Dodgers name origin:?

Question

Where did the name Dodgers originate?

All great and informative answers, Im' at a loss to pick the best. Many, many thanks to all.

Answer 1

http://www.acmewebpages.com/dodgers/thename.htm

There you go. It basically has to do w/ Trolley Dodging as people from Brooklyn were called back then.

Answer 2

Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers

Answer 3

Brooklyn was originally a bedroom community for New York City, and the people there were referred to a "trolley car Dodgers," because they had to dodge trolley cars to get from one side of the street to the other. The Dodgers eventually took the name "Dodgers" because it was synonymous with Brooklyn, but it has nothing to do with LA, except maybe draft dodgers.

Answer 4

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Dodgers name origin:?
Where did the name Dodgers originate?

Answer 5

Dear chief8,

When the Dodgers were in Brooklyn, people used to jump on and off the trolleys and became known as trolley Dodgers-- hence the name now- Dodgers.

GO Dodger Blue!

Nickster

Answer 6

They were the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers back in the day.

Crayola flirted with a color called Dodger Blue back in the early 80s.

Answer 7

The team was founded in Brooklyn, where back in the day there was a rather efficient cable trolley system -- cost-effective, frequent transport that got you where you were going. Trolley dodging was a way of life, or an actual sport for the younger citizens of the borough. Trolley dodgers.

Someone decided that name rang well, and there it was. And it moved west to Los Angeles.

Answer 8

Trolley dodgers... to avoid getting run over, you dodged out of the way of the on coming trolley.

New York needs a new baseball team and the Dodgers are a New York name.

Answer 9

Dodgers as in "Trolley Dodgers", referring to the maze of trolleys and tracks surrounding the area in Brooklyn in the late 1890s where the ballpark was. You had to be nimble and quick, and very alert, to meander through the maze of moving trolleys and not get hit by one on the way to the ballpark.

Answer 10

Brooklyn Atlantics (1884)
Brooklyn Grays (1885 - 1887)
Brooklyn Grooms (1891 - 1895)
Brooklyn Bridegrooms (1888 - 1890, 1896 - 1898)
Brooklyn Superbas (1899 - 1910, 1913)
Brooklyn Robins (1914 - 1931)
Brooklyn Dodgers (1911, 1912, 1932 - 1957)
Los Angeles Dodgers (1958 - 2007)

Brooklyn collected more nicknames than any team, anywhere, any time. Amateur and minor league teams in Brooklyn were called Putnam, Continentals, Resolute, Niagara, Bedford, Star Clubs, Brooklyns, Atlantic, Brooks, Goo-Goos, Gladiators, Hartfords (the Hartford, Connecticut, Dark Blues moved to Brooklyn in 1877), Mutuals, Nassuas, Excelsior, Eckford (named for famed ship builder Henry Eckford), and Cyclones. Major league teams went by the names Atlantics, Eckfords, Hartfords, Grays, Byrne's Men, Bridegrooms, Ward's Wonders, Trolley Dodgers, Trolley City Nine, Foutz's Fillies, Superbas, Infants, Tip-Tops, Robins, Daffiness Boys, Dodgers, Bums, and the Boys of Summer.

The team we know as the Dodgers was formed by Charlie Byrne and his investors in 1883 in the minor league Inter-State League, with the official name of The Brooklyn Base Ball Club. The next season they switched to the major league American Association. The earliest nicknames were coined by newspaper writers to make better use of limited newspaper headline space. Early on, reporters referred to Byrne's team as the Atlantics (a dominant Brooklyn amateur and professional team from 1855 to 1881) and soon the Grays (because that was the color of their uniforms). Some of the other early nicknames were the Church City Nines (Brooklyn was known as the City of Churches) or the Brooklyn Kings (Brooklyn makes up the entirety of Kings County). Four players were married in 1888, so that year's team became known as the Bridegrooms, a name the team wouldn't be able to shake for two decades. In 1890 the team jumped from the American Association to the National League, where they have been ever since.

By 1890 New Yorkers (Brooklyn was a separate city until it became a borough in 1898) routinely called anyone from Brooklyn a "trolley dodger," due to the vast network of street car lines criss-crossing the borough then. When the second Washington Park burned down early in the 1891 season, the team moved to nearby Eastern Park, which was bordered on two sides by street car tracks. That's when the team was first called the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers. That was soon shortened to Dodgers.

In 1890, John Montgomery "Monte" Ward managed and played for Brooklyn's entry in the Players' League, a team that was called Ward's Wonders. That league folded after only one year, and Monte joined Byrne's National League team as player/manager for the next two years. Those teams were also often called Ward's Wonders. Under player/manager Dave Foutz (1893 - 1896), they were often called Foutz's Fillies (and sometimes, Follies). Ned Hanlon joined the team as manager in 1899 (along with half the American Association's defunct Baltimore Orioles) and the nickname Superbas became common. It seems there was a popular vaudeville acrobatic troupe at the time by the name of Hanlon's Superbas (no relation). It also didn't hurt that the team won the National League pennant two years in a row.

Wilbert Robinson became manager in 1914, a year after the team moved into Ebbets Field. He saw the team through some if its more colorful, if not always successful, years. While he was manager (1914 - 1931) the team was sometimes called the Robins or the Flock. Just as often, though, they were called the Daffy Dodgers or Uncle Robbie's Daffiness Boys.

In 1926 Uncle Robbie phoned the Brooklyn Sun to complain about a sports cartoon that compared two players' salaries. The sports editor was so upset he ordered his writers to use the name Dodgers and never again refer to the team as the Robins. When Robbie was replaced as manager in 1932, the other newspapers followed suit.

Throughout the years after the turn of the century, the Dodger name persisted, even while many people continued to call them Bridegrooms, Superbas, Robins or even (around 1912) the Infants. The word Dodgers first appeared in block letters on the team's uniforms in 1932, when it was used on both the home and road jerseys. No other nickname had ever appeared on their uniforms. Before 1932 only the word Brooklyn (in block letters) or the letter B was used on the jerseys. The familiar script lettering was first used on the 1938 jerseys. From 1939 through 1945, the home jerseys had Dodgers on the front, while the road jerseys said Brooklyn. Both words were in the script lettering that is still used today. From 1959 through 1969 and again since 1999, the road jerseys have Los Angeles on them. Between 1946 and 1958 and again between 1970 and 1998 both the home and road jerseys had Dodgers on the front. Player names were added to the back of the jerseys for the first time in 1972, Peter O'Malley's third year as President. A year after Frank McCourt took over the team, the player names were removed for two seasons—2005 & 2006—but returned for the 2007 season.

By 1938 the team had earned the affectionate moniker Dem Bums, or, simply, Bums, at first for consistantly finishing in the second division (in the fourteen years from 1925 to 1938 they finished higher than fourth in the NL only once—3rd in 1932), and later due to their seemingly annual defeat in the World Series at the hands of the interborough rival Yankees (1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953 and 1956). Most fans quit using the term Bums after they won the 1955 World Series.

Since their move to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, all those past names have been left to the history books. Now, they are simply, the Dodgers.