<P> The Brooklyn Dodgers were an American Major League baseball team, active primarily in the National League (founded 1876) from 1884 until 1957, after which the club moved to Los Angeles, California, where it continues its history as the Los Angeles Dodgers . The team moved west at the same time as its longtime rivals, the New York Giants, also in the National League, relocated to San Francisco in northern California as the San Francisco Giants . The team's name derived from the reputed skill of Brooklyn residents at evading the city's trolley streetcar network . The Dodgers played in two stadiums in South Brooklyn, each named Washington Park, and at Eastern Park in the neighborhood of Brownsville before moving to Ebbets Field in the neighborhood of Flatbush in 1913 . The team is noted for signing Jackie Robinson in 1947 as the first black player in the modern major leagues . </P> <P> The first convention of the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) were from Brooklyn, including the Atlantic, Eckford, and Excelsior clubs that combined to dominate play for most of the 1860s . Brooklyn helped make baseball commercial, as the locale of the first paid admission games, a series of three all star contests matching New York and Brooklyn in 1858 . Brooklyn also featured the first two enclosed baseball grounds, the Union Grounds and the Capitoline Grounds; enclosed, dedicated ballparks accelerated the evolution from amateurism to professionalism . </P>

When did the brooklyn dodgers become a team