Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush

Finally got to see this and having been raised by a Brooklyn Dodgers fan who gave up watching baseball from the end of the '57 season until the Mets were born in '62, I thought it was sensational.

I knew most of the story, from O'Malley's Geodesic Dome plan in '52 to Robert Moses' stubborness in not allowing him to build in Brooklyn but the detail with which the non-baseball part was covered was exceptional.
Worth recording and keeping to watch again and again in my opinion.

 

I have it in my TiVo receiver and have watched it three times already and now I find I can't turn it off simply because it's on HBO again tonight.

 

Just watched it, and as a baseball-history maven, it was pretty engaging.

Both sides of the O'Malley debate were covered. Contrary to the propaganda pumped out by the O'Malley apologists, the city of New York, aka Robert Moses, did not tell O'Malley to drop dead and hit the road -- they offered to build the same stadium on the same location where Shea now stands.

On the other hand, the city of LA offered to give -- not sell, GIVE -- O'Malley 350 acres of prime real estate, that in the words of Bill Veeck, who wrote about it quite extensively in one of his books, was "not only worth more than the ball club itself, but probably worth more than all the clubs in baseball put together."

One quibble I had is that the film depicted the idea of the Dodgers moving to L.A. as a brainstorm springing more or less full-blown from the minds of councilwoman Rosalind Wyman (quoted at length on camera) and county supervisor Kenneth Hahn in 1956.

From various accounts, moves to L.A. had been considered by the Browns in 1942 (but Pearl Harbor put the kibosh on that), the Browns again in 1952 (as Veeck was getting run out of St. Louis), the Athletics in 1953-54, and the Senators (as mentioned on camera). I have read a couple places that Phil Wrigley, who owned the PCL Angels as well as the Cubs, occasionally toyed with the idea of bouncing the Cubs out there in the early 1950s, when Chicago attendance really tanked.

There was also, from the late 1940s to mid-1950s, a lot of talk about the Pacific Coast League trying to make a jump to major-league status. Had O'Malley or someone else not made the jump to L.A. within a year or two, the major league landscape today would be very, very different.

 

Hated the whole notion.
Loved (Bob Caro!) the program.
Go figure.

 

Always been more of a N.Y. Giants fan than a Brooklyn fan, but I've done a lot of reading on both. I'll bow to Spnited/Casty's vast knowledge of NYC baseball here but it seems to me that:

If O'Malley was one of baseball's smartest owners, Horace Stoneham had to be one of the dumbest. The Dodgers were probably gone with or without him moving to SF; that just clinched the deal. But had he remained in NYC even with the Dodgers moving, he could have leveraged a new ballpark to replace the Polo Grounds, saved a bunch on travel costs, and been the only show in town, with the best player in baseball as his attraction.

Most pissed-off Dodger fans wouldn't have become Giants fans. But over time their offspring would have. He'd have owned the city, especially when the Giants got better in the early 1960s with lots of black and Latin stars that would have been very popular there.

SF would have gotten an expansion team, maybe even an AL team along with the Angels in 1961. The NL could have gone to Houston and DC.

 

Would not have worked that way, Micro.

A. O'Malley can't go to the West Coast by himself... MLB would not have allowed it becuase of 1,600-mile travel for only 1 team.
B. No self-respecting Dodgers fan would ever become a Giants fan and nether would their off-spring (Trust me!). They hated the Giants more than they hated the Yankees.
C. Stoneham believed the Giants were looked at as the 3rd team in the City and would never get a new ballpark. He already had talked about moving to Minneapolis.
D. Becoming O'Malley's "partner" on the West Coast was the smartest move he could have made.

 

Was watching this last night and started thinking about "what if." And I'd really be interested in hearing some of the longtime baseball guys' opinions.

O'Malley gets his ballpark built in Brooklyn. What is the ripple effect? Giants to Minneapolis? Maybe. Where do the Senators go -- or do they? Do the Athletics go to Oakland from Kansas City?

Thoughts please.

 

The Giants would go to Minneapolis, the Senators go to Houston, the A's would eventually go to Oakland but they had just moved from Philly in the mid 50s.
And how much of a difference did the Giants going to SF make on the Dodgers going to LA?
Each team played what, 2 series a year against the Dodgers?
With jet travel becoming common in the late 50s, it wouldn't have made that much of a difference.
BTW, here's a good book about the move:
http://www.amazon.com/Dodgers-Move-West-Neil-Sullivan/dp/0195059220/ref=sr_1_1/002-7283502-7684821?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184686105&sr=1-1

 

And the Nationals would still suck.

 

That book is excellent, I highly recommend it.

To the point of the Giants staying in NY, it wasn't an option for Stoneham. The Giants had become a distant third in NY'ers hearts, surviving only because of the Dodger rivalry. In '57, they drew about 650,000 over 77 home dates, with about half coming in the 11 dates against the Dodgers. There simply weren't enough Giant fans left in NY to make the team viable without the Dodgers being there as well.

O'Malley and/or Stoneham were right in not wanting the Moses ballpark (which became Shea Stadium), since Shea was a dump a few years after it opened.

 

Will this program be available on DVD?

 

Thanks, Spnited. Of course I knew both teams were expected to go to the coast together. But there's part of me that thinks even though the Giants were a distant third at the time, had they become the only NL club in the NYC they would have eventually prospered, especially since they got so much better in the early 1960s.

If the Dodgers stay in Brooklyn/NYC? The Giants to MSP by 1960 or so, and the Senators to - Atlanta? The Braves got there in '66, but maybe the Senators could have beaten them there in 64 or 65 after the Civil Rights bills finally passed.

Charlie Finley screwed up by not going to Denver from Kansas City (so did the Seattle Pilots, IMHO). That was a city ready to boom and go crazy for MLB, which it did, and it was crazy about the Rockies when they first moved there.