The real history of the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles is much more nuanced than most people realize, as the following timeline only begins to indicate.
Back in 1946, with Ebbets Field clearly aging, Dodger vice president Walter O’Malley began soliciting ideas for enlarging or replacing the ballpark. Five years of research and investigation passed before, in 1951—a year after gaining majority ownership of the Dodgers—O’Malley asked to have the city help assemble land for him to purchase in Brooklyn for the building of a privately financed stadium with parking.
O’Malley directed his request to New York parks commissioner Robert Moses, the biggest hurdle to the Dodgers’ continued residence in Brooklyn. In an August 1955 letter to O’Malley, Moses explained the rationale for his opposition, saying that it was not in the public interest to aid the Dodgers in this quest.
“I can only repeat what we have told you verbally and in writing, namely, that a new ball field for the Dodgers cannot be dressed up as a ‘Title I’ project,” Moses wrote. “If the Board of Estimate on the advice of the Borough President of Brooklyn wants to put through a reasonable sensible plan for highway, railroad terminal, traffic, street, market, and relative conventional public improvements, and incidentally, wants to provide a new Dodgers Field at Flatbush and Atlantic, you can be sure that my boys will fully respect the wishes of the Board and do everything possible to help.”
Flatbush and Atlantic was the location of the deteriorating Fort Greene meat market but also a subway and Long Island Railroad nexus with room for considerable parking as well. It stood as the preferred site among approximately a dozen locations in Brooklyn that were explored for accommodating a new stadium. “Our present attendance studies show the need for greater parking,” O’Malley said in a press release that announced the Dodgers would begin scheduling select regular season games in New Jersey’s Roosevelt Stadium in preparation for the inevitable transition out of Ebbets Field. “The public used to come to Ebbets Field by trolley cars, now they come by automobile. We can only park 700 cars. Our fans require a modern stadium—one with greater comforts, short walks, no posts, absolute protection from inclement weather, convenient rest rooms, and a self-selection first-come, first-served method of buying tickets.”
The Dodgers made a huge splash upon their arrival to Los Angeles on October 23, 1957, just 15 days after the announcement that they’d leave Brooklyn and head west. Despite a two-hour delay, an enthusiastic crowd anxiously waited for their new professional baseball team. Photo courtesy of www.walteromalley.com. All rights reserved.
O’Malley argued that these weren’t luxuries, but necessities. “Baseball, with its heavy night schedule, is now competing with many attractions for the consumer’s dollar and it had better spend some money if it expects to hold its fans,” he said, “Racing has found a way to get State legislation and financing for a super-colossal proposed race track. I shudder to think of this future competition if we do not produce something modern for our fans. We will consider other locations only if we are finally unsuccessful in our ambition to build in Brooklyn.”
In the coming months, the Dodgers won their first World Series, and O’Malley got his first look at a model of a domed stadium that, if given the space, would address the needs of baseball in Brooklyn. In April 1956, with the support of New York mayor Robert Wagner and 100 civic leaders, Governor Averell Harriman raised hopes for a Brooklyn solution by signing into law the creation of the Brooklyn Sports Center Authority “for the purpose of constructing and operating a sports center in the Borough of Brooklyn at a suitable location.”
But the momentum soon fizzled.
Three years earlier, Roz Wyman, running in part on a campaign to bring baseball to Los Angeles, became the youngest person ever elected to the L.A. City Council. The following year, the council wrote to Major League Baseball’s owners asking them to consider moving a team there. None of this had the slightest significance until dreams of a new Brooklyn ballpark began to fade before the year was out. A decade after O’Malley had begun trying to address the demise of Ebbets Field, a cross-country move emerged as an option. Almost as if to give the Dodgers a little push, Moses recommended that the city of Brooklyn excise the proposed stadium from the redevelopment of downtown Brooklyn.
Moses did have an idea for keeping the Dodgers in New York, however, and proposed to throw support to a 50,000-seat stadium in Flushing Meadows, the geographic center of Queens. O’Malley visited the site and said afterward it had “possibilities.”
“To 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.”
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.
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.