Fresh wounds from old cuts

Yesterday, Dec. 3, 2007, a day that will live in infamy, Walter O’Malley, was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY.

The wailing and gnashing of teeth you hear are the remains of die-hard Brooklyn Dodger fans who consider this honor as rubbing salt in their still fresh wounds.

Popular joke of the 1950s: A Dodger fan is locked in a room with Stalin, Hitler and O'Malley but with only two bullets. Who does he shoot? O'Malley, twice.

The issue was pretty simple. Ebbets Field was small, decrepit and had no parking (many of the team's fans had moved out of Brooklyn). O'Malley wanted a big, modern, privately owned domed stadium in Brooklyn (where land was available because a market was being torn down). New York City Building Commissioner Robert Moses wanted a city-owned stadium located in Flushing Meadows, NY, on land he had cleared for the World's Fair, which is more convenient to more people (this providing more revenue for the city).

Neither side would compromise and in the end they got what they wanted. O'Malley moved to a larger, modern venue in Los Angeles and Moses got Shea Stadium. What the fans wanted was lost in the equation. No one much cared what the fans wanted because in the end, fans will always want baseball and "if you build, it they will come," even if it was in Los Angeles. The Giants moved to San Francisco in the same year, but with a lot less rancor.

On the other hand, one could consider O'Malley a visionary because he expanded baseball beyond Missouri. Dodger Stadium remains a popular venue for baseball, with it's clean and still modern design and excellent sight lines. Of course, when the team was placed for sale, O'Malley refused any offer than would move the team out of Los Angeles. He seemed to need or want or enjoy (I don't know which), the myth that the Dodgers were thrown out of Brooklyn. Anyway the moment is passed, the team remains in Los Angeles and the land on which Ebbets Filed once stood is a housing development. If nothing else, the move from east to west ushered in an era of naked corporate greed. Both sides saw an opportunity to make more money and both sides jumped at the chance, without caring what the public thought.

O'Malley was first and foremost a real estate man. He designed, built, privately financed and maintained Dodger Stadium. It was and remains his park, his vision. Although old Brooklyn Dodger fans will forever hate the man, someone would have inevitably moved baseball west. Because O'Malley made that move, he is being honored by Cooperstown. And the move was about ticket sales because the more people you can seat, the more money you can make. Whether you enjoy baseball in the "friendly confines" or a small field or while sitting in comfort in a large stadium has always been less important to owners that how many butts are in the seats. The Chicago Cubs, for example, never have to change because no matter how miserable their season, the park is frequently sold out. And that, my friends, is what really counts to owners. Attendance is the reason we have night games, it's the reason teams move and the reason baseball exists.

However, in the pantheon of most loathed team owners, I submit that O'Malley is third behind Charley Comiskey and Robert Irsay, who moved the Baltimore Colts out of the city that loved them in the dead of night.

O'Malley is being honored as a visionary, who expanded baseball west to Los Angeles. In 1957, O'Malley took his team west in search of better real estate, leaving in his wake inconsolable Brooklyn Dodger fans who have never forgiven O'Malley for taking their team west. In these days of TV coverage and the Internet, it might seem like a small thing, but in those days when a baseball game could be followed on radios blaring from open windows and backyards as one walked down a city street, when one lived and died by their teams, well, it was the worst kind of back stabbing an owner could do to fans. On that day in 1957, I gave up baseball forever--maybe not forever, but I never felt the same about the game. It was a day on which the United States began a precipitous decline from a great nation of opportunity to the shuddering corporate wreck it has become, and from which it will never recover, unless the Dodgers return to Brooklyn and since that will never happen, we are doomed as a society. I was a kid in 1957, and I am old now, but the wound remains fresh.