The World Series starts in brooklyn
One hundred years ago today … The World Series began at Ebbets Field at 55 Sullivan Place, Brooklyn, between Bedford Avenue and Cedar Street (now McKeever Place). The series pitted the Brooklyn Robins against the Cleveland Indians–one team that would change their name (and locale), another that should have.
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Fans of the Brooklyn’s baseball club lined up outside the stadium to get in.
George Grantham Bain Collection. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
Twenty-five thousand of the fans got in to the game. Mayor John Hylan threw out the ceremonial first pitch.
The Brooklyn Citizen, 5 October 1920, p. 1. Chronicling America.
As the Brooklyn Citizen tells us above, Brooklyn manager Wilbert Robinson used a strategem of not announcing beforehand which pitcher would start the game.
Robinson was apparently something of a folk hero in Brooklyn for taking a team that was heralded less than the Giants and Yankees of Manhattan and getting them into the World Series.
The Brooklyn Citizen, 5 October 1920, p. 5. Chronicling America.
It was his face, not that of any player, that graced the 1920 World Series program.
Courtesy Pinterest user Bret “Dizzie” Allen. Pinterest. Note that that the program features the Robins nickname, “Dodgers.”
Oh, Rube Marquard (pictured above in the Citizen article) started the game, and the Robins lost, 3-1. Here’s the report from Baseball Reference.
You can watch some highlights of the series courtesy Critical Past here.
SPOILER ALERT: The Robins lost to the Indians
WRITTEN BY JONATHAN GOLDMAN, OCTOBER 5, 2020.
See relevant previous posts:
August 17: Death of Ray Chapman
September 19: Babe Ruth Movie at Madison Square Garden
TAGS: baseball, sports, Brooklyn, Flatbush, entertainment