100 Things Dodgers Fans Should Know & Do Before They Die by Jon Weisman Read Free Book Online

“possibilities.”
    â€œTo me it has a chance, [but] there are obviously some deterrents,” he wrote in another internal document. “Rapid transit facilities are minimum.… Grand Central Parkway is already bumper to bumper but the future might mean widening. The site would be more acceptable to Westchester and Queens people than to Brooklynites. There is no well-defined network of buses serving the area. We might get by on the parking but it would be minimum with little likelihood of being expanded to maximum requirements.”
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    On October 28, 1957, the Dodgers attended a civic luncheon welcoming them to their new home, Los Angeles. Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley (center) is joined with Rosalind Wyman, the L.A. City Councilmember most responsible for encouraging the Dodgers to relocate, and Los Angeles mayor Norris Poulson. Standing behind them are Dodgers manager Walter Alston (left), former Dodgers player and manager Casey Stengel (middle), and an unidentified man (right). Photo courtesy of www.walteromalley.com. All rights reserved.
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    Also discouraging was the fact that the site was on swampland that, according to Emil Praeger, past designer of Holman Stadium in Vero Beach and future designer of Dodger Stadium, would make securing the proposed ballpark’s foundation a challenge.
    Meanwhile, numerous other cities, from Oakland to Dallas, soon began making inquiries regarding the Dodgers. The ensuing issue, which remains open to debate, is this: Should O’Malley have shown favoritism to a site that was in New York but not in Brooklyn? He chose not to. “If the Dodgers would have to go out of Brooklyn any site would have to be weighed against such available locations such as Los Angeles,” he wrote in an April 1957 internal memo. “In other words, the Brooklyn Dodgers would not be Brooklyn anywhere else.”
    Within a month, O’Malley was the terrified single passenger in an open-door helicopter above Los Angeles, examining potential sites for a ballpark. He saw from overhead the Chavez Ravine site that was among those he had been told about for years, a site offering ample room to build and access to the freeways converging to nearby downtown. As O’Malley’s interest in Los Angeles grew, the New York Giants were also closing in on a West Coast move to San Francisco. By the time the Giants made their formal announcement in August, further research had convinced O’Malley that Los Angeles was superior to Queens.
    To the end, O’Malley still favored staying in Brooklyn over any kind of move out of town, but Moses would not pull the strings to make the Flatbush and Atlantic site available. On October 7, 1957, the L.A. City Council officially approved the contract agreed to on its behalf by lead negotiator Chad McClellan, and the following day, citing the aging Ebbets Field, insufficient parking, dwindling attendance, and a 5 percent New York City admissions tax, O’Malley announced the Dodgers’ intention to move.
    If it’s true that O’Malley sought a stadium outcome that would be best for his franchise and its financial well-being, it’s also true that Moses stood firmly in the way of what the people of Brooklyn professed to desire. O’Malley never wavered from his willingness to pay for the land in Brooklyn and the stadium that he would erect upon it, if only the site would be made available for purchase. Though it was ultimately O’Malley’s decision for the Dodgers to leave the City of Churches, Moses and other officials gave them little reason to stay.

11. Chavez Ravine
    â€œBack in the 1880s,” wrote baseball historian Bob Timmermann, a senior librarian at the Los Angeles Central Library, “a Los Angeles County Supervisor named Julian Chavez owned a hilly tract of land north of downtown, and it eventually took his name and became known as Chavez Ravine after the most prominent geographic