Dodgers hurler Sandy Koufax unleashes a pitch during the 1966 World Series against the Orioles in the 1966 World Series. (Herb Scharfman/SI)
A vendor sells souvenirs during the 1952 World Series between Yankees and Dodgers. (Mark Kauffman/SI)
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For once an athlete taking off his hat, shoes, and shirt for a fan doesn’t lead to scandal. Instead, Matt Kemp gifted those to a disabled fan when the team was in San Francisco last week.
And that’s why Matt is the MVKemp of my heart (to shamelessly steal David Temple’s phrase.)
Jackie Robinson leaves Ebbets Field after playing opening day with the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947.
Today is the official start of Dodger baseball! In honor, here’s a couple of vintage Dodger photos, including this one of Sandy Koufax taken almost 50 years ago (April 2, 1963). The other features Dodger Stadium during the 1965 World Series. Today’s pregame ceremony celebrates the 50th and 25th anniversaries of the club’s 1963 and 1988 World Series championships.
The $100 million upgrade to Dodger Stadium has several musing on the past, present and future of Chávez Ravine. In Los Angeles Review of Books, Sam Lubell writes that approaching Dodger Stadium “feels a bit like stepping back in time, back to a very specific midcentury Los Angeles when technology was the answer, when the future could bring anything, and when optimism wasn’t optional.”
Los Angeles Times architectural critic Christopher Hawthorne details the efforts to transform Dodger Stadium from a privatized space into a more public one. Hawthorne notes, “The team has now spent nearly a decade longer in Chavez Ravine than it did in Ebbets Field.”
While we’re always excited for another season of Dodger baseball, our excitement is informed with the memory of the Chávez Ravine’s painful past, as illustrated with Ry Cooder’s song “3rd Base, Dodger Stadium,” off his Chávez Ravine album:
Mister, you’re a baseball man, as anyone can plainly see.
The straightest game in this great land. Take a little tip from me.
I work here nights, parking cars, underneath the moon and stars.
The same ones that we all knew back in 1952.
And if you want to know where a local boy like me is coming from:
3rd base, Dodger Stadium.
On Jackie Robinson’s 94th birthday, there isn’t a better time to announce perhaps the best bobblehead giveaway of 2013.
The uniforms are sharp, the likenesses strong, the heroes posed heroically, and, by using three players, we get three times the stirrups.
The bobbleheads will be given away on April 15th when the Dodgers take on the Padres which is also Jackie Robinson Day.
(h/t Baseball Nation)
