The Yankees got their start in Baltimore and the Mets didn’t play their first game until 1962, but the Brooklyn Dodgers called the city home from the very beginning. Founded in 1883 back in the early days of baseball, the team was originally called the Brooklyn Grays in the then-independent city of Brooklyn. (Kings County wasn’t incorporated into New York City until 1898.) The team name that eventually stuck came from Brooklynites’ reputations as “trolley dodgers,” thanks to the many streetcars that used to be ubiquitous on the borough’s thoroughfares.
As every baseball fan knows, the Ebbets Field boys went on to make history time and time again before they were relocated to L.A. in 1957. Their storied rivalry with the New York Giants (another team that would later be shipped off to California) began in 1889, when the Lords of Flatbush faced off against the Jints in one of the first World Series. The Dodgers also played the first game ever to be televised in 1939, when they crushed the Cincinnati Reds. And, of course, the team shattered the color barrier in 1947 when they brought on the legendary Jackie Robinson, MLB’s first African-American player. (more…)