The Dodgers Move West

By Neil Sullivan and Neil J. Sullivan

Book Overview

For many New Yorkers one of the most traumatic events since World War II was the removal of the Brooklyn Dodgers, one of the most popular baseball teams of all time, to Los Angeles in 1958. In this controversial new look at a story that has reached almost mythic proportions in its many retellings, Neil Sullivan shifts responsibility for the move onto the local government manueverings that occurred on both sides of the continent.
Conventional wisdom has it that Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley cold-heartedly abandoned the devoted Brooklyn fans for the easy money of Los Angeles. The truth was actually more complicated. O'Malley had, in fact, wanted to stay in Brooklyn and build a new stadium. Ebbetts Field was obsolete, situated in an increasingly unsafe neighborhood and without parking facilities (it had been built in the days of the streetcar, hence the name "Dodgers"). But he was stymied by an uncooperative New York City administration spearheaded by Robert Moses who blocked O'Malley's use of an ideal site at the Atlantic Avenue Long Island Railroad terminal.
A political battle over the Dodgers' move erupted in Los Angeles too. The new stadium site at Chavez Ravine, suggested by Mayor Poulson, had been designated for public housing and a bitter fight broke out over the issue. But a telethon campaign that enlisted the help of celebrities like Groucho Marx, George Burns and Ronald Reagan helped to win the referendum in favor of the deal. Despite playing until 1962 in the Los Angeles Coliseum, where the right field looked directly into the sun, the Dodgers soon bounced back winning the 1959 World Series and went on to become one of the most successful franchises in the country.
Set against a backdrop of sporting passion and rivalry, and coming thirty years after the Dodgers' last season in Brooklyn, this engrossing book offers new insights into the workings of power in the nation's two largest cities. It ends by drawing important conclusions about the proper relationship between sports franchises and the public purse.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195043669
• ISBN13: 9780195043662
• Release Date: June 1987
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 286 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.4" x 0.9" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Highly objective and wothwhile

I was a sad 10-year-old Brooklyn kid when I learned the dodgers were going to leave us. Like most everyone around, I tended to blame Walter O'Malley's greed. Yet in the end it may have been O'Malley's vanity more than his greed that was most responsible for the fateful decision. As Neil Sullivan so well points out, a strong case can be made that O'Malley didn't really want to leave at first. If he just wanted to take off, he would not have had the Dodgers play some of their home games in Jersey City. That had to be nothing more than an attempt to get the indifferent New York politicos to take him more seriously. In addition, O'Malley's family roots were all in New York. O'Malley wanted to build a ballpark at the junction of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, an ideal location as many subway lines converged there as well as the Long Island Railroad. O'Malley, in other words, believed in public transportation that would make it easy for the average working person to get to the ballpark. Robert Moses, who blocked O'Malley's path at every opportunity was determined to get the Dodgers out of urban Brooklyn and into what was then semi-suburban Queens. Moses hated the subway system and loved the automobile. It was he who insisted on building the Cross-Bronx Expressway, which tore the heart out of certain neighborhoods in that borough and today is both a bottleneck and an eyesore. Anything to accommodate suburbanites at the expense of the working stiffs. Moses claimeed that putting a ballpark at Flatbush and Atlantic would have caused many thriving businesses to relocate. In fact the Flatbush-Atlantic junction rapidly deteriorated and most of those thriving businesses went under on their own. The bottom line was that the unelected Parks Commissioner Moses considered himself the czar of all recreation in New York and was not about to let anyone build a ballpark anywhere except where he (Moses) wanted it. In fact what O'Malley proposed was an urban renewal project that was none of the Parks Commissioner's business. But New York's mayor at the time, Robert F. Wagner had the backbone of a jellyfish and was not about to stand up to Moses. O'Malley, who had invested considerable time and effort on the Flatbush-Atlantic site, finally got tired of being strung along and had no desire to become Moses' tenant and underling in Queens. He saw an opportunity in L.A. and took it. And so today we have ugly Shea Stadium, neo-Stalinist in design, named for a politico, and built under the aegis of Moses, far more unattractive than O'Malley's Dodger Stadium. People can't wait for Shea Stadium to be torn down and replaced by a building with some charm, while O'Malley's beautiful ballpark wil last indefinitely into the future. Neil Sullivan's book is an excellent read and highly recommended.

The real reasons behind the dodgers move to Los Angeles

Sullivan's masterful research draws the reader into the battle, fiancially and politically, to keep the Dodgers in brooklyn. This book takes you behind the scenes like no other. It's not just O'Malley packing up and leaving. I'll guarantee you at the end of this book, you'll be blown away at the many chances the Dodgers had at actually staying in Brooklyn. Also, you'll look at Robert Moses in a different way, and how I feel that he is as much to blame for the move too.