Did you know there was a football team called the Brooklyn Dodgers? This nice little piece of Americana reminds us of that fact. It’s the cover of a program for an NFL game between the Dodgers and the Washington Redskins, played at Ebbets Field today in 1942. The Brooklyn Dodgers football team existed from 1930 to 1944, at which point it became the Brooklyn Tigers for one season, then the next year merged with the Boston Yanks. This move came about due to a decline in the on-field product caused by wartime shortages of players. But before being folded into another franchise and effectively disappearing, the Dodgers helped bring the NFL into the mass media era when its October 22, 1939 game against the Philadelphia Eagles was broadcast on television. That was the first NFL broadcast ever. Another historical note: the unusual Dodgers nickname derives from the fact that through the late 1800s and early 1900s, there were so many trolley lines running through Brooklyn that people from that borough were called “trolley dodgers.” Naturally, this is also the reason the All-America Football Conference team called the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the baseball Brooklyn Dodgers, both adopted the nickname. Of course, baseball’s Dodgers were the first to do so, by decades. Lastly, on the cover is a photo of Frank Kinard, who played for the Dodgers/Tigers and, just to make the whole name thing even more convoluted, played for the New York Yankees of the All-America Football Conference. He was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 1971. You can learn plenty more about the Brooklyn Dodgers at the website luckyshow.org.

Here’s another new tabloid for our ever-expanding collection, the mid-tier Suppressed. So far, we’ve seen issues only from 1954 through 1956, so we can safely assume it didn’t last long. It isn’t for lack of effort, though. The layouts are interesting and designers even splash self-promoting logos throughout the mag, but all for naught, apparently. In this particular issue, published in March 1955, we learn about the Topping family, whose patriarch Dan Topping was part owner and president of the New York Yankees from 1945 to 1964. We get profiles of Mara English, Robert Taylor, and a story about John Wayne and his three marriages. And we learn that there were two sides to segregation. Silly us, we thought the two sides were the right one and the wrong one, but Suppressed schools us in all the sociological nuances of state-sponsored apartheid. What a treat! More Suppressed later. 

In the United States, Major League Baseball’s 2010 season opened last night with a couple of games, but today is the first full slate of baseball, and in commemoration we’ve tracked down a few images of baseballers from the past. We won’t identify every player, but we do want to make special mention of a few. In panel two below you see Ty Cobb  spiking catcher Paul Kritchell in the nuts. Why? That's just how he rolled. Panel three shows Buck Leonard of the Homestead Grays running out a grounder against the Philadelphia Stars during the 1945 season, and below him is Oscar Charleston. Leonard, Charleston, and Josh Gibson, in panel eleven, are all Negro League players who were inducted into the Major League Baseball Hall of Fame way back in the early seventies. Allthree are considered by sports historians to be among the best who ever played their positions, though they never played in the Major Leagues. Lastly, in panel fourteen you see Lefty Grove, one of the great pitchers of his era, frozen in time just before a game, forever young.

We decided to post all these photos because we’re basically a history site, and baseball, more than any other American sport, is inextricably bound with the country’s history. When you think of Ted Williams, you don’t just think of baseball—you think of World War II. When you think of Joe DiMaggio, you think of Marilyn Monroe and her tragic ending. Hank Aaron, chasing a sacred record with grim determination, is part and parcel of the civil rights movement—not for anything he said, but just because that was his place in time. For every era of baseball, the facesconjure moments on the field, but also events far from the confines of the ballpark. This is what makes the boys of summer such a special group. Seasons change, winter inevitably comes, careers and lives end, but their niches in history are secure. Meanwhile these images are a reminder of just how long and wonderful the summer can be. Enjoy the season everyone. 

In the U.S., Major League Baseball’s World Series begins tonight when the Philadelphia Phillies play the New York Yankees in New York City. These are two of the oldest organizations in the majors—the Phillies date from 1883, and the Yankees were formed in 1901 as the Baltimore Orioles, before moving to New York in 1913 and rechristening themselves with a new name. So in honor of these venerable teams, and baseball in general, we’ve cobbled together a collection of baseball-themed pulp magazines—seven, actually, for the number of games we want the series to go. But however long it lasts, let’s hope the games are entertaining and the fiery rioting in the winning town is non-lethal. Most of these images came from here.

Former New York Yankee baseball player Jim Leyritz, who is considered a god in the Big Apple for hitting a three-run homer in game 4 of the 1996 World Series, finds himself in legal trouble yet again after a heated domestic incident with his wife last night. The New York Daily News reports that Leyritz dragged his wife Karrie out of bed and hit her twice after learning she had written a check without his permission. Leyritz, whose homer is credited with saving the Yankees ’96 season, has had numerous troubles since retiring from sports. The most serious of those incidents occurred in December 2007 when, after a night of partying with a stripper, he ran a red light and broadsided an SUV driven by a waitress named Fredia Ann Veitch. Veitch was ejected from her vehicle and died at the hospital a short time later. Leyritz was taken into custody after an unsatisfactory field sobriety test, and later charged with DUI manslaughter. His situation got even worse when a police video surfaced that showed his apparent lack of concern when informed by an officer that Veitch had died. We watched the video and don't think there's any way to tell what's really going through Leyritz's mind, and he has strongly maintained that he was not being callous, but was just too shocked by events to show much reaction. He has also maintained he wasn't drunk that night, and the collision was not his fault. Soon a jury will decide whether that’s true, and in the meantime he’ll be arraigned for domestic battery.