Leo Durocher Returns to Ebbets Field as the Enemy

On July 26, 1948, Leo Durocher walked into the visiting dugout at Ebbets Field as manager of the New York Giants, just ten days after abandoning the Brooklyn Dodgers to take over their most hated rival. The overflow Brooklyn crowd gave him exactly the reception he deserved. They booed him relentlessly, and his former players buried his new team 13-4.

The switch had shocked the baseball world. Durocher had managed the Dodgers for nine seasons, building them into perennial contenders and serving as the combative, foul-mouthed face of Brooklyn baseball. He had been suspended for the entire 1947 season by Commissioner Happy Chandler for associations with gamblers, and when he returned in 1948, the team sputtered to a 37-38 record under his leadership.

Meanwhile, across the Harlem River, Giants owner Horace Stoneham wanted to replace the gentlemanly Mel Ott. Stoneham initially asked Dodgers president Branch Rickey about the availability of coach Burt Shotton. Rickey expanded the conversation to include Durocher himself. On July 16, the deal was done. Durocher was out in Brooklyn and in at the Polo Grounds. Shotton returned to manage the Dodgers.

The defection turned the already fierce Giants-Dodgers rivalry into something personal. Brooklyn fans viewed Durocher as a traitor. The phrase "nice guys finish last," which Durocher popularized and which was directed at Ott's mild temperament, became his permanent epitaph.

Durocher's impact on the Giants proved transformative, though not immediately. His first full season in 1949 produced a fifth-place finish. But in 1951, he managed the Giants through one of the most dramatic pennant races in history, culminating in Bobby Thomson's "Shot Heard 'Round the World" against the Dodgers. In 1954, his Giants swept the heavily favored Cleveland Indians to win the World Series.

The July 26 game at Ebbets Field was the first public test of the new arrangement. Brooklyn's fans left no doubt about where they stood. They had loved Durocher for nine years and hated him for the rest of his life.