The Trolley Dodger

ESPN.com has this had a special Web Gems video up at their site today going over the best defensive players at each position, with input by Baseball Prospectus. Russell Martin projected to be the overall best defensive catcher in both leagues for 2009. The video is no longer available.

Over at the Dodgers Blue Blog today, Chuck tells the one of the great stories in Dodgers history, “When Zack Wheat held out”

In 1917 Zack Wheat returned his unsigned contract to owner Charlie Ebbets saying he wanted more money. Ebbets decided he would go to Polo, MO to talk to his star player to talk him into the contract. When Ebbets arrived he found that Wheat wanted more than he was willing to offer and would not budge. Ebbets didn’t like giving raises unless he felt forced too so he offered a small increase and Zack Wheat smiled and refused. Ebbets tried smooth talking and then anger to get Wheat to sign, but he refused saying he wouldn’t mind sitting home in the summer and with his farm he wouldn’t starve.

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I’ll bet that trip from NYC to Missouri wasn’t trivial back in 1917. Zack Wheat was worth it.

Somehow I missed the announcement, but there’s a new official Dodgers blog, Inside Dodgertown.

Dodger webisodes provide an inside look at your beloved Dodgers from anywhere in the world – the world of Dodgertown.

This is awesome, as I’ve been wishing for an easier way to keep track of new videos on the site.

Friday in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle was this article by Phoebe Neidl, “The Trolleys We Didn’t Dodge”, covering some of the dangerous history of those famous trolleys.

The first electric trolley ride in Brooklyn was on April 19, 1890. The new method of transport allowed people to travel to all corners of the city on the cheap. By 1919, there were 40 different trolley lines in Brooklyn, an abundance that inspired the nickname “trolley dodgers” for Brooklynites (a certain famous baseball team took this as their name and then shortened it to simply The Dodgers).

But the electric lines quickly proved more dangerous and accident-prone than their horse-drawn predecessors. In 1893, subway commissioners called for safety measures to be applied to the new lines, such as speed limits. There was public debate over the trolley system and its dangers versus its advantages. Who was responsible when people were struck and killed by the trolleys? The operators? The owners of the companies?

Via Dodger Thoughts, who also has the story on Peter O’Malley’s visit to Brooklyn over the weekend.

Here’s a 1959 newsreel of the West Coast’s first World Series game, which of course took place at the Coliseum. The unmistakable voice of Ed Herlihy walks us through the action between the Dodgers and White Sox.

The YouTube title date (October 5, 1959) is incorrect, by the way — Game 3 was the first game in LA and was on October 4th. The three games played at the Coliseum were each record-breaking World Series crowds and are unlikely to be broken: 92,394, 92,650, and 92,706.

Via The Retroist, who points out, “Before we had the constant braying of 24 hours cable news, people got their ‘visual’ news via newsreel”, and links to all the Universal Newsreels now on YouTube.