Los Angeles Dodgers
The Los Angeles Dodgers are an American professional baseball team based in Los Angeles. The Dodgers compete in Major League Baseball as a member club of the National League West Division. One of the most successful and storied franchises in MLB, the Dodgers have won nine World Series championships and a record 26 National League pennants. As of 2024, Forbes ranked the Dodgers second in MLB franchise valuation at $5.45 billion. They are the current champions of MLB, having won the World Series for the second straight year.
Founded in 1883 in Brooklyn, New York, the team joined the NL in 1890 as the Brooklyn Bridegrooms and used other names before becoming the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1932. The Dodgers broke the baseball color line in 1947 with the debut of Jackie Robinson, the first African American to play in the Major Leagues since 1884. From the 1940s through the mid-1950s, the Dodgers had a fierce crosstown rivalry with the New York Yankees. The clubs have faced each other in the World Series a record 12 times, with the Dodgers losing the first five matchups before winning the franchise's first title in 1955.
After 68 seasons in Brooklyn, Dodgers owner and president Walter O'Malley moved the franchise to Los Angeles before the 1958 season. The team played their first four seasons at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum before moving to their current home of Dodger Stadium in 1962. The Dodgers found immediate success in Los Angeles, winning the 1959 World Series. Success continued into the 1960s; their ace pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale helped win titles in and. In 1956, Don Newcombe became the first player to win the Cy Young Award and be named NL MVP in the same season. In, rookie pitcher Fernando Valenzuela became a sensation and led the team to a championship; he remains the only player to win the Cy Young and Rookie of the Year awards in the same season. The Dodgers were once again victorious in, upsetting their heavily favored opponent in each series and becoming the only franchise to win multiple titles in the 1980s. Next came a 32-year championship drought, despite 12 postseason appearances in a 17-year span and eight consecutive division titles from 2013 to 2020. It was broken when the Dodgers won the World Series. Two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani joined the Dodgers in 2024, who led the team to consecutive World Series titles that season and in 2025 while setting league and franchise records along the way.
Eleven players have been named NL MVP with the Dodgers. Eight Dodger pitchers have won a total of 12 Cy Young Awards—by far the most of any MLB franchise. The Dodgers boast 18 Rookie of the Year Award winners, twice as many as the next club. This includes four consecutive Rookies of the Year from 1979 to 1982 and five consecutive from 1992 to 1996. From 1884 through 2025, the Dodgers' record is . Since moving to Los Angeles in 1958, the Dodgers' record is through the end of 2025.
The Dodgers have a wide fanbase and have historically been one of the National League's most dominant teams. Their rivalry with the San Francisco Giants has spanned over a century and distinct eras as a New York City cross-town affair and a California cross-state rivalry.
History
The club was formed, as the Brooklyn Baseball Association, in 1883, when it played in the Interstate League. It joined the major league American Association in 1884, and the National League in 1890.Although the team had no official nickname until 1932, they were informally nicknamed the Bridegrooms in the team's earliest years, then the Superbas around the turn of the century, and then the Robins. In the early 1900s, sportswriter Charles Dryden nicknamed the team the Trolley Dodgers after the Brooklyn pedestrians who dodged streetcars in the city, and the Dodgers nickname was used contemporaneously with Superbas and Robins. In 1932, the team allowed the Brooklyn baseball writers to select a permanent name, and the writers chose Dodgers on January 22, 1932. The only other nickname seriously considered by the writers was Kings.
In 1941, the Dodgers captured their third National League pennant, only to lose to the New York Yankees. This marked the onset of the Dodgers–Yankees rivalry, as the Dodgers would face them in their next six World Series appearances. Led by Jackie Robinson, the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era; and three-time National League Most Valuable Player Roy Campanella, also signed out of the Negro leagues, the Dodgers captured their first World Series title in 1955 by defeating the Yankees for the first time, a story described in the 1972 book The Boys of Summer.
After the 1957 season, the team left Brooklyn. In just their second season in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won their second World Series title, beating the Chicago White Sox in six games in 1959. Spearheaded by the dominant pitching of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, the Dodgers captured three pennants in the 1960s and won two more World Series titles, sweeping the Yankees in four games in 1963, and edging the Minnesota Twins in seven in 1965. The 1963 sweep was their second victory against the Yankees, and their first against them as a Los Angeles team. The Dodgers won more pennants in 1966, 1974, 1977, and 1978, but lost in each World Series appearance. They won the World Series again in 1981 behind pitching sensation Fernando Valenzuela; the early 1980s were affectionately dubbed "Fernandomania".
In 1988, another pitching hero, Orel Hershiser, led them to a World Series victory, aided by one of the most memorable home runs of all time: star outfielder Kirk Gibson, injured in both knees, came off the bench to pinch-hit with two outs in the bottom of the ninth inning of game 1, in his only appearance of the series. Their next pennant came in 2017, aided by a Justin Turner walk-off home run, 29 years to the day after Gibson's. They lost the Series in seven games to the Houston Astros, which would later be revealed to have been stealing signs. The Dodgers repeated as pennant-winners in 2018 but lost the Series to the Boston Red Sox in 5 games. They took the pennant in 2020 in a season shortened by the COVID-19 pandemic to 60 games, and defeated the Tampa Bay Rays to win the Series in 6 games. The Dodgers returned to the World Series in 2024, defeating the New York Yankees in 5 games. They returned to the World Series as defending champions in 2025, defeating the Toronto Blue Jays in 7 games.
The Dodgers share a fierce rivalry with the San Francisco Giants, dating back the franchises' time in New York City. Both teams moved west for the 1958 season. The Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers have appeared in the World Series 22 times, while the New York/San Francisco Giants have appeared in the World Series 20 times. The Dodgers have won nine World Series titles, and the Giants eight. When the two teams were based in New York, the Giants won five World Series championships, and the Dodgers one. Since the move to California, the Dodgers have won eight World Series while the Giants have won three.
In Brooklyn, the Dodgers won the NL pennant 12 times and the World Series in 1955. After moving to Los Angeles, the team won National League pennants in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1988, 2017, 2018, 2020, 2024, and 2025 with World Series championships in 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988, 2020, 2024 and 2025. In all, the Dodgers have appeared in 22 World Series: nine in Brooklyn and 13 in Los Angeles.
Team history
Brooklyn Dodgers
The Dodgers were founded in 1883 as the Brooklyn Atlantics, borrowing the name of a defunct team that had played in Brooklyn before them. The team joined the American Association in 1884 and won the AA championship in 1889 before joining the National League in 1890. They promptly won the NL Championship in their first year in the League. The team was known alternatively as the Bridegrooms, Grooms, Superbas, Robins and Trolley Dodgers, before officially becoming the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1930s.Jackie Robinson
For most of the first half of the 20th century, no Major League Baseball team employed an African American player. Jackie Robinson became the first African American to play for a Major League Baseball team when he played his first major league game on April 15, 1947, as a member of the Brooklyn Dodgers. This was mainly due to general manager Branch Rickey's efforts. The deeply religious Rickey's motivation appears to have been primarily moral, although business considerations were also a factor. Rickey was a member of The Methodist Church, the antecedent denomination to The United Methodist Church of today, which was a strong advocate for social justice and active later in the American Civil Rights Movement.This event was the harbinger of the integration of professional sports in the United States, the concomitant demise of the Negro leagues, and is regarded as a key moment in the history of the American Civil Rights Movement. Robinson was an exceptional player, a speedy runner who sparked the team with his intensity. He was the inaugural recipient of the Rookie of the Year award, which is now named the Jackie Robinson Award in his honor. The Dodgers' willingness to integrate, when most other teams refused to, was a key factor in their 1947–1956 success. They won six pennants in those 10 years with the help of Robinson, three-time MVP Roy Campanella, Cy Young Award winner Don Newcombe, Jim Gilliam and Joe Black. Robinson would eventually go on to become the first African-American elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
Move to California
Real estate investor Walter O'Malley acquired majority ownership of the Dodgers in 1950 when he bought the 25 percent share of co-owner Branch Rickey and became allied with the widow of another equal partner, Mrs. John L. Smith. Shortly afterwards, he was working to buy new land in Brooklyn to build a more accessible and profitable ballpark than the aging Ebbets Field. Beloved as it was, Ebbets Field was no longer well-served by its aging infrastructure and the Dodgers could no longer sell out the park even in the heat of a pennant race, despite largely dominating the National League from 1946 to 1957.O'Malley wanted to build a new, state-of-the-art stadium in Brooklyn. But City Planner Robert Moses and New York politicians refused to grant him the eminent domain authority required to build pursuant to O'Malley's plans. To put pressure on the city, during the 1955 season, O'Malley announced that the team would play seven regular-season games and one exhibition game at Jersey City's Roosevelt Stadium in 1956. Moses and the City considered this an empty threat, and did not believe O'Malley would go through with moving the team from New York City.
After teams began to travel to and from games by air instead of train, it became possible to include locations in the far west. Los Angeles officials attended the 1956 World Series looking to the Washington Senators to move to the West Coast. When O'Malley heard that LA was looking for a club, he sent word to the Los Angeles officials that he was interested in talking. LA offered him what New York would not: a chance to buy land suitable for building a ballpark, and own that ballpark, giving him complete control over all revenue streams. When the news came out, NYC Mayor Robert F. Wagner, Jr. and Moses made an offer to build a ballpark on the World's Fair Grounds in Queens that would be shared by the Giants and Dodgers. However, O'Malley was interested in his park under only his conditions, and the plans for a new stadium in Brooklyn seemed like a pipe dream. O'Malley decided to move the Dodgers to California, convincing Giants owner Horace Stoneham to move to San Francisco instead of Minneapolis to keep the Giants-Dodgers rivalry alive on the West Coast. They were the first MLB teams both west and south of St. Louis.
The Brooklyn Dodgers played their final game at Ebbets Field on September 24, 1957, which the Dodgers won 2–0 over the Pittsburgh Pirates.
For the 1958 season, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles and kept their nickname, even though pedestrians in Los Angeles were not known for dodging trolleys. The Giants also kept their nickname when they moved to San Francisco for that season as well. These moves left New York with only one baseball team, the American League Yankees, and without a National League team until 1962, when Joan Payson founded the New York Mets. The blue background used by the Dodgers was adopted by the Mets, honoring their New York NL forebears with a blend of Dodgers blue and Giants orange.