Mapping Brooklyn's Baseball Heritage

Ben
March 15, 2013

For the past couple of days I've been laying the groundwork for a map of Brooklyn's baseball past. It's a daunting task, our borough being so rich in baseball lore, but with the help of many terrific books in our collection, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, and our directories I've managed to come up with quite a few points of interest. Thanks to Google maps I've been able to overlay these historic baseball sites with the locations of our branch libraries, with the hope that the wandering baseball scholar will find herself -- if in need of reference materials or a restroom -- a library nearby to visit.

Aerial shot of Ebbets field

So what can you expect to find here? Well, the childhood home of Joe Torre, the address where Sandy Koufax lived while a student at Lafayette High School, the building where Duke Snider and Gil Hodges first roomed when they lived in Brooklyn. In addition to these more recent points of interest, you will also be able to discover where in Carroll Gardens the mid-19th century club, the Charter Oaks, played and what kind of uniforms they wore (pink shirts, pink and white striped pants).

Keep in mind though that this is certainly a Beta of all Beta maps; in time I hope to tinker with it to make a more comprehensive, detailed, and error-free version. If you're scoring at home and you notice I've made an error, feel free to point it out in the comments section below. I have yet to completely annotate each point of interest, so be patient, in time they will each be fleshed out and links to relevant books will be included. All of the invaluable texts I used to begin this map can be found here at the Brooklyn Collection and include the following titles: