The 1937 Dodgers were a team making changes. For more than a decade, the Brooklyn Dodgers were the laughing stocks of the National League due to their miserable record and for fielding eccentric players such as the poor fielding and base running Babe Herman and hard drinking pitcher Van Lingle Mungo. It didn’t help that their manager, Casey Stengel, talked in riddles and seemed helpless when it came to fielding a winning team. In 1937, the team sacked Casey and replaced him with former Dodgers ace pitcher Burleigh Grimes in an attempt to restore respectability to the franchise. One of the surface changes the team tried was to dump their traditional blue colors and replace them with an eye-catching Kelly green. At this time, 6 of the 8 teams in the league claimed a variation of blue as their club colors, so the Dodgers new green livery sure turned some heads. To complete the new uniforms, the team ordered these heavy green warmup jackets. The fronts proclaim “BROOKLYN” across the chest in white letters on a body of dark green wool with Kelly green and white trim. This example has the number “27” chain stitched on the interior, which corresponds to Eddie Morgan and Ben Cantwell who both wore that number in 1937. This example shows nice game use with toning from age and some moth nips in the Kelly green and white ribbing. The original A.G. Spalding label is still affixed, and the seven front buttons are all present and appear to be the originals. The Dodgers Kelly green experiment lasted just this one year, and the team opened the 1938 season wearing the same colors and design used today. An outrageously rare one-year-only jacket from the most storied franchise in baseball history. The jacked comes with an LOA from MEARS.