The History of the Los Angeles Dodgers: Every Era, from the First Season to Today

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 12 min read

A franchise history of the Dodgers in eras, from the 1884 Brooklyn Atlantics through Ebbets Field, the move west, Koufax, Lasorda and the 2024 and 2025 championships, with the numbers behind each stretch.

The Dodgers have won 27 league pennants and nine World Series, and they have done it under seven nicknames in two cities. The historical record, which covers every season from 1884 through 2025, shows 142 seasons, 11,525 wins and 10,137 losses, a winning percentage of .532. Those totals hide a very uneven story: long stretches of mediocrity in Brooklyn, a run of near misses against the Yankees that became a civic wound, a move that broke a borough's heart, and then more than six decades in Los Angeles with a remarkable line of pitchers.

Jackie Robinson broke the modern color line in a Brooklyn uniform in 1947. Walter O'Malley took the franchise to California a decade later and opened the door to the West Coast game. In 2025 the Dodgers drew 4,012,470 fans to one ballpark, the largest season attendance in their history, and won the World Series for the second year running.

Brooklyn beginnings, 1884 to 1912

The franchise began as the Brooklyn Atlantics in the American Association in 1884 and changed nicknames often in its first years: Grays in 1885, Bridegrooms in 1888, Grooms in 1891, Bridegrooms again in 1896, then Superbas from 1899. The name that lasted, Dodgers, comes from "trolley dodgers," a joke about how Brooklynites had to weave among streetcar lines. It was used informally for years and appears in the record for 1911 and 1912, though the club went back to Superbas for 1913.

The early club was good enough to win right away. Brooklyn took the 1889 pennant with a 93-44 record and then lost a postseason series, six games to three, to the New York club of the National League. In 1890 the franchise moved into the National League and won again, with an 86-43 record, in a postseason series against Louisville that ended three games apiece.

The first lasting stars arrived at the turn of the century under manager Ned Hanlon, who ran the club from 1899 to 1905 and finished 511-488 in that stretch. The 1899 team went 101-47 and won the pennant; it won again in 1900. Then the bottom fell out. The club went 56-97 in 1904 and 48-104 in 1905, the worst winning percentage in franchise history among the seasons on record. The home park through this period was a succession of Washington Parks and a stop at Eastern Park from 1891 to 1897, none of which drew more than about 321,300 fans in a season.

Ebbets Field and the Robins, 1913 to 1940

The club moved into Ebbets Field in 1913 and played there through 1957. The park's best attendance year in the record was 1,807,526, and its small size and odd angles became part of the team's identity. The franchise leaderboards still show the hitters of the era. Zack Wheat, an outfielder who played from 1909 to 1926, is the franchise's career hits leader with 2,804, more than Pee Wee Reese, Willie Davis or Duke Snider. Babe Herman holds the franchise batting average mark among players with 3,000 at-bats at .339, ahead of Wheat at .317.

Wilbert Robinson took over in 1914 and managed through 1931, the third-longest tenure in club history at 1,375 wins and 1,341 losses. The team was renamed the Robins in his honor and kept that name until 1931. Under Robinson Brooklyn won the 1916 pennant and lost the World Series to the Boston Red Sox four games to one. One of those games, as it happens, was won by a young Boston pitcher named Babe Ruth, who threw a 14-inning complete game. Four years later the Robins lost to Cleveland in a series best remembered for Bill Wambsganss's unassisted triple play in a game against Brooklyn.

The 1920s and 1930s belong more to individual excellence than to team success. Dazzy Vance won the 1924 Most Valuable Player award as a pitcher and still sits fourth in club wins with 190 and fifth in strikeouts with 1,918. Burleigh Grimes, another Hall of Famer, won 158 games for the club. The Dodgers name came back for good in 1932, but the club did not win a pennant between 1920 and 1941.

Rickey, Robinson and the Boys of Summer, 1941 to 1957

The turn came in 1941. Leo Durocher, who managed the club from 1939 through 1948 (738-565), led it to its first pennant since 1920 with first baseman Dolph Camilli winning the Most Valuable Player award. The World Series that year went four games to one to the Yankees and ended with a famous misplay: in Game 4, with Brooklyn one out from evening the series at two games each, a strike-three pitch got past catcher Mickey Owen and the Yankees rallied. It was the first of seven World Series the franchise would play against the Yankees in sixteen years.

Branch Rickey, the club's president and general manager, signed Jackie Robinson, and in 1947 Robinson played first base for Brooklyn, won Rookie of the Year and helped the Dodgers to the pennant under Burt Shotton (326-215 in four seasons). Robinson played ten seasons, all for the club, and hit .311 with 947 runs scored and 740 walks. In 1949 he won the Most Valuable Player award. Major League Baseball retired his number 42 across the sport in 1997; the details of his career are in Jackie Robinson: Breaking the Color Line in 1947.

Around him Rickey assembled the team later called the Boys of Summer: Pee Wee Reese at shortstop, Gil Hodges at first, Duke Snider in center field, Carl Furillo in right, and Roy Campanella behind the plate, who won three Most Valuable Player awards in 1951, 1953 and 1955. Don Newcombe took the Rookie of the Year award in 1949 and the Most Valuable Player and Cy Young awards in 1956. Walter Alston, who was hired for 1954, became the manager and stayed 23 seasons. The club won pennants in 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956, an enormous run in a sport with eight teams in each league.

Almost every one of those pennants ended in heartbreak. The Dodgers lost to the Yankees in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953, and both the 1947 and 1952 series went the full seven games. Then, in 1955, Johnny Podres beat the Yankees 2-0 in Game 7, and Brooklyn had its first World Series title, 4-3. The next year Don Larsen threw a perfect game against Brooklyn in Game 5, and the Yankees won in seven games again.

The move west and the Coliseum years, 1958 to 1961

After the 1957 season Walter O'Malley, who owned the club, moved it to Los Angeles, and the New York Giants went to San Francisco at the same time. O'Malley had wanted a new ballpark in Brooklyn and could not get the land he wanted; Los Angeles offered a site in Chavez Ravine. Until the stadium was built the team played in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a football and track stadium with a short left-field porch, from 1958 to 1961.

The Coliseum years were brief, but in 1959 the Dodgers, with an aging core from Brooklyn and young pitchers named Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, won the pennant and beat the Chicago White Sox four games to two for the franchise's second world championship. The Coliseum drew a best-season crowd of 2,253,887, more than Ebbets Field ever managed.

Koufax, Drysdale and the pitcher's ballpark, 1962 to 1973

Dodger Stadium opened in 1962 and is still the club's home. It sits at 515 feet above sea level, seats about 56,000, has an open grass field and measures 330 feet down each line and 395 to center, according to the site's reference data for the park. The park played as a pitcher's park in its first generation, and the Dodgers built a team to match.

Sandy Koufax pitched for the club from 1955 to 1966, and his last six seasons are among the most dominant any pitcher has had. He won the Cy Young Award in 1963, 1965 and 1966, plus the Most Valuable Player award in 1963, when the Dodgers swept the Yankees four games to none. His 40 shutouts rank third in club history, behind Don Sutton's 52 and Drysdale's 49. Drysdale won the Cy Young in 1962. In 1965 Los Angeles beat Minnesota in seven games, with Koufax shutting the Twins out in Games 5 and 7. The 1966 Dodgers won a third pennant in four years but were swept by Baltimore, and Koufax retired at the end of the season at the age of 30.

Maury Wills stole 490 bases in a Dodgers uniform from 1959 to 1972, the most in club history, and won the Most Valuable Player award in 1962. The 1962 team won 102 games, but San Francisco forced a three-game playoff and won it. After Koufax retired the club slid back toward the middle of the league, and it needed until 1974 to build the next contender.

Lasorda and the Garvey-Cey-Lopes-Russell infield, 1974 to 1988

The next great team arrived in 1974, when the Dodgers won 102 games and the pennant. The infield of Steve Garvey at first, Davey Lopes at second, Bill Russell at short and Ron Cey at third played together through most of the decade. Garvey won the Most Valuable Player award in 1974 and ranks fifth in club history with 1,968 hits. Cey hit 228 home runs for the club. Lopes stole 418 bases. Reliever Mike Marshall won the Cy Young Award in 1974 after pitching in 106 games, a record at the time.

Tom Lasorda took over from Alston late in 1976 and held the job through 1996, going 1,599-1,439. His teams won pennants in 1977, 1978 and 1981 and finished first in the division in 1983, 1985 and 1988. They lost the World Series to the Yankees in 1977 and 1978, and the 1981 team finally got its revenge, beating the Yankees in six games after losing the first two. That season was shortened by a players' strike, and the playoffs were stitched together from two half-seasons, but the title counted all the same.

The star of 1981 was a 20-year-old left-hander from Mexico named Fernando Valenzuela, who started the season 8-0 and won the Cy Young Award and Rookie of the Year honours in the same year. He remains sixth in franchise strikeouts with 1,759 and is tied for sixth in shutouts with 29. The fan fever that followed was called Fernandomania.

The last championship of the era came in 1988. Orel Hershiser won the Cy Young Award and set a record by pitching 59 consecutive scoreless innings late in the regular season, and Kirk Gibson, the Most Valuable Player, limped to the plate in Game 1 of the World Series against Oakland and hit a two-run walk-off home run off Dennis Eckersley. The Dodgers won the series four games to one. It would be 32 years before they won another.

The long drought, 1989 to 2012

From 1989 to 2012 the Dodgers won division titles in 1995, 2004, 2008 and 2009 and a wild card in 1996 and 2006, and not a single pennant. Five straight Rookie of the Year winners came from the club between 1992 and 1996: Eric Karros, Mike Piazza, Raul Mondesi, Hideo Nomo and Todd Hollandsworth. Nomo's arrival in 1995 opened a pipeline of Japanese pitchers to the majors. Eric Gagne won the Cy Young Award in 2003 and is second in club saves with 161.

The teams lost in the first round time after time. Los Angeles was swept in the 1995 division series by Cincinnati, in 1996 by Atlanta and in 2006 by the Mets. The club reached the National League Championship Series in 2008 and 2009, only to lose to the Phillies both times, 4-1. Away from the field, the franchise was passed between corporate and private owners. The O'Malley family sold the club to Fox in a deal completed in 1998, and Mike Piazza was traded to the Marlins that same year. Fox sold to Frank McCourt in 2004. McCourt put the club into bankruptcy in 2011, and a group led by Mark Walter and including Magic Johnson bought it in 2012.

New money, Kershaw and the near misses, 2013 to 2019

The new ownership spent heavily, and the results were immediate. From 2013 through 2019 the Dodgers won seven straight division titles and played in the National League Championship Series in 2013, 2016, 2017 and 2018. The central figure was Clayton Kershaw, who debuted in 2008 and is the franchise's career strikeout leader with 3,052 and second in wins with 223, behind only Don Sutton's 233. His career earned run average of 2.53 in the franchise books ranks third behind Jeff Pfeffer of the dead-ball era and Nap Rucker. He won the Cy Young Award in 2011, 2013 and 2014 and the Most Valuable Player award in 2014.

Dave Roberts took over as manager in 2016, and he is now the club's fourth-longest-serving manager by games with a 944-575 record, a winning percentage just above .620. His teams won the pennant in 2017, forcing a seventh game with Houston before losing, and won again in 2018, falling to the Boston Red Sox in five. Corey Seager (Rookie of the Year in 2016), Cody Bellinger (Rookie of the Year in 2017 and Most Valuable Player in 2019) and Justin Turner were the faces of a team that was always good and usually one step short.

The championship run, 2020 to 2025

The wait ended in 2020, in a season shortened to 60 games by the pandemic. The Dodgers swept Milwaukee and San Diego, then beat Atlanta in seven games after trailing three games to one, and then beat Tampa Bay four games to two. It was the first title in 32 years. The 2022 team went 111-51, the best record in franchise history, and was then beaten by San Diego in four games in the division series.

Then came Shohei Ohtani. The Dodgers signed him ahead of 2024, and he won the Most Valuable Player award that year and again in 2025, joining Robinson, Koufax, Garvey, Gibson, Kershaw and Bellinger on the list of club winners. The 2024 team beat the Mets in six games and the Yankees four games to one for the franchise's seventh title in Los Angeles. In 2025 the Dodgers swept Cincinnati in the wild-card round, beat Philadelphia three games to one, swept Milwaukee in the championship series and beat Toronto four games to three in the World Series. That made eight titles in Los Angeles and nine in all, and consecutive championships for the first time in club history.

The franchise in numbers

The table below sets the eras side by side. Pennants include the American Association title of 1889.

The club leaders in the main categories come from almost every era.

For the players behind those lines, see The Best Players in Los Angeles Dodgers History, Position by Position.

Managers, parks and what the pattern says

Two men define the managerial history. Walter Alston won 2,040 games from 1954 to 1976, and Tom Lasorda won 1,599 from 1976 to 1996. Between them they managed the club continuously from 1954 to 1996, and every pennant from 1955 through 1988 came under one of them. Dave Roberts, with 944 wins through 2025, stands fourth, behind Wilbert Robinson's 1,375.

The pattern across 142 seasons is one of long cycles. The club has had three golden stretches, 1941 to 1966, 1974 to 1988 and 2013 to 2025, separated by a gap of seven years and then one of 24. Of the franchise's 15 lost World Series, eight were lost to the Yankees, a rivalry covered in more detail in The Best Los Angeles Dodgers Seasons and Every October Run. For the parks, from Ebbets Field to the Coliseum to Dodger Stadium, read UNIQLO Field at Dodger Stadium: The History, the Dimensions and How the Park Plays.

Common questions

How many World Series have the Dodgers won? Nine through 2025: 1955 in Brooklyn and 1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, 1988, 2020, 2024 and 2025 in Los Angeles. They lost the series in 1889, 1916, 1920, 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1956, 1966, 1974, 1977, 1978, 2017 and 2018, tied one in 1890, and had no series to play after the 1899 and 1900 pennants.

Why did the Dodgers leave Brooklyn? The owner, Walter O'Malley, wanted a new ballpark and could not secure the land in Brooklyn that he believed he needed. Los Angeles offered a site in Chavez Ravine and the opportunity to be the first major-league team on the West Coast.

How many times have the Dodgers beaten the Yankees in the World Series? Four times: 1955, 1963, 1981 and 2024. The Yankees won in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1956, 1977 and 1978.

Where to go next

Follow the current club on the Dodgers team page, read about the home field on the UNIQLO Field at Dodger Stadium page, and keep up with the latest on the Dodgers news topic page. For the rest of the division, read the histories of the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Colorado Rockies and the San Diego Padres, and for how October works, see The History of the World Series: Formats, Champions and the Streaks.