They Didn't Always Hit Home Runs
Brooklyn won pennants in 1916, 1920, and 1941 with teams that relied on pitching. The 1916 team had a 2.12 ERA, the 1920 team had a 2.62 ERA and the 1941 pennant winners had a 3.14 ERA, but it was a different game, even in 1941. As a rule of thumb, any ERA under 3.00 was considered quite good and the informal "cut off point" in rating pitchers was 4.00. The top pitchers were expected to have ERAs at or below 3.00, the good to average pitchers' ERAs were between 3.00 and 4.00, and the borderline pitchers who could not be trusted in key games had ERAs above 4.00.
Most of the Brooklyn teams from 1913 until 1949 were bad. They often finished in the second division (there were eight teams in the league and the top four finishers were referred to as "first division" teams and the last four finishers were the "second division). After winning the 1920 pennant, Brooklyn finished in the second division every year in the 1920s with the exception of 1924. The 1930s were not much better but in 1941 Brooklyn won the pennant, contended for most of the decade, and then broke through as the 1940s ended.
In 1949, the Brooklyn Dodgers' started the power surge that has earned the team the reputation as one of the great slugging congregations ever assembled. Brooklyn batted .274, hit 152 home runs and scored 879 runs. The nucleus of Robinson, Snider, Hodges, Campanella and Furillo had been formed and would terrorize opposing pitchers for the next few years. Brooklyn won the 1949 pennant but the Yankees won the World Series.
The following season was one of frustration, something with which Brooklyn was well acquainted. The Phillies won the pennant on the last day of the season when Dick Sisler, one of the baseball-playing sons of the second greatest first baseman of all time, hit a game winning home run in the tenth inning off Don Newcombe (George Sisler, Dick's father, had a .340 lifetime batting average and in three consecutive seasons batted .407, 371, and .420).
Snider, Hodges and Campanella all hit more than thirty home runs in 1950 and the following season, which lives in Brooklyn infamy, Hodges became the first Brooklyn Dodger to hit 40 home runs. Campanella hit 33 while Snider chipped in with 29. The slugging continued as Snider became the first player to hit at least forty
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