• Card series: Diamond Heads '15
• City: Brooklyn
• Team: Robins
• League: National League

Charles Hercules Ebbets, Sr (1859-1925) started work for the new Brooklyn baseball team in 1883 and did just about every job possible before taking over operations in ’98. He became president of the Bridegrooms and was even the field manager that year. A tenth-place finish (out of 12 NL teams) ushered Ebbets out of the dugout and into the executive suite. A lifelong love of the game had drawn this architect/businessman/politician to the most menial of tasks for the franchise, working his way to the top upon the death of Charles Byrne. Twice he risked personal bankruptcy: in 1902 to keep the team in Brooklyn and later to buy the land and build the club’s new park. When the modest Ebbets suggested “Washington Park” as the name of the stadium, a Brooklyn Times reporter admonished him “Why don’t you call it Ebbets Field? It was your idea and nobody else’s, and you’ve put yourself in hock to build it.”

• The park he built would become the site of some of the most zany and beloved moments in all of sport