Charles Ebbets

While much has been written about the legendary players and managers of the Deadball Era (1901-1919), far less attention has been paid to baseball club owners like Charles Ebbets who put together the teams and built the era's legendary ball parks. In 1898, after a 15 year apprenticeship, Ebbets became president of the Brooklyn Dodgers, taking over a chronic second division team in poor financial condition. Over the next 25 years, he built four pennant winning clubs while making the franchise one of the most profitable in baseball. Even more impressively, Charles Ebbets gave Brooklyn two state of the art ball parks, something Hall of Famers, Branch Rickey and Walter O'Malley couldn't to do even once. Ebbets was also an effective steward of the national pastime, working tirelessly for innovations that would help all teams, not just his own. In spite of all his success, however, Ebbets' weaknesses also sowed the seeds for the destruction of what he had so painstakingly built. This first full length biography of Charles Ebbets provides an in depth look his life and baseball career while filling a gap in the history of the Deadball Era and the Brooklyn Dodgers.