Brooklyn Dodgers

The Brooklyn Dodgers were a Major League Baseball team founded in 1883 as the Brooklyn Grays. In 1884, it became a member of the American Association as the Brooklyn Atlantics before joining the National League in 1890. They remained in Brooklyn, New York, until 1957, after which the club moved to Los Angeles, where it continues its history as the Los Angeles Dodgers. The team moved west at the same time as its longtime rival, the New York Giants, moved to San Francisco in northern California as the San Francisco Giants.

The team's name derived from the reputed skill of Brooklyn residents at evading the city's trolley streetcars. The name is a shortened form of one of their former names, the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers, and they later earned the respectful nickname Dem Bums. The Dodgers played in two stadiums in South Brooklyn, each named Washington Park, and at Eastern Park in the neighborhood of Brownsville before moving to Ebbets Field in the neighborhood of Crown Heights in 1912. The team is noted for signing Jackie Robinson in 1947 as the first black player in the modern major leagues.

The Brooklyn Dodgers had an overall win–loss record of 5,624–5,290–133 (.515) during their 68 years in Brooklyn. Eight former Brooklyn Dodgers players were elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

Many of the clubs represented at the first convention of the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) were from Brooklyn, including the Atlantic, Eckford, and Excelsior clubs that combined to dominate play for most of the 1860s. Brooklyn helped make baseball commercial, as the locale of the first paid admission games, a series of three all star contests matching New York and Brooklyn in 1858. Brooklyn also featured the first two enclosed baseball grounds, the Union Grounds and the Capitoline Grounds; enclosed, dedicated ballparks accelerated the evolution from amateurism to professionalism.

Despite the early success of Brooklyn clubs in the NABBP, which were officially amateur until 1869, they fielded weak teams in the succeeding National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), the first professional league formed in 1871. The Excelsiors no longer challenged for the amateur championship after the Civil War (1861–1865) and never entered the professional NAPBBP (aka NA). The Eckfords and Atlantics declined to join until 1872 and thereby lost their best players; the Eckfords survived only one season and the Atlantics four, with losing teams.

The National League (NL) replaced the NAPBBP in 1876 and granted exclusive territories to its eight members, excluding the Atlantics in favor of the Mutual Club of New York who had shared home grounds with the Atlantics. When the Mutuals were expelled by the league, the Hartford club moved in, the press dubbing them The Brooklyn Hartfords, and played its home games at Union Grounds in 1877 before disbanding.

The team currently known as the Dodgers was formed in 1883 by real estate magnate and baseball enthusiast Charles Byrne, who convinced his brother-in-law Joseph Doyle and casino operator Ferdinand Abell to start the team with him. Byrne arranged to build a grandstand on a lot bounded by Third Street, Fourth Avenue, Fifth Street, and Fifth Avenue, and named it Washington Park in honor of first president George Washington.

Nicknamed by reporters the "Grays" for their uniforms, the team played in the minor league Inter-State Association of Professional Baseball Clubs that first season. Doyle became the first team manager, and they drew 6,431 fans to their first home game on May 12, 1883, against the Trenton, New Jersey team. The Grays won the league title after the Camden Merritt club in New Jersey disbanded on July 20 and Brooklyn picked up some of its better players. The Grays were invited to join the two-year-old professional circuit, the American Association (founded 1882) to compete with the eight-year-old NL for the 1884 season.