Customer Reviews

The Greatest Ballpark Ever: Ebbets Field and the Story of the Brooklyn Dodgers

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As a 58 year old Brooklyn Dodger fanatic who still and always will hate O'Malley, Mr. McGee's book is my new bible. He gives you the entire history of Baseball in Brooklyn without being boring, without preaching facts and making me feel that I was still living on Eastern Parkway. This is one book that I read very slowly as I didn't want it to end. He brought back many great memories and also brought back the tears I shed when they left and even more when on that cold February day they tore down the Hallowd Walls of that place called Ebbets. He brought me back to the times when I snuck in to watch games, layed on my stomach on Bedford Avenue to sneak a peak at the only spot to look under the Center Field fense to watch a game,saved our Borden's Elsie Dixie Cup tops to get Bleacher Seats and to turn in a Bedford Blast for a free admision to the bleachers. He even spelled Gladys Goodding's name correctly, something not done in some of the other Brookly Dodger books.

A job well done, Mr. McGee. My only disappointment in your book is that I finally ran out of pages. But, It is a book I will read over and over and over again and to all who miss Ebbets Field,the Brooklyn Dodgers and still hate O'Malley, DO NOT miss this book

Steve Grossman, Mount Laurel, NJ

If you are a baseball fan interested in the game's history you will enjoy this effort on the Brooklyn Dodgers and their history. Whether they were called the Dodgers, Superbas, or Robins the Brooklyn version of the team has cemented its place in baseball history. Author Bob McGee provides us with a detailed account of the team's history dating from the opening of Ebbets Field in 1913 until their infamous move following the 1957 season orchestrated by a man who's name will not appear here. Some readers may find they are being told more about the team than they care to know. However, if you are a fan of baseball history this will not be a problem for you. The team's inability to win a World Series haunted the team throughout their history from their first Series appearance in 1916 until that glorious year of 1955. At one period of time the team was nicknamed the Daffiness Boys, an early version of the New York Mets of the early 1960's. The best was saved for last with the arrival of the post war Boys of Summer in the early 1950's who were immortalized in literature by Roger Kahn in 1971. Several pictures also add to the book. One, in particular, of the inside of the Ebbets Field Rotunda, I had never seen before. If you remember the Brooklyn Dodgers, I do, or if you were a fan of the team you will enjoy this book. As I said in my title, it is at once both historic and nostalgic.

What differentiated this book from the countless others witten about the Brooklyn Dodgers was the author's attention to small detail. Now being from Brooklyn myself I appreciated this. The references to Steeplechase and the clown with paddles, Jim McElroy bring the Torre brothers to games at Ebbets field, the old Washington Park, Jack Kaiser, etc. For the average baseball fan outside of Brooklyn this is a great way to experience what once was. Even though I was only 6 when the Dodgers left and never saw a game at Ebbets Field the only logo's I display on anything I wear are Brooklyn Dodgers hats or shirts. You can't believe how many compliments I get. McGee in his writing really connects the Dodgers into the everyday life of every Brooklynite. I could only imagine what it must have been like (neither of my parents were sports fans nor did I have brothers or sisters). Growing up on the streets of Brooklyn you never had to worry how much junk food you ate because you would constantly burn it off playing stickball or basketball in the schoolyards. I find it interesting the players lived right in the neighborhoods, todays players live in castles and mansions, how could they ever connect to today's fan. I read this book very slow in order to digest every detail, there are plenty to digest. I highly recoomend this book to anyone baseball fan or not to get a glimpse into what was the "greatest place in the world" to grow up in. I only regret the Dodgers were not there when I could have appreciated them. I had the pleasure of meeting the author at a book signing and if he is ever in your area make it your business to meet him. The only thing better than the book is actually meeting Bob McGee.

I had the privilege of meeting bob McGee at a commemoration of the Brooklyn Dodgers' only winning World Series and was amazed to learn he was a bit too young to have ever gone to Ebbets Field in person.
However, he somehow did manage to get there in spirit as he has done an exceptional job in capturing the flavor of a wonderful bygone era.
Until someone invents a time machine, McGee's book is the best means of transporting a reader back to a time when an extrordinary baseball team made those of us lucky enough to have lived in Brooklyn feel a little special outselves.
The well-known words of fellow Brooklynite Jackie Gleason describe this book to a "T."
"HOW SWEET IT IS!"

Even though I grew up a Senators fan, having lived in Washington, DC., my parents, both of whom are from Brooklyn, instilled in me a love and respect for that grand old city/borough. I was born on October 16, 1956, 8 days after Don Larsen's World Series perfect game, but this book brought me in a time machine, allowing me to sit with Charley Ebbets as he planned to build this park, talked strategy with Uncle Robbie, laughed as the three Dodgers ended up on third, cried as those close chances in the World Series of the 1940s, cheered for Pee Wee, the Duke, Gil, Oisk, Campy and Jackie, booed Walter O'Malley and cried as the wrecking ball wiped out a landmark. Read this book today, immerse yourself in an era that was simpler, more neighborly, more alive. Take those memories and share them with all people, your kids, grandkids and their kids. Keep the memory of Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodgers alive forever.

THE GREATEST BALLPARK EVER is a paean and a song of love to Ebbets Field, home of the "original America's team," the Brooklyn Dodgers, from 1913 to 1957. Author Bob McGee writes a detailed and crisp history of the team and the place, but far beyond the FACTS surrounding the history of the physical structure of the park, and the men who played there, he manages to capture---amazingly enough, and very well---the SYMBOLOGICAL importance of the Brooklyn Dodgers and their home in the American, and particularly Brooklynite, psyche.

Of particular joy is the fact that McGee refuses to fall for the revisionist dreck presently being touted by the O'Malleys and their supporters, that "The Big Oom" had no choice but to hijack the Dodgers from Brooklyn in 1958. He relegates their arguments quite properly to the floor of the horse stall where they (and Walter) belong.

If McGee's symbologizing of Ebbets Field sounds awfully highfalutin', it isn't. McGee loves the IDEA of Ebbets Field, and in communicating that love, recreates the ballpark in words, an almost impossible task, considering that, like much of his reading audience, he never experienced the reality. That he could succeed at all is a measure of how fine this book is. THE GREATEST BALLPARK EVER comes VERY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

---Order me dogs and beer. Here comes the Duke of Flatbush to the plate---

This book is a must for Dodger fans, and the best of its kind.

But by 1957, Ebbets Field was no longer a suitable ballpark for a major league team. The park and its neighborhood were deteriorating, there was no public transportation, and attendance had been steadily falling even in their pennant-winning years (the previous review notes that the powerhouse Dodgers were drawing around 10,000 fans per home game). Renovation was not an option because there would be insufficient additional revenue projected to cover the cost. The Dodgers simply could not stay there. But Walter O'Malley did not want to leave Brooklyn.

In reality, he wanted to stay in Brooklyn and build a brand new ballpark at the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush, near public transportation. Walter O'Malley was not the villain of the piece; rather, it was Robert Moses, then the most powerful man in New York City, who refused to let him do so, insisting that he build instead in Flushing Meadows (where Shea Stadium stands today). They would no longer have been in Brooklyn, and O'Malley naturally refused. He left reluctantly, narrowly choosing Los Angeles over Minneapolis. In doing so, he brough Major League Baseball west of the Mississippi, and forever changed the game. He deserves to be in the Hall of Fame (plenty of even tougher businessmen are), but East Coast writers like Roger Kahn and misinformed fans like the one who posted that he "hates O'Malley" to this day have blocked his entry. Shame on them.

Bob McGhee's masterful recollection of the greatest ballpark ever---Ebbets Field---is a nostalgic trip down baseball's memory lane. I loved every page & can understand the passion he felt when writing this book & can understand the emotion any fan of the Brooklyn Dodgers felt when reading it.

Growing up in St Louis, I was only a five year old kid when Walter O'Malley took his team to Lala-land, and I barely remember it. As the years passed, the Ebbets Field mystic pulled me in and I've been completely captivated by it for decades now. I've often said, if I had a special baseball time machine, I'd like to set it for 1955 & watch Brooklyn play the dreaded Yankees in that Fall Classic. To me, there's no other time or place on earth that captures the essence of baseball better than that.

This is a wonderful chronology of one of baseball's most colorful franchices and it's something any fan of the game will want to add to their personal library.

I liked this book ... it's one of the better street-insight books from the Brooklyn-as-the-center-of-the-baseball-universe genre, and I got a better feel from this book than from any other of what it would have been like to see a game at Ebbets Field. But as usual with the Brooklyn revisionists, the book ignores the fact the Brooklyn Dodgers were a doomed franchise from the time Walter O'Malley was thwarted in his effort to obtain land for a new ballpark.

Few, if any, owners in the major leagues then or now would have remained in a rotting ballpark with no parking in one of the worst neighborhoods in a dying borough. The Dodgers' attendance in 1955, their World Series title year, was just over 1 million, almost a 50 percent drop in only eight years, and if any other franchise had suffered a similar attendance drop, it would have taken wing also. The Dodgers also had to deal with the Milwaukee Braves phenomenon, which is mentioned hardly at all as a factor in the Dodgers' departure, even though it played a very important role.

McGee, and other self-styled Brooklyn historians, also glosses over the fact that Ebbets Field was a very dangerous place in its final years, with many beatings, assaults and robberies - many of them racially motivated, the Jackie Robinson experience notwithstanding - inside and near the ballpark.

Brooklynites of that era claim that the Dodgers leaving killed Brooklyn ... it's my belief that Brooklyn would have killed the Dodgers if they'd stayed at Ebbets Field much longer.

At any rate, this is a well-written book, but I'd like to see someone write a Brooklyn Dodgers/Ebbets Field book that isn't an exercise in Pollyannish literature. If you're sick of hearing about Brooklyn as the fulcrum of society as we know it, don't bother with this book.

Ebbets Field is considered hallowed ground for baseball fans.
The field drew up to 650T people or 4th /5th in League attendance. The author provides a chronology starting with Charles Ebbets circa 1898. He traces the history including the Ebbets Field architect-Clarence Van Buskirk.

Ebbets Field construction began 3-4-1912 and opened in 1913.
By 1930, Frank York became the club President.
The volume by Bob McGee faithfully documents the early history
of Ebbets Field with a plethora of black/white photos depicting
the period of the early 1900s. The acquisition is definitely
worth while as an opening point of conversation on New York
Baseball.