A slender remnant of Ebbets Field stands at a busy intersection in Downtown Brooklyn

It’s kind of a sad-looking flagpole, plastered with stickers and a layer of grime at the chaotic intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues. But it once stood in Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1913 to 1957. And that makes it a welcome rescued relic from a very different Brooklyn. The flagpole took a strange journey before ending up here in big box shopping, skyscraper-dominated Downtown Brooklyn. After Ebbets Field was bulldozed in 1960, “the flagpole was later donated to a VFW post on Utica Avenue in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East Flatbush,” states the website for the Barclays Center. There it remained, even after the VFW post became the Canarsie Casket Company, which later transitioned into a church. Real estate and Barclays Center developer Bruce Ratner obtained the flagpole in 2007, raising it in front of the arena in a dedication ceremony when it opened to the public in 2012. Having the flagpole in front of the home arena for the NBA’s Nets and WNBA’s…