The Last Home Runs Ever Hit at Ebbets Field
On September 22, 1957, Duke Snider hit 2 home runs off Robin Roberts at Ebbets Field. They were the last ever hit there. Two days later the Dodgers played their final game in Brooklyn.
On this date in 1957, a Sunday, 6,662 people came to Ebbets Field. Duke Snider hit 2 home runs. Nobody in those seats knew they were watching the last 2 the ballpark would ever see.
32,000 seats and not a bad one in the house
Ebbets Field opened in 1913 on a single city block in Flatbush, hemmed in by Bedford Avenue, Sullivan Place, McKeever Place and Montgomery Street. It held about 32,000 people when it was full, which in the 1950s was often. The rotunda had a chandelier made of baseball bats. The right-field wall was a patchwork of billboards, and the one for Abe Stark's clothing store promised a free suit to any batter who hit it. Almost nobody did, because the right fielder stood in front of it.
For 44 seasons it was the most beloved ballpark in America, and for most of those seasons the Dodgers broke Brooklyn's heart. They lost the World Series to the Yankees in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953. "Wait till next year" was not a slogan. It was a diagnosis.
1955, and the Duke
Next year finally arrived on October 4, 1955. Johnny Podres shut out the Yankees 2-0 in Game 7 at Yankee Stadium, and Brooklyn had its first championship. It would also be its only one.
The star of that team was Duke Snider, the Duke of Flatbush, the center fielder in the borough's endless argument over Willie, Mickey and the Duke. From 1953 through 1957 he hit 40 or more home runs 5 seasons in a row. Only Ralph Kiner had ever done that in the National League.
September 22, 1957
By the last week of the 1957 season everybody in Brooklyn understood what was coming, even if nobody in the front office would say it. Walter O'Malley had bought the Los Angeles minor-league franchise and its ballpark back in February. The team's new airplane, the first ever owned by a professional sports club, had been flying the Dodgers around the league since spring. The Dodgers were a distant third, on their way to finishing 11 games behind the Braves. The crowds had thinned to a few thousand a game.
On Sunday, September 22, the Phillies were in town and Robin Roberts was pitching. Roberts was a future Hall of Famer having a miserable year. He came in at 10-21.
Jim Gentile homered in the 4th. Then Snider came up in the 5th with a man on and took Roberts deep. In the 7th he did it again, this time with the bases empty. Two swings. A 7-3 Dodgers win, and Don Drysdale's 17th victory of the year.
They were Snider's 39th and 40th home runs of the season. The 40th tied Kiner's National League record of 5 straight 40-homer years. And they were the last home runs anyone would ever hit at Ebbets Field.
Snider hit 19 career home runs off Robin Roberts. No batter in major-league history has hit more off a single pitcher.
The last game
Two days later, on Tuesday, September 24, the Dodgers played the Pirates in the final game at Ebbets Field. Attendance was 6,702. Danny McDevitt pitched a complete-game shutout, 2-0, striking out 9. Gladys Goodding, who had played the organ at Ebbets since 1942, played the fans out. Depending on which account you believe, the last song was "May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You" or "Don't Ask Me Why I'm Leaving."
The Dodgers finished the season in Philadelphia on September 29. Vin Scully had the last half of that broadcast. When it was over he told the Dodger Network the 1957 season was "just about down the drain," said goodbye for the last time, and signed off with "So long."
The move was announced officially on October 8.
The plane
The airplane is the part of this story people forget. In January 1957 the Dodgers bought a Convair 440 Metropolitan that Eastern Air Lines had ordered as part of a fleet purchase. It kept Eastern's duck-hawk on the tail. The fuselage said "Brooklyn Dodgers" in red block letters, and the nose carried a baseball with "Dodgers" written across it in script.
That October, pilot Bump Holman had the fuselage repainted to read "Los Angeles Dodgers" before the inaugural flight west on October 23, 1957, with team executives and a few players aboard. The head winds were so bad they had to stop for fuel in Oklahoma City.
Rubbing salt in the wound
Two years later the Dodgers were world champions again. In Los Angeles. In a football stadium.
The Memorial Coliseum had been expanded for the 1932 Olympics and had a left-field fence 251 feet from home plate. It also held more people than any ballpark in history. Games 3, 4 and 5 of the 1959 World Series against the White Sox drew 92,394, 92,650 and 92,706. The Game 5 crowd is still the largest ever to watch a World Series game, and there is no ballpark in use today that could break it.
Brooklyn watched all of it on television.
February 23, 1960
The wrecking ball was painted white with red stitches, to look like a baseball. About 200 people came. A brass band played "Auld Lang Syne." Otto Miller, who had caught the first game at Ebbets Field in 1913, was there. So was Roy Campanella, who had caught the last one, and who had been paralyzed in a car crash on an icy road in January 1958.
Campanella sat in his wheelchair on the bare infield, a jersey with his number 39 draped over the back of the chair. Before the ball swung they handed him an urn of dirt dug from behind home plate.
The Ebbets Field Apartments, a project of the Kratter Corporation, opened on the site in 1962. There is a plaque on the building.
Duke Snider's 40th home run of 1957 was the last one Brooklyn ever got.
September 22, 1957. This date in sports history.
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