On February 23, 1960 — Twenty-eight months after the Dodgers play their last game in Brooklyn, the demolition of Ebbets Field finally begins when a wrecking ball, painted with red and white stitches, begins its work on the ballpark Brooklyn called home for 44 years. Before the demolition wheel-chair bound Roy Campanella, the team’s former All-Star catcher and three-time National League MVP is given an urn of dirt from behind home plate.
A brass band played Auld Lang Syne and 200 diehard fans watched as a two-ton wrecking ball, painted to resemble a baseball, began to demolish Ebbets Field in Brooklyn: the home of the Dodgers from 1913 to 1957.
Charles Hercules Ebbets had built his park on a garbage dump called Pigtown, Ebbets Field had united the hopes of the borough of Brooklyn, and had been home to Wilbert Robinson and Dazzy Vance; Red Barber, and Hilda Chester, and the Dodgers Sym-phony; Leo Durocher, and Pee Wee Reese, and Duke Snider; Larry MacPhail, and Branch Rickey, and Jackie Robinson.” ~ Ken Burns.
