The Los Angeles option was initiated by the city leaders here and implemented long after Chavez Ravine had been taken over. O'Malley had nothing to do with the eviction of that area's tenants. He could have stayed in Brooklyn forever, and those people weren't getting their homes back.

Once the decision was made to move to Los Angeles, that could have gone in any number of ways. As it turned out, during the Dodgers' first 30 years in Los Angeles - 20 of them under O'Malley, the rest under his son - were a model for baseball in almost every way. Competitive teams playing in a hallmark stadium without ticket prices being raised more than a dollar in three decades. I don't think that should be taken for granted.

O'Malley was a businessman, no doubt about it. Miller should be in the Hall, no doubt about it. And I know your post is all in good fun, but the revisionist history is worth giving more than lip service.

As for O'Malley, my stance has softened a bit WRT the move west. Dodger Thoughts has a lot of good info on O'Malley.

Would it have been awesome if the Dodgers stayed? Sure, of course. But it appears that the city tried to call his bluff, and failed.

FWIW, Steinbrenner almost expanded the landscape to NJ or Manhattan or Yonkers on several occasions :)

Moses never did anything with the best interests of the people of New York first and foremost in his mind.

Can't imagine how they never got along, considering that they both had the same favorite catch-phrases:

"Well, they're just gonna have to move!"
"Does it hurt when I do THIS?"

Hmmmm...........

Wouldn't it be something if Steinbrenner and Marvin Miller went into the HoF at the same time? Not that I would care to wait that long for either one, but...

Which is 1246 pages long.

The Giants were almost operating as a vassal to the Dodgers in the late 1950s. Stoneham kept trying to get invited to the O'Malley-Moses sitdowns and the principals sort of blew him off.

O'Malley convinced Stoneham that the West Coast was the place to be and Stoneham received what appeared to be a sweetheart deal from San Francisco. The city built him a new stadium and got it done very quickly. Candlestick opened in 1960, two years before Dodger Stadium.

But Stoneham didn't own Candlestick. And he didn't realize that it was going to be one of the least commodious stadiums ever constructed.

"In the 21st Century, as many have decried the inability of American public institutions to construct and maintain infrastructure projects, a more positive view of Moses' career has emerged. In a 2006 speech to the Regional Plan Association on downstate transportation needs, Eliot Spitzer, who would be overwhelmingly elected governor later that year, said a biography of Moses written today might be called At Least He Got It Built. "That's what we need today. A real commitment to get things done"."

You can say that again, Gov! >;)

http://nymag.com/news/sports/37643/

Say what you want about Steinbrenner, but he's always had the fans interest foremost in his mind.

Apparently the Dodgers were the unique glue that held all this together.

30 Because they tore down the stadium, duh! >;)

Steinbrenner is just something you accept as a Yankees fan. You may not like it, you may wish it wasn't that way - but what cha gonna do?

I know it'll never, ever, EVER happen, but I fantasize about having a team in Brooklyn again one day. There are 3 million people here, more than any other US city besides the rest of NY, LA, and maybe Chicago. We could totally support a team. The Cyclones sell out on a regular basis, and they're an A ball team 90 minutes from midtown.

Yeah, this is a minor obsession of mine... but that's another post for another time.

31 Nice.

"If a Brooklyn man finds himself in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and O'Malley, but has only two bullets, what does he do? Shoot O'Malley twice."