Tuesday, November 26, 2024

1948-1949 Season

 Madison Square Garden, home of Roller Derby's First World Series.

 

As mentioned in a previous post, the 1948-1949 season began on November 28, 1948.  The following night, Roller Derby would first appear on television and began a run of 13 weeks on the CBS Network.  Because of television, crowds that were initially in the hundreds would eventually be in the thousands by the time the first season ended.

 

The first regular season that lasted until the following September in 1949 would have teams playing roughly four games per week.  It culminated with the first Roller Derby World Series that took place between September 16-22.

 

Other than the third place game being played at Buffalo, New York's Memorial Auditorium, the remaining playoff games took place at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan.  This blogger doesn't know the reason for the third place game being held in another city.

 

Interestingly, prior to the Roller Derby World Series, two of the four teams would leave their areas for games.  Though it has never been mentioned, perhaps going from one's home area to a neutral site was a way of having the game grow.

 

In June 1949, New York traveled to Indianapolis for a series of games against a team from Indianapolis.  The match up happened at Victory Field.  Victory Field was a minor league baseball park that was also used in the Negro League era.  Originally known as Perry Stadium in 1931, it was renamed Bush Stadium until the end of the 1996 season.  The park was used in the movie, Eight Men Out that was about the 1919 White Sox baseball betting scandal.

 

Today, some of the facade of the park remains and it is mainly an apartment complex.

 

Fast forwarding to early August, a second NRDL team, Chicago, traveled to the San Francisco Bay Area.  They would play a team in Oakland at the Oakland Auditorium.  They would play an 18 game series with no days off.  It was mentioned in the August 2, 1949 edition of the Oakland Tribune that Oakland would have a big stake in the future of the NRDL.  

 

If they won the series, Oakland would be one of six teams to go on to the Roller Derby World Series.  Well, Oakland did win the eighteen game series, 10 games to eight.  Unfortunately, Oakland and one other unknown team did not go to New York one month later.  This blogger does not know the reason why.

 

After a long and grueling first season, it was determined that New York won the league's first pennant.

 

The Roller Derby World Series was a week long event that was a round robin event.  It began on September 16th with Bronx-Philadelphia taking on Brooklyn.  Playoff games would take place at Madison Square Garden in Manhattan, NY and Buffalo's Auditorium in western New York state.

 

The Championship Game at Madison Square Garden would have New York defeating Brooklyn, 26-21 before 13,000 fans.

 

The third place game was won by Bronx-Philadelphia, 20-12 over Chicago. 

 

There was no All Star Team mentioned or awarded that season.  However, Midge "Toughie" Brasuhn, the women's captain of Brooklyn was the MVP.  The men's MVP went to Billy Bogash of the champions from New York.

 

Roughly one week later, the 1949-1950 season would be taking place.  The National Roller Derby League would be expanding with another two teams.  Also, for the first time, the cities would have nicknames added to their city.  More on this in the next post.

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