32 yr old Cleveland baseball fan ... love the purpose here to preserve history on the real New York Giants ... Kevin's book was excellent, great audio book as well! So many entertaining and interesting facets to baseball's history, particularly in New York. Quite the bygone era.
I definitely cannot agree with Baker's take on Robert Moses and Walter O'Malley. Moses did not so much evaluate and reject O'Malley's stadium proposal as he summarily ignored that proposal. When the rest of the New York City government finally grasped that Moses had given O'Malley the back of his hand, they were outraged. Alas, by that time it was too late, as O'Malley had already formed a relationship with the Los Angeles municipal authorities, which had given him the land on which he could build his own stadium. All that New York officials could offer O'Malley by that point was a municipal stadium in Queens, an offer which had no chance of being acceptable to him. If New York City had had a functioning government at the time (which is another way of saying: if Robert Moses had not been so unaccountable), then that government would surely have reached an arrangement to acquire the necessary land, and the privately-funded Dodger Stadium (note: not the domed stadium of some of the more fanciful plans) would have been built at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Fourth Avenue rather than in Chavez Ravine. It is true that an Atlantic Avenue stadium would have caused the displacement of the people living in the residential buildings that would have been torn down, just as the Chavez Ravine stadium caused the displacement of the entire community of Mexican-Americans who had been living on that land. But that stadium would have arrested the perception of Brooklyn - and, more generally, of New York City and of Eastern cities overall - as being in decline. The sociological effects would have been profoundly beneficial. What's more, a Dodger Stadium at that location would have been accessible to the entire City by subway, while also being accessible by the LIRR to the former Brooklynites who had moved out to Long Island. If we imagine Koufax and Drysdale and the 1960s Dodger teams there, we have to concede that they would have had the same two-million-plus in yearly attendance that the team drew in Los Angeles. The area would have experienced a boom, with restaurants and bars creating a thriving baseball District; and that Marriott hotel on Jay Street would have been built a good fifty years earlier than it was actually built. An Atlantic Avenue stadium would certainly have been a net economic positive for our whole City. I have bought Baker's book, and I am sure that I will enjoy it and that I will learn a great deal from it. But Baker will never dissuade me from the conclusion that O'Malley was kicked out of Brooklyn by the monstrous megalomaniac Robert Moses, nor will he convince me that O'Malley's having been kicked out was a good thing for our City, for the borough of Brooklyn, and for that particular area.
We are looking at it with 2024 lenses, O’Malley had a land deal in California which he was never going to pass up, Atlantic and Flatbush in 1955 was entering the beginning of a decline and O’Malley was asking for straight up illegal deals in the city condemning operating business for him to purchase them cheaply, than he would’ve had to do this multiple more times to build the parking he needed. He was not landlocked in looking for sites in Brooklyn like people say, he could’ve had Dodger Stadium amounts of parking in Southern Brooklyn instead of boxing himself into a declining Downtown. O’Malley was nothing more than a con man, who wasted Moses time, and Moses was no hero but he’s not the villain in this situation. Also for the LIRR, it would’ve collapsed in on itself if somehow this stadium would have been built, the LIRR entered the 50’s at its lowest with over 200 killed in 2 massive wrecks in less than a year, the rolling stock was abysmal, tracks and structures were in dire straits, many grade crossings still in service which slowed down service, the LIRR wouldn’t be able to handle crowds going to Dodger games until 1970 when new equipment and structural improvements were made. The subway was only a few levels better. So most of the fans that left to Long Island would’ve drove and traffic would’ve been much more of a nightmare than Ebbets Field. If O’Malley was in fact inspired by County Stadium in Milwaukee than why the hell would he choose Atlantic and Flatbush where he could have very little parking, abysmal commuter rail and an overall nightmarish situation, real estate and stadium situations hadn’t developed the way they are now so Downtown Brooklyn would have still declined the way it did even if the Dodgers moved there, If anything Downtown Brooklyn would look like Downtown Newark in the fact that many buildings would have to be demolished to accommodate Dodger Parking, meanwhile you had open land where Kings Plaza Mall exist right now and Mill Basin, Canarsie and Bergen Beach were still largely barren in that era, he could have tied that into the Belt Parkwy and future Verrazono Bridge that would’ve shuttled fans to a new Dodger Stadium.
@@richiemartinez103 - O'Malley was inspired by Milwaukee in terms of the huge jump in attendance, not in terms of the gigantic parking lots surrounding the stadium. The main access to a Dodgers stadium at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues would have been by subway (with access greater than that which had served Ebbets Field); and a strong economic imperative would have brought improvements to the LIRR's rolling stock and grade crossings much sooner then they actually occured. What's more, condemnation is hardly illegal; that is in fact the mechanism by which Chavez Ravine was obtained by the Los Angeles municipal authorities for the construction of Dodger Stadium. It's true that the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenue was, by the mid-1950s, entering a decline. But it is a decline that would have been completely reversed by the building of a stadium for a popular winning team, and by the establishment of all the ancillary businesses serving the baseball crowds, in much the same way that the Giants' current park in San Francisco revitalised an area of that city that had previously been in decline. Moses, who had the power to put gigantic highways literally wherever he wanted (thereby displacing people in quantities orders of magnitude greater than would have occurred as a result of a baseball stadium), could easily have assembled the necessary parcels for O'Malley to build upon at his own cost. O'Malley was forced to look outside of Brooklyn only after he understood that the profound governmental dysfunction embodied in Moses was an insurmountable obstacle. And only thereafter did the rest of the City government counter with the woefully inadequate offer of a municipal Flushing Meadows stadium. O'Malley had presented a perfectly sensible plan to the only person in the New York City government who could effectuate such a plan - namely, Moses, who made a colossal blunder by rejecting that entirely workable plan out of hand. In the story of the Dodgers' move, Moses is absolutely the one and only villain.
@@FerdinandCesarano A. If O’Malley obliterates 100 blocks for parking for his new stadium at Atlantic and Flatbush than he kills off the neighborhood, and it will become a giant parking lot which would most likely not be developed. It would instead just sit as a large open parking lot and as Brooklyn burned in the 70’s and 80’s especially Brownsville, East New York, Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant the most likely course of action would be the city would pressure the Dodgers to sell of some of their parking to build low income housing, the revival of Downtown Brooklyn wouldn’t have occurred because O’Malley would’ve destroyed it, the idea of stadium revitalizing neighborhoods didn’t exist the way it does now,. B. The slaughterhouses and businesses inside the LIRR station that O’Malley wanted to condem were successful and not failing the way it’s presented, people would’ve cried bloody murder if that occurred along with condemning 100 blocks for parking which would’ve had O’Malley killed if he began to target the blocks close to mob holdings in Prospect Heights, this was all very unserious or he was just that stupid. C. As for the LIRR, there was no money for rolling stock in the 50’s, look at the small rolling stock order they had, the state couldn’t support it, and O’Malley damn sure wasn’t going to fund it, he would’ve needed to replace 900 plus cars within the opening of the new stadium and a set deadline, so say the Dodger Dome at Atlantic and Flatbush opens in 1962, he’d have to fund a purchase of 900 plus cars to arrive on LIRR tracks before at least 1965 or the existing equipment would have given out, that wasn’t going to happen, I can promise you if O’Malley’s 1950 coup that pushed Rickey out never occurred the Dodgers would still be in Brooklyn, O’Malley was not loosing money, he was in an advantageous situation compared to the Boston Braves, Philadelphia A’s or even the Phillies and Reds, the Dodgers were the financial class of the NL until the Braves short meteoric rise and it would’ve remained that way. O’Malley had a sweetheart land deal in LA, which he’d probably had since the late 40’s and in order to make it sweeter he had to b.s the city of New York to make LA feel as if it was a chance he’d stay in Brooklyn if LA didn’t bend over even more to his demands. If O’Malley was so content on parking he’d look to Southern Brooklyn, he has highways that connect to Long Island and Jersey and space for Milwaukee style parking without disturbing existing neighborhoods to the extent that he would’ve Downtown, or the most economically feasible move would’ve been to purchase the Property on Bedford Ave between Montgomery and Sullivan Place, than Sullivan-Emprie Blvd, (only at the corners) than purchase the vacant lot on Franklin Ave where a streetcar depot had recently been turned into a vacant lot, than another one on Nostrand Ave and he could’ve built large indoor parking facilities around Ebbets Field. Reminder had O’Malley not been a slumlord between 1950-56 and let another Slumlord takeover Ebbets Field would’ve had 15-20 years as an adequate stadium than in 1970 once Moses was gone he could blackjack another set of NYC politicians to build his nonsense Atlantic and Flatbush nightmare, they probably would have went for it if he greased their palms enough.
@@richiemartinez103 - A. There is no way that O'Malley would have obliterated 100 blocks for parking. Indeed, the very fact that he sought to put the Dodgers' new park in Downtown Brooklyn rather than in the southern part of the borough near Coney Island demonstrates that he was not looking for parking on the scale of County Stadium (or even on the scale of what Shea Stadium would later have). The subway had been responsible for the Yankees' strong attendance since the 1920s; likewise, the subway would have been the main means of transport to a new Dodgers ballpark on Atlantic Avenue. B. No one said that the businesses on the plots that O'Malley wanted were failing; likewise, the residential community of Mexican-Americans in Chavez Ravine that was displaced by that land's condemnation was thriving. But those slaughterhouses and other businesses would have been replaced by restaurants, bars, nightclubs, hotels, etc.; and the value of the residential properties in the area would have gone up dramatically. C. With the drastic increase in the tax base that would have occurred if a stadium had been built, the State could have taken over the LIRR long before it acutally did so in the 1960s. This would have made it all the easier to get to the new stadium (which, incidentally, would **not** have been the dome of some unrealistic fantasies). The entire story is that the city government of Los Angeles acted responsibly, while the New York municipal authorities, having ceded control to Moses, did not. The deal that the Los Angeles government made - the acquisition of a little bit of land by condemnation, in return for the new owner spending a great deal of his own money to bring about tremendous improvements - is one that any responsible and sensible government would make. But, alas, we did not have a responsible or sensible government in New York at the time; we had a staggeringly inappropriate autocracy in city planning by an unaccountable megalomaniac. If not for that, the Dodgers would be playing on Atlantic Avenue today, and Brooklyn's nadir would have been avoided. (P.S. - And the Giants would have moved to Minneapolis. So this scenario would have been worse for the Giants, even as its effects on New York City and on urban America in general would have been extremely positive.) You must read the book "The Dodgers Move West" by Neil Sullivan. That book explodes many, many old myths that deserve to die.
32 yr old Cleveland baseball fan ... love the purpose here to preserve history on the real New York Giants ... Kevin's book was excellent, great audio book as well! So many entertaining and interesting facets to baseball's history, particularly in New York. Quite the bygone era.
Enjoyable Evening
I definitely cannot agree with Baker's take on Robert Moses and Walter O'Malley. Moses did not so much evaluate and reject O'Malley's stadium proposal as he summarily ignored that proposal.
When the rest of the New York City government finally grasped that Moses had given O'Malley the back of his hand, they were outraged. Alas, by that time it was too late, as O'Malley had already formed a relationship with the Los Angeles municipal authorities, which had given him the land on which he could build his own stadium. All that New York officials could offer O'Malley by that point was a municipal stadium in Queens, an offer which had no chance of being acceptable to him.
If New York City had had a functioning government at the time (which is another way of saying: if Robert Moses had not been so unaccountable), then that government would surely have reached an arrangement to acquire the necessary land, and the privately-funded Dodger Stadium (note: not the domed stadium of some of the more fanciful plans) would have been built at the intersection of Atlantic Avenue and Fourth Avenue rather than in Chavez Ravine.
It is true that an Atlantic Avenue stadium would have caused the displacement of the people living in the residential buildings that would have been torn down, just as the Chavez Ravine stadium caused the displacement of the entire community of Mexican-Americans who had been living on that land.
But that stadium would have arrested the perception of Brooklyn - and, more generally, of New York City and of Eastern cities overall - as being in decline. The sociological effects would have been profoundly beneficial.
What's more, a Dodger Stadium at that location would have been accessible to the entire City by subway, while also being accessible by the LIRR to the former Brooklynites who had moved out to Long Island. If we imagine Koufax and Drysdale and the 1960s Dodger teams there, we have to concede that they would have had the same two-million-plus in yearly attendance that the team drew in Los Angeles.
The area would have experienced a boom, with restaurants and bars creating a thriving baseball District; and that Marriott hotel on Jay Street would have been built a good fifty years earlier than it was actually built. An Atlantic Avenue stadium would certainly have been a net economic positive for our whole City.
I have bought Baker's book, and I am sure that I will enjoy it and that I will learn a great deal from it. But Baker will never dissuade me from the conclusion that O'Malley was kicked out of Brooklyn by the monstrous megalomaniac Robert Moses, nor will he convince me that O'Malley's having been kicked out was a good thing for our City, for the borough of Brooklyn, and for that particular area.
We are looking at it with 2024 lenses, O’Malley had a land deal in California which he was never going to pass up, Atlantic and Flatbush in 1955 was entering the beginning of a decline and O’Malley was asking for straight up illegal deals in the city condemning operating business for him to purchase them cheaply, than he would’ve had to do this multiple more times to build the parking he needed.
He was not landlocked in looking for sites in Brooklyn like people say, he could’ve had Dodger Stadium amounts of parking in Southern Brooklyn instead of boxing himself into a declining Downtown. O’Malley was nothing more than a con man, who wasted Moses time, and Moses was no hero but he’s not the villain in this situation.
Also for the LIRR, it would’ve collapsed in on itself if somehow this stadium would have been built, the LIRR entered the 50’s at its lowest with over 200 killed in 2 massive wrecks in less than a year, the rolling stock was abysmal, tracks and structures were in dire straits, many grade crossings still in service which slowed down service, the LIRR wouldn’t be able to handle crowds going to Dodger games until 1970 when new equipment and structural improvements were made. The subway was only a few levels better. So most of the fans that left to Long Island would’ve drove and traffic would’ve been much more of a nightmare than Ebbets Field.
If O’Malley was in fact inspired by County Stadium in Milwaukee than why the hell would he choose Atlantic and Flatbush where he could have very little parking, abysmal commuter rail and an overall nightmarish situation, real estate and stadium situations hadn’t developed the way they are now so Downtown Brooklyn would have still declined the way it did even if the Dodgers moved there, If anything Downtown Brooklyn would look like Downtown Newark in the fact that many buildings would have to be demolished to accommodate Dodger Parking, meanwhile you had open land where Kings Plaza Mall exist right now and Mill Basin, Canarsie and Bergen Beach were still largely barren in that era, he could have tied that into the Belt Parkwy and future Verrazono Bridge that would’ve shuttled fans to a new Dodger Stadium.
@@richiemartinez103 - O'Malley was inspired by Milwaukee in terms of the huge jump in attendance, not in terms of the gigantic parking lots surrounding the stadium. The main access to a Dodgers stadium at Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues would have been by subway (with access greater than that which had served Ebbets Field); and a strong economic imperative would have brought improvements to the LIRR's rolling stock and grade crossings much sooner then they actually occured.
What's more, condemnation is hardly illegal; that is in fact the mechanism by which Chavez Ravine was obtained by the Los Angeles municipal authorities for the construction of Dodger Stadium.
It's true that the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenue was, by the mid-1950s, entering a decline. But it is a decline that would have been completely reversed by the building of a stadium for a popular winning team, and by the establishment of all the ancillary businesses serving the baseball crowds, in much the same way that the Giants' current park in San Francisco revitalised an area of that city that had previously been in decline.
Moses, who had the power to put gigantic highways literally wherever he wanted (thereby displacing people in quantities orders of magnitude greater than would have occurred as a result of a baseball stadium), could easily have assembled the necessary parcels for O'Malley to build upon at his own cost.
O'Malley was forced to look outside of Brooklyn only after he understood that the profound governmental dysfunction embodied in Moses was an insurmountable obstacle. And only thereafter did the rest of the City government counter with the woefully inadequate offer of a municipal Flushing Meadows stadium.
O'Malley had presented a perfectly sensible plan to the only person in the New York City government who could effectuate such a plan - namely, Moses, who made a colossal blunder by rejecting that entirely workable plan out of hand. In the story of the Dodgers' move, Moses is absolutely the one and only villain.
@@FerdinandCesarano A. If O’Malley obliterates 100 blocks for parking for his new stadium at Atlantic and Flatbush than he kills off the neighborhood, and it will become a giant parking lot which would most likely not be developed. It would instead just sit as a large open parking lot and as Brooklyn burned in the 70’s and 80’s especially Brownsville, East New York, Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant the most likely course of action would be the city would pressure the Dodgers to sell of some of their parking to build low income housing, the revival of Downtown Brooklyn wouldn’t have occurred because O’Malley would’ve destroyed it, the idea of stadium revitalizing neighborhoods didn’t exist the way it does now,.
B. The slaughterhouses and businesses inside the LIRR station that O’Malley wanted to condem were successful and not failing the way it’s presented, people would’ve cried bloody murder if that occurred along with condemning 100 blocks for parking which would’ve had O’Malley killed if he began to target the blocks close to mob holdings in Prospect Heights, this was all very unserious or he was just that stupid.
C. As for the LIRR, there was no money for rolling stock in the 50’s, look at the small rolling stock order they had, the state couldn’t support it, and O’Malley damn sure wasn’t going to fund it, he would’ve needed to replace 900 plus cars within the opening of the new stadium and a set deadline, so say the Dodger Dome at Atlantic and Flatbush opens in 1962, he’d have to fund a purchase of 900 plus cars to arrive on LIRR tracks before at least 1965 or the existing equipment would have given out, that wasn’t going to happen, I can promise you if O’Malley’s 1950 coup that pushed Rickey out never occurred the Dodgers would still be in Brooklyn, O’Malley was not loosing money, he was in an advantageous situation compared to the Boston Braves, Philadelphia A’s or even the Phillies and Reds, the Dodgers were the financial class of the NL until the Braves short meteoric rise and it would’ve remained that way.
O’Malley had a sweetheart land deal in LA, which he’d probably had since the late 40’s and in order to make it sweeter he had to b.s the city of New York to make LA feel as if it was a chance he’d stay in Brooklyn if LA didn’t bend over even more to his demands. If O’Malley was so content on parking he’d look to Southern Brooklyn, he has highways that connect to Long Island and Jersey and space for Milwaukee style parking without disturbing existing neighborhoods to the extent that he would’ve Downtown, or the most economically feasible move would’ve been to purchase the Property on Bedford Ave between Montgomery and Sullivan Place, than Sullivan-Emprie Blvd, (only at the corners) than purchase the vacant lot on Franklin Ave where a streetcar depot had recently been turned into a vacant lot, than another one on Nostrand Ave and he could’ve built large indoor parking facilities around Ebbets Field. Reminder had O’Malley not been a slumlord between 1950-56 and let another Slumlord takeover Ebbets Field would’ve had 15-20 years as an adequate stadium than in 1970 once Moses was gone he could blackjack another set of NYC politicians to build his nonsense Atlantic and Flatbush nightmare, they probably would have went for it if he greased their palms enough.
@@richiemartinez103 - A. There is no way that O'Malley would have obliterated 100 blocks for parking. Indeed, the very fact that he sought to put the Dodgers' new park in Downtown Brooklyn rather than in the southern part of the borough near Coney Island demonstrates that he was not looking for parking on the scale of County Stadium (or even on the scale of what Shea Stadium would later have). The subway had been responsible for the Yankees' strong attendance since the 1920s; likewise, the subway would have been the main means of transport to a new Dodgers ballpark on Atlantic Avenue.
B. No one said that the businesses on the plots that O'Malley wanted were failing; likewise, the residential community of Mexican-Americans in Chavez Ravine that was displaced by that land's condemnation was thriving. But those slaughterhouses and other businesses would have been replaced by restaurants, bars, nightclubs, hotels, etc.; and the value of the residential properties in the area would have gone up dramatically.
C. With the drastic increase in the tax base that would have occurred if a stadium had been built, the State could have taken over the LIRR long before it acutally did so in the 1960s. This would have made it all the easier to get to the new stadium (which, incidentally, would **not** have been the dome of some unrealistic fantasies).
The entire story is that the city government of Los Angeles acted responsibly, while the New York municipal authorities, having ceded control to Moses, did not. The deal that the Los Angeles government made - the acquisition of a little bit of land by condemnation, in return for the new owner spending a great deal of his own money to bring about tremendous improvements - is one that any responsible and sensible government would make. But, alas, we did not have a responsible or sensible government in New York at the time; we had a staggeringly inappropriate autocracy in city planning by an unaccountable megalomaniac. If not for that, the Dodgers would be playing on Atlantic Avenue today, and Brooklyn's nadir would have been avoided.
(P.S. - And the Giants would have moved to Minneapolis. So this scenario would have been worse for the Giants, even as its effects on New York City and on urban America in general would have been extremely positive.)
You must read the book "The Dodgers Move West" by Neil Sullivan. That book explodes many, many old myths that deserve to die.