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BROOKLYN, N.Y. - And there used to be a ballpark where the field was warm and green
And the people played their crazy game with a joy I'd never seen
JENNIFER S. ALTMAN /For The Inquirer
With the famed Coney Island Cyclone , above, as a backdrop, the single-A Brooklyn Cyclones play ball at KeySpan Park, below. Baseball was brought back to Brooklyn in 2001. Now, 50 years after the beloved Dodgers were moved to L.A., baseball is flourishing. Fans are packing the park at an average of more than 7,500 a game.
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And the air was such a wonder from the hot dogs and the beer
Yes, there used a ballpark right here
- Frank Sinatra, 1973
Frank Sinatra never saw KeySpan Park. He never looked over the scoreboard in left field and saw the famous Coney Island Cyclone. Sinatra sang those lyrics about Ebbets Field, which housed the Brooklyn Dodgers in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn for 44 years.
That was until 50 years ago, when owner Walter O'Malley couldn't get the domed stadium he wanted in Brooklyn and moved the Dodgers to Los Angeles. Ebbets Field became an apartment complex.
Baseball was brought back to Brooklyn in 2001 at KeySpan Park. It is a 7,500-seat minor-league stadium that houses the single-A Brooklyn Cyclones of the New York-Penn League - not exactly featuring Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider and Pee Wee Reese.
But there's a phenomenon associated with Cyclones baseball. The Cyclones have averaged 7,749 fans this season, tops in the New York-Penn League. The next highest is the Aberdeen (Md.) IronBirds with 6,567. Eleven of the 14 teams in the league draw an average of fewer than 5,000 fans per game.
On Tuesday, 7,420 saw the Cyclones beat the Williamsport CrossCutters - the Phillies' single-A affiliate - 5-1, despite Phillies 2007 fifth-round pick Michael Taylor's going 2 for 4 with a double and an RBI.
The reason is simple: Fifty years after the Dodgers left, the borough of Brooklyn has changed, but the love for baseball lingers.
The Dodgers
The Dodgers were a source of pride for Brooklyn, which had the distinction of being "Manhattan's bedroom." Residents worked in Manhattan and slept in Brooklyn.But they had a baseball team, and that was enough.
"We're not a city, just a borough, and we have a team," Roger Kahn said by phone. Kahn grew up in Brooklyn and covered the Dodgers for the New York Herald Tribune and wrote the classic book The Boys of Summer.
The franchise started in 1890 but was not particularly successful until the 1940s. From 1941 to 1956, the Dodgers won seven pennants. They won the 1955 World Series and set their mark in history in 1947 when Jackie Robinson integrated baseball.
But Brooklyn started to change, too. Attendance slipped, partly because of a population shift to the suburbs following World War II. Kahn pointed to television as the primary catalyst for sliding attendance because fewer people needed to be at the ballpark to see the game.
O'Malley's answer was a new ballpark. He was steadfast about building a domed stadium at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in downtown Brooklyn. Robert Moses, the New York City building commissioner, wanted the ballpark in Queens on the plot of land where Shea Stadium is now located.
Neither man compromised, and O'Malley moved to franchise to Los Angeles.
Brooklyn was crushed. The Dodgers were not as much a ballclub as an institution.
"The pyramids are in Egypt, and the Dodgers are in Brooklyn," Kahn said.
The lure of land and a stadium in Los Angeles - plus the legacy of westward expansion in baseball - was enough for O'Malley to break the hearts of Brooklynites. Kahn and another Brooklyn native, Jay Leonard, who now lives in Short Hills, N.J., echoed the fabled expression that there would be a public lynching of O'Malley if he had returned to Brooklyn after the move.
"Here's a team that's an integral part of the community for 75 years, and all of the sudden, a greedy man says, 'If I go to California, I'll find gold,' " Kahn said. "Baseball is a private business, but it's a quasi-public institution."
The Cyclones
In the late 1990s, then-New York mayor and current presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani worked to land minor-league franchises in Brooklyn and Staten Island. New York Mets owner Fred Wilpon is a Brooklyn native and understood the importance of baseball to the borough. The Mets became a natural affiliate for a Brooklyn franchise.The New York Yankees took the Staten Island franchise.
It was an opportune development to place the ballpark at Coney Island, which is a summer place with its amusement park and beach. Single A is short-season summer ball, which made the Coney Island location even more ideal.
The team has set various attendance records. In 2002 and 2003, the Cyclones became the first short-season team in history to eclipse 300,000 fans in a season. During those years, they were also the only short-season team in history to rank in the top 10 in the minor leagues in average attendance - and that's regardless of class.
