3 Finger Brown leads the Way

The latest issue of Baseball History & Art focuses on Brooklyn baseball and some of the most beloved players of the early decades. There is also a bit about Charles Ebbetts, builder of Ebbetts Field. Imagine, he started selling scorecards for the team in 1880 and ended up owning the team! That “can-do” attitude is one of the things that I most admire about both baseball and America in those earlier days. I suppose even now there are success stories like his; it’s just that they seem much less frequent. Maybe not, but there does seem, to me, to be one big difference. Fortunes today seem to be built overnight. Some manage it by creating a software app that will be forgotten in less ten years, some do it by scams, some do it by getting fat contracts through politicians that they seem to have paid off. How often do we hear of modern fortunes being built up slowly, over a lifetime, such as Charles Ebbetts accomplished? More important than Mr. Ebbett’s wallet is the fact that he really built up an institution (the Dodgers) that will last a long, long time. I suspect Ebbetts would be more proud of the Dodger legacy than any of the money that he made.

Anyway, here is the latest cover: