On this day in New York · April 5, 1913
Ebbets Field Opens in Flatbush
A ballpark built on a garbage dump called Pigtown drew a crowd twice the size anyone expected, and Brooklyn spent the next 44 years falling in love with it.
The facts
- Opened
- April 5, 1913, with an exhibition game against the New York Yankees
- Final score
- Brooklyn 3, Yankees 2
- Cost
- $750,000, designed by architect Clarence Randall Van Buskirk
- The site
- A former garbage dump nicknamed Pigtown, assembled lot by lot by Charles Ebbets starting in 1908
Charles Ebbets spent five years quietly buying up a block of Flatbush that neighbors called Pigtown, for the pigs that used to root through the garbage dumped there. On April 5, 1913, his new $750,000 ballpark opened with an exhibition game against the crosstown Yankees, and Brooklyn won, 3 to 2. The park held roughly 25,000 to 30,000 people and far more than that tried to get in, so gates closed early with thousands still stuck outside. Ebbets' youngest daughter, Genevieve, threw out the first pitch. The park stayed the Dodgers' home until the club left for Los Angeles after the 1957 season.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
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The first game played was an inter-league exhibition game against the New York Yankees on April 5, 1913, played before an overcapacity of 30,000 fans, with 5,000 more who had arrived but were not able to get in.
Wikipedia's entry on Ebbets Field
Source: Wikipedia
Why it still matters
Ebbets Field gave Brooklyn a ballpark of its own and shaped the borough's identity for more than four decades, which is exactly why the Dodgers' move to Los Angeles in 1957 still stings for people who never set foot in Flatbush before the wrecking ball came in 1960.
Sources
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