In 1909, a man named Charles Hercules Ebbets began secretly buying up adjacent parcels of land in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn including the site of a garbage dump called “pig town” because of the pigs that once ate their fill there and the stench that filled the air.
He hoped eventually to build a permanent home for the lackluster baseball team he had once worked for and now owned. The team was called the Trolley Dodgers or just the Dodgers after the way their devoted fans negotiated Brooklyn’s busy streets.
In 1912, construction began. By the time it was completed, “pig town” had been transformed into Ebbets Field, baseball’s newest shrine where some of the games greatest drama would take place.
In the years to come, Dodger fans would see more bad times than good but hardly cared. Listen to the southern cadences of a pioneer broadcaster and witness first hand when a black man wearing the number 42 trotted out to first base.
