Ebbets, Feltman and the Brooklyn Dodgers

By Michael Quinn

Baseball season is starting next week. It looks like the Mets will be stealing the Yankees thunder this season. Yes, I’m  cautiously optimistic. I was born a Mets fan by default. With my Brooklyn Dodgers lineage I really had no choice. My grandmother was a Brooklyn Dodgers season ticket holder who like many other immigrants viewed the Yankees as representing the upper class. You wouldn’t dare root for the Yankees. Win or lose the Dodgers were their own. The players lived in their neighborhood. The Dodgers were their bums. They were one of us.

To this day so many of my old family stories involve Ebbets Field and the Brooklyn Dodgers. As a child my mother would celebrate her birthday with her mom watching the Dodgers at Ebbets Field. The people who sat in her section every game were like family members. They were also blue collar immigrants who easily identified with the Brooklyn Dodgers. It made them every part an American.

Charles Ebbets, a local politician who owned the Dodgers brought them to Ebbets Field from Washington Park in 1912 (Casey Stengel played his first professional game at Washington Park). The original ballpark wall still exists at the Washington Park site. Ebbets changed the game of baseball by introducing the “rain check” policy as well as incorporating a “player draft” which favored losing teams.

Around a century ago the league was moving, so Ebbets decided that he wanted to sell the team. One evening in Boston he had a chance encounter with a man named Charles L. Feltman (sound familiar?). Charles L. Feltman’s father Charles Feltman is widely believed to have invented the hot dog at Coney Island in around 1867. They were originally called Coney Island Red Hots until they were sold as Hot Dogs later on at New York’s Polo Grounds. Charles L. Feltman wanted to buy the Brooklyn Dodgers from Charles Ebbets. Feltman and Ebbets met at a Boston restaurant after the Robins now officially on the program for the first time as the Brooklyn Dodgers were defeated 4-1 in the series by the Boston Red Sox. Babe Ruth pitched 13 scoreless innings for the Red Sox. After plenty of media buzz the Feltman’s deal ultimately fell through.

We can only fantasize about what would have happened if Mr. Feltman had bought our Brooklyn’s Bums. It could have been the perfect marriage. Family that invented the hot dog owns the Brooklyn Dodgers! Nathan of Nathan’s Famous worked for Charles L. Feltman at around this time (1915) , slicing hot dog buns at Feltman’s of Coney Island.

Maybe the Dodgers would have stayed in Brooklyn? Imagine if Feltman brought the Dodgers to Coney Island? We can only dream!

Enjoy the baseball season! Buy up those Cyclones tickets. Remember this story when you order your first hot dog of the season.