Los Angeles Dodgers

▪ American baseball team

 American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles that plays in the National League (NL). The team won six World Series titles and 21 NL pennants.

      The Dodgers were originally based in Brooklyn, N.Y., and were known as the Atlantics. Founded in 1883, the team joined the American Association in 1884 and won the league pennant in 1889. Brooklyn was one of four American Association teams to join the NL the following year, and they won their first NL pennant in their inaugural season in the league. Brooklyn developed a natural rivalry with Manhattan's New York Giants following their move to the NL, which became one of the game's most renowned and enduring feuds, even after each team's relocation to California in 1958. In 1913 the team moved into Ebbets Field, an intimate ballpark that served as the home of the Dodgers until 1957. The team was known as the Grays, the Bridegrooms, the Superbas, and the Robins before they settled on the name Dodgers in 1932.

   The Dodgers won NL pennants in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, and 1953 but lost the World Series to the crosstown New York Yankees each time, earning the Dodgers the affectionate nickname “Dem Bums” and precipitating their fans' famous annual lament, “Wait 'til next year.” In the midst of this run, the Dodgers made history in April 1947 by calling up African American third baseman Jackie Robinson (Robinson, Jackie) (who had been signed to a minor league contract by the pioneering Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey (Rickey, Branch) two years earlier), shattering major league baseball's long-standing colour barrier. In 1955 the Dodgers finally bested the Yankees and won the franchise's first World Series title behind a lineup led by future Hall of Famers Robinson, Roy Campanella (Campanella, Roy), Pee Wee Reese (Reese, Pee Wee), and Duke Snider. Despite the team's enduring popularity in Brooklyn—they finished first or second in NL attendance in seven of the nine seasons between 1949 and 1957—team owner Walter O'Malley (O'Malley, Walter) moved the franchise to Los Angeles in 1958 in order to capitalize on the financial windfall that was likely to come from major league baseball's expansion to West Coast markets.

  An instant success in their new home, the Dodgers set numerous NL attendance records at Dodger Stadium, which was located in scenic Chavez Ravine, a few miles outside downtown Los Angeles. The Dodgers won World Series championships in 1959, 1963, and 1965 behind the clutch pitching of stars Sandy Koufax (Koufax, Sandy) and Don Drysdale and the speed of base-stealing sensation Maury Wills (Wills, Maury). The team won three NL pennants in the 1970s (1974, 1977, and 1978) but failed to capture a World Series title in that decade. Toward the end of the 1976 season, manager Walter Alston (Alston, Walter)—who had guided the team to each of its first four world championships—retired abruptly and was replaced by a fellow future Hall of Famer, Tommy Lasorda. In 1981 the Dodgers acquired pitcher Fernando Valenzuela (Valenzuela, Fernando), who became the first player to win both the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards in the same season, on his way to leading the Dodgers to their fifth World Series win, in 1981. Veteran slugger Kirk Gibson joined NL Cy Young award-winning pitcher Orel Hershiser in 1988. At the end of that season the Dodgers defeated the Oakland A's in the World Series, which featured a dramatic game-winning pinch-hit home run by Gibson in game one. Despite the presence of such popular stars as Mike Piazza and Hideo Nomo (Nomo Hideo) in recent years, the Dodgers have not won an NL pennant since 1988; the current streak is the franchise's longest in over 60 years. In 2008 the Dodgers finished the major league season as one of the hottest teams in baseball, as first-year manager Joe Torre and mid-season acquisition Manny Ramirez rallied the team to a late-season surge that resulted in the Dodgers' winning the NL Western Division title.

 

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