Before the rise of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1940s, baseball was a game of white men, cloth caps and concrete walls. Four men helped to change the sport as America knew it: Branch Rickey, Larry MacPhail, Jackie Robinson and Pete Reiser.
These men were essential to the evolution of baseball, especially in their home of Brooklyn’s Ebbets Field. It was there that the first major league game was televised, where the batting helmet was developed, where the first walls were padded and the first outfield warning tracks laid down and—with the arrival of Jackie Robinson, it is where the color line was broken.
This richly researched history which includes chapters such as “1940: MacPhail Starts a Dodger Dynasty,” “1942: FDR Says the Show Must Go On” and “The War Years,” presents an exploration of how a crucial decade of Dodger accomplishments transformed American baseball.

Rudy Marzano started his career as a reporter on the Newark Evening News after graduating from Rutgers University. He retired from AT&T where he was a press relations manager, writer and editor. He lives in Point Pleasant at the Jersey shore.

Rudy Marzano
Foreword by Dave Anderson
Format: softcover (6 x 9)
Pages: 235
Bibliographic Info: photos, notes, bibliography, index
Copyright Date: 2005
pISBN: 978-0-7864-1987-6
Imprint: McFarland

Acknowledgments       vi
Foreword by Dave Anderson      1
Introduction      5

1. The $100 Superstar of 1939      9
2. 1940: MacPhail Starts a Dodger Dynasty      26
3. 1941: The Year of the Batting Helmet      39
4. 1942: FDR Says the Show Must Go On      71
5. The Dodgers Are Not for Sale      91
6. The War Years      94
7. 1946: Baseball’s First Playoff      105
8. 1947: Jackie Robinson Arrives      130
9. 1948: Rickey Pads the Walls      160
10. 1949: Jackie Robinson, Batting Champion      175

Notes      207
Bibliography      217
Index      221

“carefully researched…useful”—Library Journal; “splendid”—Ohioana Quarterly.