The Grim Reality of the “Trolley Dodgers”
A History and
Etymology of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ Nickname
As William Shakespeare’s Juliet
famously asked, what’s in a name? As it
turns out, what’s in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ name is quite a bit more than meets
the eye. It is well known that Los
Angeles imported the name from Brooklyn and that the name is a shortened form
of “Trolley Dodgers,” a name that hearkens back to a network of trolley lines
that criss-crossed Brooklyn in the 1890s; a sweetly anachronistic name that
conjures quaint images of men with big moustaches and bowler hats, women in
long, flouncy dresses and ostrich feather hats, and little boys in blue sailor
suits side-stepping cute yellow trolleys on the way to a baseball game.
The innocent-sounding name,
however, masks the grim reality. In
mid-1890s Brooklyn, trolley dodging was not merely a way of life; it was a
matter of life and death.
Little Zetta Lumberg, aged four, was this morning said to be dying at St. Mary's Hospital, Brooklyn. She was knocked down by trolley car No. 118, of the Fulton street line, last night.
As the child crossed the street at Saratoga avenue there was a maze of trolley cars and vehicles. She dodged behind an uptown car just as another trolley car came flying down the other track.
As the child crossed the street at Saratoga avenue there was a maze of trolley cars and vehicles. She dodged behind an uptown car just as another trolley car came flying down the other track.
The Evening World (New York) October 3, 1893.
The “trolley dodger” name was
first applied to the Brooklyn baseball team in 1895. Some sources incorrectly date
the first use of “trolley dodger” to 1891, when the team moved to its new
ballpark, Eastern Park, which is incorrectly said to have been surrounded by several trolley lines. In 1891, however, there would have been no need to “dodge” trolleys. All of the trolley cars in Brooklyn in 1891 were slow-moving, horse-drawn trolleys; no dodging necessary.
That would all change in 1892,
however, when the first of many electric trolley lines were installed on
Brooklyn’s streets. The new, faster,
more-powerful vehicles barreling through crowds of people raised in a horse-and-buggy
culture was a recipe for disaster. It took three years of maiming and death, a trolley strike, and a trolley reform movement for the “Brooklyns” or “Bridegrooms” (as they were known
at the time) to earn their new nickname, the
“Trolley Dodgers.”
[(For additional background, see my supplemental post,
The Introduction of Electric Trolleys
In 1881, Werner von Siemens
introduced his electric-powered tramway at the first International Exposition of Electricity in Paris (an event that would, curiously, inspire
the first-known science fiction story about an invasion
of the Earth by Martians). The first
electric trolley was tested
in the United States 1888. By 1890,
a speaker at the Convention of the American Street Rail Association noted that
of the 3,150 miles of street railroad track in the United States (trolleys and
cable cars), 2,354 miles were operated by horses, 260 miles by electricity, 255
miles by cable, 221 miles by steam, with the remaining miles being part of the
New York and Brooklyn elevated railways.
When referring to a paper on the subject of street car horses that was
to be read at the convention, he predicted that “electricity was making
such rapid strides he did not believe that at any subsequent convention the
street car horse would be considered.” St. Paul Daily Globe (Minnesota) October 16, 1890.
Brooklyn, however, still did not
have the electric trolley in 1890. The
only electric trolley service available in Brooklyn was the Coney Island and
Brooklyn line, which ran from the Brooklyn city limits at Prospect Park (then at the southern edge of the
city of Brooklyn) to Coney Island. The
neighborhoods of Flatbush, Flatlands, Gravesend and New Utrecht were all
independent towns or cities in 1890.
Flatbush, Gravesend and New Utrecht were not annexed until
1894; Flatlands was annexed in 1896.
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| Map of the City of Brooklyn - 1889 |
Electric trolleys would quickly
encroach on Brooklyn from all sides, however. In November 1890, the New York
State Railroad Commission approved an application to switch from horse and
steam power to the “electric single trolley wire system” on the Fort Hamilton
to Brooklyn line, several lines in New Utrecht, and a line from Bay Ridge to
Gravesend Bay. The Sun (New York)
November 19, 1890. The Jamaica Electric
Railroad also had a line that terminated at the Brooklyn city limits in
1891. It was only a matter of time before
the electric trolley extended into Brooklyn proper.
In April of 1891, General Slocum, a
Civil War hero in the Battle of Atlanta (and goat at the Battle of Gettysburg),
petitioned the city for permission to build electric trolley lines on the
streets of Brooklyn. The Sun (New York) April 23, 1891. The city initially denied his request, based at
least in part on the perceived dangers of electric trolleys and their presumed negative effects on
property values:
Brooklyn taxpayers should
appear to-morrow at the Chamber of Commerce to oppose this invasion of their
streets. If General Slocum gets a
footing in Brooklyn, Deacon Richardson and Mr. Lewis, of the Brooklyn City Railway
Company, and Mr. Culver and Mr. Corbin naturally will demand and will get the
same privileges, and Brooklyn streets will be finally overrun by the worst
system of propulsion yet invented.
New York Tribune, June 10, 1891.
The Brooklyn property owners’
fears were well-founded. Electric trolleys
had already proven to be dangerous in other cities. The electric trolleys could travel at speeds of up to fifteen miles per hour, about three times faster than typical, horse-drawn traffic. The high speeds, combined with chaotic traffic patterns of the time, made life more dangerous in the streets. Newspaper accounts from before the approval
of trolleys in Brooklyn, illustrate the twin dangers of collision and
electrocution:
The third fatal accident since
the introduction of the new electric railroad system in this city [(Newark, New
Jersey)] occurred at 9 0’clock this morning.
Mrs. Mary Albrecht . . . started to cross Springfield avenue when a
downtown car struck her and threw her with frightful force against one of the
electric poles in the street. When
picked up one leg had been broken at the thigh, and her skull had been so badly
fractured that she died shortly after her admission to the German Hospital.
The Evening World (New York)
December 31, 1890;
A broken trolley wire on the
Brooklyn and Jamaica Electric Railroad was responsible for the killing of three
horses on Wednesday night. . . . William Grimms, a Woodhaven farmer, was on his
way to market in his wagon, to which two fine horses were attached. Just as they were crossing the railroad track
both horses suddenly staggered and fell to the ground side by side. . . . [A] one-horse car on the Cypress Hills road,
which uses a portion of the same tracks as the electric road, was driven up,
and the horse attached to it shared the fate of the two others. It touched the broken electric wire and fell
as if it had been struck by lightning.
The Sun, October 9, 1891.
The electric trolleys were
finally approved in early 1892:
Within a year or less a
revolution is to take place in the surface railroad system in Brooklyn by the
substation of the electric trolley system in place of horse power. . . . [T]here is very little doubt that the
resolutions will be approved by the mayor and all obstacles to the introduction
of the electric trolley in Brooklyn removed.
The Sun, December 22, 1891.
Brooklyn’s Trolley Ordinance
passed into law in January 1892 when the Mayor refused to veto the bill; he had
vetoed an earlier version of the ordinance, but it had passed over his veto. The Evening World (New York), January
23, 1892. Construction began on the
first line by mid-March, 1891. The
electric trolley would soon take over the entire city:
Brooklyn will soon be bound by
the trolley system. Nearly every surface
road in the city has made application to the Common Council and the State
Railroad Commission for the privilege of changing their motive power from
horses to the overhead electric system.
The Evening World, April 2, 1892.
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| From thejoekorner.com |
The Death-Toll Mounts
Accidents and deaths occurred almost
immediately and the death-toll climbed steadily as the number of trolley lines
multiplied. A small sampling of
contemporary news coverage gives a sense of the danger:
“Eternal vigilance is the price
of liberty.” Eternal vigilance is
certainly needed as the price of protection from the death-dealing and hideous
trolley abomination.
The Evening World, June 23, 1892;
Another accident due to the
careless management of a trolley electric car is brought to the attention of
Brooklyn people to-day.
The Evening World, June 24, 1892;
Run into by a trolley car. This
time in Brooklyn. The record of events
keeps furnishing arguments against the perilous railway system, as applied on
city streets.
The Evening World, June 27, 1892;
The Trolley’s Fatal Score. Score three more deaths for the trolley.
The Evening World, August 22, 1892;
[A] new precaution is necessary for the suffering Brooklynite. In addition to being always
prepared to dodge the trolley wire, he must always be careful to step clear of
the trolley rail.
The Evening World, September 20, 1893;
In these times when the
trolley-cars’ slaughter from one to two people a day, the public is apt to
condemn the whole system.
The Evening World, December 20, 1893.
The trolleys were considered so
dangerous that having no accidents on the first day of operation of a new line
was apparently newsworthy:
The trolley system was put in
operation on one more of Brooklyn’s surface roads this morning. . . . This is
the first introduction of the system on Fulton street, and the swiftly moving
cars attracted a great deal of attention.
Up to noon no accidents were reported.
The system will be operated on several other roads within a few weeks.
The Evening World, November 7,
1892.
It is hard to imagine today, with
more than a century of higher-speed traffic and modern traffic laws behind us,
that the introduction of electric trolleys could create such chaos in the
streets of the mid-1890s. Early film
footage, however, provides a small glimpse of the hectic, nearly lawless
traffic patterns of the time.
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| Fire Brigade - Brooklyn, 1893 |
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| A Trip Down Market Street - San Francisco, 1906 |
Trolley Strike
In January of 1895, Brooklyn's trolley operators and conductors went on strike. Trolley service was interrupted completely for a time, although replacement drivers provided for limited service later during the strike. The national guard was called out, there was some violence, but in the end, management was able to break the strike after about one month.
Issues raised during the strike revealed some of the factors that contributed to the trolley dangers. Drivers complained that the trolley time-schedules were too tight, turn-around times too short, and that the schedules made it difficult for drivers to take their thirty-minute meal breaks and held them overtime, past the statutory ten-hour limit. Management's policy of firing drivers who fell behind on the nearly impossible time-schedules prompted drivers to drive at unsafe speeds.
Although the streets were made safer in the short term at the beginning of the strike, the danger mounted again as replacement drivers took over:
Issues raised during the strike revealed some of the factors that contributed to the trolley dangers. Drivers complained that the trolley time-schedules were too tight, turn-around times too short, and that the schedules made it difficult for drivers to take their thirty-minute meal breaks and held them overtime, past the statutory ten-hour limit. Management's policy of firing drivers who fell behind on the nearly impossible time-schedules prompted drivers to drive at unsafe speeds.
Although the streets were made safer in the short term at the beginning of the strike, the danger mounted again as replacement drivers took over:
The strike situation is
doubtless somewhat tedious for Brooklyn citizens, but there is at least one
consolation –while the trolley cars are not running they can’t kill
anybody. Brooklyn street know a safety
they have not known for some years heretofore, and Brooklyn mothers can see
their children start to school or to lay without the heart-straining thought
that the little ones may be brought back on a stretcher dead or maimed. . . .
It is a question, however,
whether the temporary suspension of operations by these instruments of death
will reduce the yearly returns of the murdered and maimed. It has been a bad enough killing machine in
the hands of men whom the companies’ officers have declared to be skilled and
experienced operators and whom they have paid fair wages.
Now the cars are being handed
over to new men, gathered from various parts of the country, unfamiliar, most
of them, with the trolley system, and all of them untrained in the running of
cars amid the difficulties and dangers of Brooklyn’s crowded streets; paide,
besides, less wages and less regularly employed than the men who have run the
cars in the past.
The Evening World, January 16, 1895. When the end of the strike was thought to be
near at hand, one paper reported:
. . . the Brooklyn trolley
strike is about ended. The companies
seem to be in a position to run their cars.
They are not skillfully operated, and throughout yesterday there were
many collisions, and there was much bumping together but there was no accident
of a serious nature.
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| Dr. Octavius' Dirty Work - Spiderman 2 |
Alexandria Gazette (Virginia) January 28, 1895. Again, one day without serious
accident appeared to be newsworthy.
The following cartoon, from a trolley
strike in 1905 (with imagery seemingly inspired by Dr. Octavius in Spiderman 2),
illustrates the public’s perception of the dangers associated with strike
replacements:
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| The Washington (DC) Times, March 29, 1905. |
A serious accident during a trolley strike in 1920 illustrates the specific danger posed by replacement drivers to fans of the Brooklyn Dodgers:
Another serious accident
occurred today on the lines of the Brooklyn Rapid Transit company, whose
employes [(sic)] have been on strike for two weeks. Two trolleys collided near Ebbets field
during the rush to the ball park this afternoon and thirty persons were
reported injured.
The Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner, September 11, 1920.
When the Brooklyn trolley strike
of 1895 finally ended in late February, a gallows-humor cartoon reflected the
expectation that nothing had changed:
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| The Evening World, February 27, 1895. |
As it turns out, nothing had changed; public backlash, however, would soon change matters.
Resistance and Reform
Within a few week following the end of the trolley strike, the public organized mass-meetings, attended by 5,000 to 10,000 people, to protest the dangers of the trolleys. The first meeting was held in early April, 1895, and continued, periodically, through May. The meetings, led by a coalition of priests, ministers, and rabbis, pressed for changes in operational policy. Their proposals included speed limits and the installation of safety fenders on the
front of
the trolleys. In May, 1895, a crowd of
more than 5000 people listened to a song entitled, “The Trolley Dirge,” in
which a clang of a trolley gong was followed by a chorus of childish
shrieks. “It is a horrible thing, but
not more so than the horrible work of the trolley which now has a record of 108
killed and over 500 more maimed for life.” Christian
Work, May 23, 1895. But the death
toll continued to rise; it stood at 133 dead by the end of the year. Christian Work, January 2, 1896.
The political response was nearly immediate. On April 14, 1895, the Mayor signed a new trolley ordinance. The new ordinance limited speeds to six miles per hour in the most crowded districts and eight miles per hour in other neighborhoods (the original electric act of 1882 had included a ten mile per hour speed limit, but due to the lack of any speed indicator and the failure of enforcement, speeds had routinely been higher), created a team of trolley inspectors to enforce the speed limits, and required the use of fenders on the trolleys. In May, several trolley executives lost their jobs for their part in contributing to the trolley dangers, and in August, the city instituted criminal proceedings against trolley executives who had violated the statutory, ten-hour shift for trolley car operators.
The political response was nearly immediate. On April 14, 1895, the Mayor signed a new trolley ordinance. The new ordinance limited speeds to six miles per hour in the most crowded districts and eight miles per hour in other neighborhoods (the original electric act of 1882 had included a ten mile per hour speed limit, but due to the lack of any speed indicator and the failure of enforcement, speeds had routinely been higher), created a team of trolley inspectors to enforce the speed limits, and required the use of fenders on the trolleys. In May, several trolley executives lost their jobs for their part in contributing to the trolley dangers, and in August, the city instituted criminal proceedings against trolley executives who had violated the statutory, ten-hour shift for trolley car operators.
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| A trolley with safety fenders attached. |
The cities of Baltimore and Buffalo, which were both early adopters of trolley fenders, reported success in reducing the rate of injury. Brooklyn began installing fenders in July of 1895. The Evening Star, July 6, 1895. Peninsula Enterprise (Accomac, Virginia) September 7, 1895. In Philadelphia, the safety fenders may have been too successful:
The
fun of dodging trolley cars, which has added so much to the agility of
Philadelphians during the last couple of years, has just been augmented
by the positive delight of falling in front of them. Small boys are
whitening the hair of every motorman in town by dropping unexpectedly in
front of the cars just for the exhilarating experience of being tossed
in the bed of a fender.
Shenandoah Herald (Woodstock, Virginia) October 11, 1895.
By August of 1896, there were no longer any electric trolleys in the United States that operated at speeds in excess of ten miles per hour. Western Electrician, August 15, 1896.
But speed limits, fenders and inatentive operation were not the only problems with electric trolleys. Another major problem was the complete lack of traffic safety standards or universal rules of the road. Mid-1890s Brooklyn, and everywhere else for that matter, did not have traffic codes. The slow pace of the horse-and-buggy culture had simply never needed any standardized traffic rules. The faster, more powerful electric trolleys, and later the automobile, would eventually lead to the introduction of standardized rules of the road that helped ameliorate the dangers of the new technologies.
By August of 1896, there were no longer any electric trolleys in the United States that operated at speeds in excess of ten miles per hour. Western Electrician, August 15, 1896.
But speed limits, fenders and inatentive operation were not the only problems with electric trolleys. Another major problem was the complete lack of traffic safety standards or universal rules of the road. Mid-1890s Brooklyn, and everywhere else for that matter, did not have traffic codes. The slow pace of the horse-and-buggy culture had simply never needed any standardized traffic rules. The faster, more powerful electric trolleys, and later the automobile, would eventually lead to the introduction of standardized rules of the road that helped ameliorate the dangers of the new technologies.
In 1903, New York City (including Brooklyn, which had been
annexed in 1898) adopted the first set of modern traffic codes. The codes had first been proposed by William Phelps Eno
(who later worked on traffic codes for London and Paris) in 1901. His proposals included such revolutionary
ideas as, keeping to the right, passing on the left, making right turns from
near the right curb and left turns from near the middle of the street, and
signaling before stopping or slowing.
Interestingly, his suggestion for the signal before stopping or slowing
was to raise the buggy whip. The New York
Tribune, February 4, 1900. He
believed that enacting, following and enforcing a few simple traffic rules
could eliminate ninety percent of all traffic accidents. The now ubiquitous and indispensible stripe down the middle
of the road was invented in 1911 and the first traffic lights in
1912, although neither were widely adopted until years later.
It must have been an incredibly
difficult transition for a horse-and-buggy culture to adapt to the presence of
large, mechanical machines (first electric trolleys and later automobiles) running
down the middle of their streets. Change
was slow. An indication of the slow pace of change is a
report from the June 15, 1918 issue of Good
Roads magazine that St. Louis was considering the noteworthy step of making
pedestrians, as well as vehicles, subject to the traffic code. Brooklyn
in the mid-1890s was just beginning to deal with the changes and was
paying the price that would eventually lead to much-needed reforms.
Trolley Dodgers
The name “trolley dodgers”
first appeared in print in early May of 1895:
The “Rainmakers” and the
“Trolley Dodgers” are the latest terms used by base ball writers to designate
the Phillies and Brooklyns respectively.
The Scranton Tribune, May 11, 1895.
The reference to the “Rainmakers” appears to have been a reaction to a
suggestion by a New York sportswriter less than two weeks earlier that, “[f]rom
now out the Philadelphias will be known as the “Rainmakers” in Gotham.” The World (New York) May 1, 1895. The name appears to have been prompted by a series of rain-outs of games with scheduled with the
Phillies. The reference to the “trolley
dodgers” also appears to be a response to a newly minted nickname.
Barry Popick’s etymology blog, The
Big Apple, cites one earlier reference to “Trolley Dodgers” from the
previous week:
“Trolley dodgers” is the new
name which Eastern baseball cranks [(fans)] have given the Brooklyn club.
The San Francisco Chronicle on
May 4, 1895. The fact that two, independent
sources report that the name is “the latest term” or “the new name” suggests
that the name was new, and unfamiliar to sportswriters (and likely their
readers) at the time. Clearly someone
had used the name before the San Francisco papers picked it up on May 4, 1895,
but probably not long before. Although
1895 was long before the “information age,” they did have the telegraph that
permitted nearly instantaneous dissemination of news, so a sportswriter who
followed baseball would be familiar with developments in the game soon after
they happened.
Several other sources would
repeat the news of Brooklyn’s new name throughout the rest of the season, using
precisely the same language (“‘Trolley dodgers’ is the new name which Eastern
baseball cranks have given the Brooklyn club”), indicative of novelty, as had
been used in the San Francisco article.
See, e.g. Atchison (Kansas) Daily
Globe, August 30, 1895; Warren (Pennsylvania) Ledger, September 3, 1895; The Roanoke Times (Virginia) September 13, 1895. The repeated reporting that the name was new,
in so many different outlets, suggests that the name was, in fact, new in 1895
and had not been known or used during the previous season. The name was still new enough in 1896
baseball season, that a magazine piece explained:
As a playful descriptive term
for the members of the Brooklyn Baseball club, the name “Trolley-dodgers” has
been adopted by some of the New York papers.
Western Electrician, August 29, 1896.
The name, "Trolley Dodgers," however, had already achieved widespread, frequent use in many different newspapers during the 1896 season. It was also used as the name for the Brooklyn Skating Club’s hockey team in 1897, in the earliest non-baseball use of the term that I could find. The Sun, February 6, 1897. Unless earlier uses are discovered, it seems safe to say that the name probably originated near the beginning of the 1895 season. In any case, it seems certain that the name could not have arisen prior to the introduction of electric trolleys in 1892.
A biography of physicist Nicola Tesla, who worked with Edison on electrical power generators in New York in 1885, asserted, without citation, that the name "trolley dodger" had been adopted by a group trolley protestors. Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time (1981), page 33. Although the timing of the appearance of the name in May, 1885, during the high-point of trolley reform activism, is consistent with the claim, I found no clear evidence of the name used in any of the contemporary accounts of the anti-trolley meetings.
The name, "Trolley Dodgers," however, had already achieved widespread, frequent use in many different newspapers during the 1896 season. It was also used as the name for the Brooklyn Skating Club’s hockey team in 1897, in the earliest non-baseball use of the term that I could find. The Sun, February 6, 1897. Unless earlier uses are discovered, it seems safe to say that the name probably originated near the beginning of the 1895 season. In any case, it seems certain that the name could not have arisen prior to the introduction of electric trolleys in 1892.
A biography of physicist Nicola Tesla, who worked with Edison on electrical power generators in New York in 1885, asserted, without citation, that the name "trolley dodger" had been adopted by a group trolley protestors. Margaret Cheney, Tesla: Man Out of Time (1981), page 33. Although the timing of the appearance of the name in May, 1885, during the high-point of trolley reform activism, is consistent with the claim, I found no clear evidence of the name used in any of the contemporary accounts of the anti-trolley meetings.
“Trolley Dodger” as a Term for a Resident of Brooklyn
There are no known examples of
the term “trolley dodger” being applied as a general euphemism for Brooklyn
residents prior to 1895. The verb, “to
dodge,” however, appears with some frequency:
Brooklyn’s trolley cars made a
field day of it yesterday. There was a
collision, which incomprehensibly failed to kill anybody, and there was the
killing of an eight-year-old boy, who
couldn’t dodge a car under full headway.
The Evening World, July 11, 1892;
In addition to being always prepared to dodge the trolley wire,
he must always be careful to step clear of the trolley rail.
The Evening World, September 20, 1893; in a report about two
Irishmen (I think I learned a song like that in grade school) who were hit by a
trolley, written in a manner to suggest an Irish brogue:
We were dodgin’ the dorned throlleys at every corner, and couldn’t get
clear of thim. We will never go near
Brooklyn again.
New York Tribune, November 27, 1893; in a one-liner joke:
“There’s no use in talking,”
remarked a man who had just dodged a
broken trolley wire; “even in this country a man must show respect for
lineal descent.”
The Evening Star (Washington DC) January 29, 1894; in an article
about a fat policeman who was outrun by a woman who was avoiding a trolley:
As for the fat policeman, he dodged off the track, mopped his brow,
and observed; “Well, if women don’t beat the devil!”
The Sun, March 18, 1894; in a satirical article about the
advantages of Brooklyn as a vacation destination;
Dodging
trolley cars,
I may say in conclusion, is, after all, great fun, and is much less dangerous
than football.
The Sun, September 30, 1894; in an article about the life of an old
man from the country who has not spent time in the city;
He hasn’t had to dodge trolley or cable cars, or live in
2x2 flats, or lie awake Saturday nights wondering if a side door will be open
on Sunday.
The Evening World, December 17, 1894; in a humor piece that
imagined how Napoleon Bonaparte would react during a visit to modern-day New
York City:
Dodging
a trolley car. Mr. Bonaparte (loquitur) – Sacre! This is
worse than the Russians.
The Washington Times, March 24, 1895; in an article about
Brooklyn’s postmaster Sullivan, who had arranged for mail to be delivered
continuously through the day using the electric trolley system:
Uncle Sam “would be too busy dodging trolley cars” in Brooklyn to
tip his hat to postmaster Sullivan.
St. Paul Globe May 27, 1895;
Kansas City (Missouri) Journal, May 19, 1895; with the introduction of more cable cars in
mid-town Manhattan, the streets of New York were also becoming more dangerous:
People seldom kill themselves in the city of Brooklyn. When they get tired of life they simply quit dodging trolley cars.
Cable car dodging at this point
bids fair to become as prominent a feature of metropolitan life as trolley car dodging is in Brooklyn.”
The Sun, October 20, 1895.
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| The Sun, October 20, 1895. |
Despite frequent references to
dodging trolleys, there were no references to a “trolley dodger.” It would not be a stretch, of course; someone
who dodges trolleys might easily be called a trolley dodger. But as easy as it would have been to coin and
use the phrase before 1895, there is no record of any such use. The term seems to have been coined in early
1895, whether by a sportswriter with reference to the baseball team, a group of trolley protestors, or organically based on the common association of Brooklyn with dodging trolleys.
The earliest reference that I could find using "trolley dodger" in a non-sporting context was a joke that appeared in the June 3, 1897 edition of The American Stationer. The narrator of the joke is described as a,
“young ‘Trolley Dodger’ (misnomer for Brooklynite),” who is attending a Quaker
church service with his best girl. To
lighten the mood, he tells her a humorous story about what had happened at an
early Quaker service. The story revolves around a “son of ‘Ould
Oirland,’” presumably Catholic, who is unfamiliar with the rituals of a
Friends’ Meeting House, which, as related in the joke, involve parishioners
jumping out of their seats to shout when, “the spirit moved.”
“Trolley dodger” is used here in a neutral,
certainly non-pejorative, sense. Placing
the narrator in Brooklyn may have been designed to account for the presence of
an Irishman at a Friends’ Meeting House; Brooklyn being home to a large Irish
immigrant population. Other non-sports
related references to “trolley dodger” from after 1897 similarly lack a
pejorative tone. The phrase seems to
have been embraced by Brooklynites, and never really understood as an insult.
Conclusion
The name “trolley dodgers” would
not and could not have been used to describe the baseball team or anyone else
from Brooklyn until 1892. The frequent appearance
of the verb “to dodge,” in association with trolleys in Brooklyn between 1892 and 1894, and the lack
of evidence of “trolley dodger” during the same period, suggests that the
phrase had not achieved a significant level of use, if any at all, before
1895. The description of "trolley dodger" as the "new" name of the Brooklyn team shortly
after opening day in 1895, and the repeated reporting of the name as “new” throughout 1895 and into 1896, suggests that the name was likely first applied
to the team in 1895. The name seems to
have been extended to people from Brooklyn only later, and then not in a pejorative
sense.
The dark history of the Dodgers
name should not caution against embracing the name. Instead, the courage and persistence of our
Brooklyn forbears in facing, surviving, and ultimately taming the trolley
menace should elevate our appreciation of the name, “Dodgers,” from a sweetly
anachronistic, dated vestige of an earlier age (like the Padres or Brewers) to
that of a proud, heroic figure, more like the Pirates and Braves.
Go Dodgers!!!
OK, I’m not going to leave you
hanging. If you are curious about the
1897 “trolley dodger” joke, here it is in all of its glory:
A young “Trolley Dodger”
(misnomer for Brooklynite) was taking his best girl to church Sunday night
last. It was to a Friends’ church, and
to relieve the monotony of the occasion and to make his remarks apropos to the
time as well as himself interesting to his companion he told her the following
store: The scene is laid in a Friends’
meeting. All were according to custom
waiting for “the Spirit to move.” At
last, at last, I say, a member of the sect jumped from his seat and exclaiming
“I am married!” sat down. Whereupon an
Irishman, who was present for the novelty of the thing or by mistake, shouted
out, “The d—d you are!” Then all was as
quiet as the soul when the spirit has departed.
Soon the same Friend was again touched by the Spirit, and by bounding
from his seat he fervently shouted, “I am married, I am married to a daughter
of the Lord,” and down he sat again.
Then the wit of the son of “Ould Oirland” came into play, and moved by
an entirely different spirit he jumped up and said: “Say, mister, if thot’s
the’ case it’ll be er long toime afore yer see yer father-in-law.”
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