have played in Dodger Stadium longer than they had played in Ebbets Field, the stadium remains surprisingly fresh^{[citation needed]}. O'Malley was determined that there would not be a bad seat in the house, achieving this by cantilevered grandstands that have since been widely imitated. More importantly for the team, the stadium's spacious dimensions, along with other factors, gave defense an advantage over offense, and the Dodgers moved to take advantage of this by assembling a team that would excel with its pitching.

The Dodgers in Los Angeles won nine more National League Championships and five World Series rings.

Bankruptcy and the sale of the team[link]

Bud Selig, the Commissioner of Baseball, announced on April 20, 2011, that MLB would appoint a representative to oversee the day-to-day operations of the Dodgers. His statement said that he took that action because of his "deep concerns for the finances and operations" of the Dodgers.^[6] One week after the commissioner refused to approve a proposed television contract that would have pumped much needed funding into the club, the Dodgers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on June 27.^[7] Frank McCourt agreed to sell the Dodgers, Dodger Stadium, and the surrounding area at auction.^[8]

An agreement on the sale of the Dodgers between McCourt and Guggenheim Baseball Management LLC, a group of investors fronted by Guggenheim CEO Mark Walter and including former Los Angeles Lakers player Magic Johnson, baseball executive Stan Kasten and film mogul Peter Guber, was announced on March 27, 2012.^[9] The total sale price exceeded $2 billion, making the sale the largest for a professional sports team in history, exceeding the approximately $1.5 billion purchase of Manchester United F.C. by Malcolm Glazer in 2005.^[10] On the same day, the members of the group announced a partnership with McCourt in purchasing the property surrounding the stadium for an additional $150 million.^[11] The sale price of the Dodgers was considered to be far higher than what the team was actually worth at the time of sale. Estimates made by Forbes placed the value of the Dodgers at approximately $1.4 billion, and the winning bid was more than 30% higher than the next highest bid.^[12] The sale was officially closed on May 1, 2012.^[13]

Other historical notes[link]

Historical statistics[link]

• First MLB team to employ and start an African-American in the 20th century (Jackie Robinson in 1947)
• First baseball team to win championships in different leagues in consecutive years (1889–1890)
• First TV broadcast (1939)
• First use of batting helmets (1941)
• First West Coast team (1958) – along with the San Francisco Giants
• First MLB team to open an office in Asia (1998)
• Largest home-opener crowd (78,762 in 1958)
• Largest attendance: 93,103 (1959) and 115,300 (2008) *World Record
• MLB record for home start going 13–0 (2009)

The team's nickname[link]

By 1890, New Yorkers (Brooklyn was a separate city until it became a borough in 1898) routinely called anyone from Brooklyn a "trolley dodger," due to the vast network of street car lines criss-crossing the borough as people dodged trains to play on the streets. When the second Washington Park burned down early in the 1891 season, the team moved to nearby Eastern Park, which was bordered on two sides by street car tracks. That's when the team was first called the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers. That was soon shortened to Dodgers.^[14] Sportswriters in the early 20th century began referring to the Dodgers as the "Bums," in reference to the team's fans and possibly because of the "street character" nature of Jack Dawkins, the "Artful Dodger" in Charles Dickens' Oliver Twist

Other team names used by the franchise which would finally be called the Dodgers were the Atlantics, Grays, Grooms, the Bridegrooms, the Superbas and the Robins. All of these nicknames were used by fans and sportswriters to describe the team, but not in any official capacity. The team's legal name was the Brooklyn Base Ball Club.^[15] However, the Trolley Dodger nickname was used throughout this period, simultaneously with these other nicknames, by fans and sportswriters of the day. The team did not use the name in any formal sense until 1932, when the word "Dodgers" appeared on jerseys for the team.^[1] The "conclusive shift" came in 1933, when both home and road jerseys for the team bore the name "Dodgers".^[2]