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

They successfully neutralized me. Crews of television people walked in, arrived to take pictures of the whole scene. Mayor Bowron [who wanted to preserve the project] was removed—he would have been a shoo-in in 1953. After this was reported in the press, the Times and other papers crusaded against the mayor.”
    With Norris Poulson defeating Bowron at the polls in 1953, a public vote on the Chavez Ravine situation took place despite a California Supreme Court ruling declaring it unenforceable. Los Angeles canceled its public housing contracts (except for two that had already had construction started on them) and later sealed their end by negotiating to buy back the land from the United States at a discount, on the condition that it still be used for a public purpose, though not limited to housing. Los Angeles ultimately determined that purpose should be a baseball stadium, one that would host the team the city lured west from Brooklyn after the 1957 baseball season.
    Though the Dodgers had nothing to do with its controversial history, Chavez Ravine was falling into their lap. But opponents to the new Dodger Stadium (including business interests who had hoped to profit from the property themselves) stalled construction by forcing a public referendum, contested to the final hour but boosted to narrow approval by a live five-hour “Dodgerthon” on KTTV in Los Angeles that took place two days before the June 3, 1958, vote. Even in the ensuing months, it took continued legal wrangling before the Dodgers were almost free to build their stadium .
    By this time, Chavez Ravine had almost been emptied of its residents. “The land titles would never be returned to the original owners, and in the following years the houses would be sold, auctioned, and even set on fire to be used as practice sites by the local fire department,” according to PBS. But approximately 20 parcels remained.
    Two months after the California Supreme Court unanimously denied a Los Angeles Superior Court injunction that had continued to preclude Dodger Stadium’s construction, eviction notices for those who remained at Chavez Ravine came in March 1959. In the following month, the legal battle ended when the U.S. Supreme Court did not find sufficient merit to further explore the case. But there was one final showdown. “On May 8, 1959,” wrote Neil J. Sullivan in The Dodgers Move West , “as deputies forcibly removed the Arechigas from their dwelling, Mrs. Avrana Arechiga, the 68-year old matriarch, threw rocks at them while her daughter, Mrs. Aurora Vargas, a war widow, was carried kicking and screaming from the premises. Mrs. Victoria Angustain also physically resisted the eviction, while children cried and pets, chickens, and goats added to the chaos. The grim scene was televised by local stations in the city.”
    The footage seemed to sum up 10 years of conflict in the area, though sympathy for the Arechigas—who remain a cause célèbre today—dissipated at the time when it was revealed that they were actually owners of numerous properties elsewhere in Los Angeles, had been occupying the land tax-free for years and had been awarded compensation for their lots from the courts but were holding out for more. In subsequent decades, they became a symbol both of the anguish enveloping the area and the misunderstandings—on both sides—of its history.
    The specter of looted art hovers over Chavez Ravine, but the Dodgers weren’t complicit. The expulsion of Chavez Ravine’s homeowners lay at the feet of the city, which was going to dictate a new fate for the land, with or without the Dodgers. One could further argue that Dodger Stadium does serve a public purpose, albeit one that profits private ownership; you can decide whether that’s fair or hypocritical, clear-eyed or naive. But the Dodgers shouldn’t be counted among any villains in the story of Chavez Ravine.
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