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| Re: What If The Dodgers had not moved from Brooklyn? (1369578) | |||
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Re: What If The Dodgers had not moved from Brooklyn? |
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Posted by MATHA531 on Mon Oct 12 23:10:40 2015, in response to Re: What If The Dodgers had not moved from Brooklyn?, posted by #4 Sea Beach Fred on Mon Oct 12 20:16:53 2015. That is correcgt. The creeps in LA flew O'Malley over Chavez Ravine as the Dodgers were returning from Japan. (too bad for Brooklyn the helicopter did not crash). Too bad about the inhabitants (squatters)living at Chavez Ravine; besides there were very loose if any eminent domain laws in California. O'Malley at that point, the miserable piece of slime that he was, that he would be coming but that since he had to play out 1957 in Brooklyn, they should not take seriously anything he said about continuing to seek a place in Brooklyn. At the baseball writers diner in New York in February 1957, he negotiated with Phil Wrigley, the owner of the Cubs, to swap AAA franchises in Fort Worth (Dodgers) with Los Angeles (Cubs). That should have been the tip off as was the announcement the Dodgers had bought their own airplane. He was also told by other NL owners there had to be another left coast team and thus he began urging Horace Stoneham of the virtues of transferring their rivalry to the left coast.In April 1957, there was a big article in the NT Times of Moses showing O'Malley the site at Flushing Meadows where the city would build for him a large municipally owned ballpark. Knowing he was leaving anyway, O'Malley proclaimed it was unsatisfactory since he could not play in Queens and call the team the Brooklyn Dodgers. (Two notes here, he first originally considered calling the team the Brooklyn Dodgers of Los Angeles after moving. Secondly nobody asked him how he could call the team the Brooklyn Dodgers if they played in Los Angeles). The imminent departure of the teams became all but official in May 1957. That was a Friday night and I had just come back from my cub scout pack meeting where I was inducted into the Webelos (those within a half year of becoming boy scouts at age 11). It was announcd when I turned on the ball game on channel 11 as Brooklyn was playing at the Polo Grounds by Russ Hodges that the NL had unanimously voted to give permission, if necessary (ha ha), for the Dodgers and Giants to re-locate to Los Angeles and San Francisco. It was a very angry meeting where O'Malley continued his lie that it wasn't too late (again untrue, he was committed at this point to LA but still had to play out half a season in Brooklyn). Warren Giles, another pos who was President of the National League at a time when the League Presidents had a little power, when asked how his league could operate without a NY franchise replied, "Who needs New York? Ford Frick, the Commissioner of baseball, when asked what about the Brooklyn fans replied, "No problem. We're not abandoning New York. They will siply root for the Yankees." Remember these were two people whose job it supposedly was to operate in the best interests of baseball. Before he died, Bowie Kuhn who later became Commissioner stated he would have blocked the Dodgers move. The Dodgers still finished the season in Brooklyn drawing over a million which was considered adequate in baseball at the time, bearing in mind they had by far the richest television/radio contract in the game ensuring they were the biggest money makers in the game and in October as noted in this thread, O'Malley finally publically announced the Dodgers franchise was dead and it would be re-located to Los Angeles. In the interim, in August, Moses wrote a piece for Sports Illustrated, which you can read by doing a google search, defending his actions and blaming the Brooklyn fans for not attending the game as if there was any truth to that. It is my firm belief today, however, that Flushing would have worked and the Dodgers would have done quite well there as we all know Citi Field and Shea Stadium were locatd between three highways, had a subway station and an LIRR station within walking distance, was about to host the NY World's Fair, had a boat marina nearby. Quite frankly, it was the perfect location if one could ignore the totally artificial boundaries between Queens and Brooklyn which had nothing to do with geography. Also I can tell you tow other locations in Broklyn that while never considered would have been perfect. First was Floyd Bennet Field. Plenty of land there for a ballpark and parking but it would have meant the long promised extensions of the Nostrand Avenue and Utica Avenue subways would have had to have been built. The other would be Coney Island where MCU Park is located. Enough land to build a jajor league ballpark there and of course six or seven subway lines go through that complex at Stillwell Avenue. Oh how beautiful it would be to go to a Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium at Coney Island with the Atlantic Ocean behind the right field fence, the cyclone operating as well as the other amusements there with a restored parachute jump all lit up at night. It was nevet considered but it would have been spectacular. Alas, O'Malley the pompeous pos that he was wanted it to be his way or the highway despite the fact there were laws prohibiting him from getting what he wanted, he felt the city owed him the land so he could build the first privately owned ball park since Yankee Stadium was built in 1923 instead of renting. And to show his appreciation to his new fans in Los Angeles, he played in a ballpark totally inadequate for baseball just to pack in 80,000 fans the vast majority of which were so far from home plate you needed binoculars to see the action or a transistor radio to listen to Vince Scully doing the games and most tragic of all for the baseball fans of Los Angeles, he refused to televise the games claiming television had ruined him in Brooklyn when in fact it was television that made the Dodgers the richest franchise in baseball. But thanks to his families' money, several books have been written trying to transfer the blame to Robert Moses who, in this instance quite frankly, was probably right on this one thing. |
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