Charles Ebbets

A long time member of the Society for American Baseball Research, John G. Zinn is the author of three books about the Brooklyn Dodgers and numerous articles and essays about the history of baseball. His blog on baseball history can be found at amanlypastime.blogspot.com.

• Table of ContentsPreface and AcknowledgmentsI.“Where I learnt the first rudiments of baseball”II.“The greatest mistake of our life”III.“I have put every dollar I own into the club”IV.“It is the fair name of the Brooklyn club at stake”V.“Sooner than give into Freedman I would lose every dollar I have invested in the game”VI.“Sabbatarians who wanted to regulate the morals of everyone”VII.“I know we get robbed, I know it”VIII.“We gentlemen are the guardians of this great national game”IX.“A very important piece of news”X.“An outside organization antagonistic to us coming into Brooklyn”XI.“A wide smile on his face and giving the glad hand to all comers”XII.“A man who can do that has more than ­twenty-five cents in his pocket”XIII.“1920 will be the most wonderful season in the history of our great National game”XIV.“Tell the fans that I am in baseball until I die”XV.“The good squire of Flatbush”Chapter NotesBibliographyIndex

“An excellent account of the efforts required to establish the business of base ball in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thoroughly researched and gracefully written, the Ebbets bio fills a longstanding void in baseball scholarship, providing readers with the largely untold life story of the club owner...Zinn knows his subject well...compelling reading and a most deserving Gabriel Award winner.”—The Inside Game (SABR Deadball Era Committee Newsletter); “John Zinn's well-researched biography of Ebbets gives us a detailed look at a Dodgers owner who devoted 42 years of his life to Brooklyn baseball. Zinn skillfully recounts Ebbets’s role in helping guide the National League through the challenges presented by three rival leagues, as well as his long battle to bring Sunday baseball to New York.”—Lyle Spatz, author of Hugh Casey: The Triumphs and Tragedies of a Brooklyn Dodger.