Did a greedy, cold-hearted Walter O'Malley ship the Dodgers off to Los Angeles for California gold? O'Malley was no saint, but neither was he just trying to get rich. As early as 1952 he tried to buy land in Brooklyn in order to build a stadium more modern and accessible than Ebbets Field. Beloved as it was, Ebbets Field was more than forty years old and had a capacity of only 32,000 seats. Even then the Dodgers couldn't fill all the seats in the heat of a pennant race. They drew only 13,423 fans per game in 1955, down from the 23,474 they'd averaged in 1947. The first season in Dodger Stadium the team averaged 34,014 fans per game — more than the capacity of Ebbets Field. New York City building czar Robert Moses, however, sought to all but jam a site in Flushing Meadows, Queens, down O'Malley's throat — a site featuring a city-built, city-owned park. Moses made it plain enough that he had no intention of allowing any privately owned baseball stadiums in his New York. Only when he realized he wasn't going to be allowed to buy any fresh land in Brooklyn did Walter O'Malley begin thinking elsewhere. For their part, the Los Angeles city fathers weren't even thinking of the Dodgers when they attended the 1955 World Series looking to lure a team to the City of Angels — their original target had been the Washington Senators! But when O'Malley realized he'd need a contingency in case Moses and New York's politicians refused to let him build a new Dodger home in Brooklyn, he sent word to the Los Angeles officials that he wanted to talk. Los Angeles offered him what New York would not: a chance to buy land suitable for building a new ballpark. That the Dodgers left Brooklyn heartbroken is indisputable; that Walter O'Malley did it without good reason is not. As the 1957 season rolled around, the team on the field was overshadowed by the publicity of the team's possible move to the West Coast. Since the early 1950's Walter O'Malley had wanted to build a more modern stadium for his ballclub in Brooklyn, but New York officials did not want to provide O'Malley with the specific land he had in mind. On October 8, 1957, O'Malley announced that after 68 seasons in Brooklyn, the Dodgers would be moving to Los Angeles. In a move to bring baseball to all parts of the country, O'Malley also convinced Giants owner Horace Stoneham to move his Giants the same year to San Francisco. Just a little more than six months later, on April 18, 1958, the Dodgers played their first game in Los Angeles, defeating the Giants 6-5 before 78,672 fans at the Coliseum.

Copyright © 2009 Patrick Spreng.