By Luke E.

ãLives rooted in weary brownstones·were lit up by the gods at play nearbyä -Unknown

Once upon a time, Brooklyn was the world, and Brooklyn had a baseball team.

The Brooklyn Dodgers, during their heyday in the 1950âs, were one of baseballâs best and most important teams. While only winning one World Series in that period (1955), the Dodgers did more for Brooklyn than simply providing mindless entertainment: the Dodgers gave the city identity. When team owner Walter OâMalley moved the team to Los Angeles, California in 1958, Brooklyn experienced a loss from which they have never recovered. The Dodgers were so ingrained in the culture of Brooklyn, were so beloved by everyone from the kids playing stickball in the streets to the mothers calling them inside for dinner, were such a common ground for all the different types of Brooklynites on which to connect with each other, that many Brooklyn residents and former Brooklyn residents have still not forgiven the team for moving, 43 years later. And just as Brooklyn was deeply in love with the Dodgers, the Dodgers were deeply imbedded in the scrappy, working-class identity that Brooklyn projected. Each year, the Dodgers would sign as many as 10 local Brooklyn boys to contracts, grooming them in various sandlot leagues (some even made it to the majors, such as Sandy Koufax and Chuck Connors), and shrewdly ensuring a consistent fan base of young Brooklynites with big baseball dreams.

Apparently, however, this fan base was not enough. Citing poor attendance and the cityâs refusal to build the Dodgers a new stadium per OâMalleyâs preferred plan, the Dodgers packed up and left before the 1958 season. In hindsight, the move was economically sound, with franchise profits rising steadily in the years after the move (the Los Angeles Dodgers even won the World Series in 1959, only their second season in L.A.). Dodger fans were immediately incensed; in local newspaper columns, OâMalley was compared to the likes of Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin. However, the Dodgerâs departure was more of a reflection than a cause of Brooklynâs decline. There were various factors that had contributed to the loss of attendance at Brooklynâs legendary Ebbetts Field, and OâMalley was not a baseball romantic. He was a businessman, and he was shrewd enough to see that with Brooklynâs changing social and cultural climates, the Dodgers would never regain the success, financial or otherwise, that they had once enjoyed. Likewise, Brooklyn actually did not suffer much economically as a result of the Dodgerâs departure; the effect on the city was more cultural, even sentimental.

Pre-war Brooklyn had been a mostly white middle-class community, with good schools and parks. However, as WWII came to an end, many factors were contributing to the changing social and cultural climate in Brooklyn. The availability of the automobile, for one, made it possible for the middle class white families who had made up much of the Dodgers fan base to leave Brooklyn, heading for California, Canada, or any one of the new frontiers calling out to the cooped-up city folk of the East Coast. Families that had resided in Brooklyn apartments or projects for years took advantage of government-sponsored housing loans to move out to the suburbs. Hundreds of thousands of white families abandoned the borough for Queens, Nassau County, New Jersey, and Staten Island. Brooklyn, in turn, was flooded with new immigrants representing every corner of the globe. These immigrants found homes in neighborhoods that had fallen into disrepair as a result of the failure of Brooklynâs industries. Big manufacturers began to move to cheaper areas in other cities, and the ports became less active as larger ships began to dominate the shipping trade.

As a result of these changes in Brooklyn, the Dodgers took on even more importance than they had previously held. Whether by a conscious effort or not, the Dodgers became the symbol of the new blue-collar, hardworking Brooklyn. ãThe Dodgers represented beer, sweat, unfiltered cigarettes, raucous laughter and all manner of animal pleasure in red-bulbed basements in the outer boroughs ,ä writes sportswriter/novelist Robert Lipsyte. ãThe Dodgers were virtueâs team.ä

Among young males in the community, there was probably no other aim in life than to be signed by the mighty Dodgers ö who, unfortunately, had to adopt a slogan of ãwait Îtill next yearä due to their poor play in the post-season during the post-war decade. Nevertheless, the Dodgers became a real central aspect of Brooklyn life, in a way that few sports franchises today are able to in their respective communities. The Dodgers gave Blacks, Italians, Eastern Europeans, and Jews a common interest to rally around. ãDodger Blue was it,ä says Marty Radwell, a Brooklyn native who grew up with the Dodgers. ãAll the guys on my block were Dodger fans. They were very exciting times for us, for all the boys who were into baseball. In those days, before free agency, very little changed, there was no trading or any of that. It was (Carl) Furillo and (Duke) Snider, Pee Wee Reese and Cox, Dixie Walker, a guy by the name of Schultz on first base, Jackie Robinson·these guys didnât move around much, and they didnât make a lot of money,ä reminisces Radwell. ãThere were fewer teams, only one winner in each league, and that was it. It was nothing like baseball now. It was really quite an interesting thing.ä

The Dodgers also managed to endear themselves to the Brooklyn community through the quirkiness that seemed to characterize the organization as a whole. In May of 1920, the Brooklyn ãbumsä participated in the longest game in the history of the major leagues, 26 innings of 1-1 baseball. In the World Series of that year, the Dodgers were on the unfortunate end of an unassisted triple play ö one of the rarest feats in baseball. The Dodgers would not win another pennant for 21 years, until the likes of Dixie Walker (ãDa Peopleâs Choiceä), ãPistol Peteä Reiser, Dolf Camilli, Joe Medwick, Pee Wee Reese, and Cookie Lavagetto led the ãbumsä to the World Series, which they promptly lost. Yet, this was a team with personality, something that can be rare in the sports world. Brooklyn fans quickly responded, bringing their own sense of quirky personality to their bleacher antics. When team president Larry Macphail hired organist Gladys Goodding to tickle the ivory at Ebbetts Field, she impetuously began to play ãThree Blind Miceä whenever the umpires would walk out onto the field at the beginning of a game, thus immortalizing herself among Brooklyn baseball fans. Local woman Hilda Chester became a regular at Ebbetts field when her doctor told her to exercise her arm in the sun. Chester would often show up waving a 4-pound cowbell, waving along to the ãDodger Symphony,ä a five-piece band wearing tattered clothes and playing battered instruments, regularly rendering cacophonous support for the home team while mocking the visitors. The Dodgers were at once successful (World Series Champions in 1955) and lovable, and above all inescapable as a central part of life in post-war Brooklyn.

As successful as the Dodgers were, there were those who saw that by the mid-1950âs, Brooklynâs continually changing cultural climate was causing the attendance at Ebbetts field to sag. Various aspects of American life as a whole were also contributing to the apparent loss of interest in baseball among fans in Brooklyn. By 1956, the World Champion Dodgers were struggling to break even, financially. The Dodgers had even had trouble selling out their World Series games in 1955.

Mostly responsible for the quite sudden lack of interest in the Dodgers was the continuing ãwhite flightä of many communities. Native white families who had been ardent Dodger fans were making more money and taking advantage of opportunities to move to the suburbs and follow the white-picket-fence American Dream. Immigrants were moving into Brooklyn, an increasing number of whom had no interest in baseball, only in making a living for themselves. This left the Dodgers with a rapidly diminishing fan base in their hometown.

The solution to this problem was thought to be a new stadium for the team to play in ö this much was agreed on between the major players in the Dodgersâ move to Los Angeles: team owner Walter OâMalley, Parks Commissioner Robert Moses, and Mayor Robert F. Wagner.

The Dodgers and New York City had been considering a new park for the team to play in for almost a decade. It was agreed that although Ebbetts field had character, it was small (it only seated 32,000), old and rickety, and lacked sufficient parking and rail facilities for fans coming in from the suburbs. In addition, neighborhood crime around the park was bad and getting worse. So the Dodgers designed a 55,000-seat stadium complete with a plexiglass dome and the necessary parking space. The Dodgers, along with the Brooklyn Board of Estimate, agreed that the proposed new stadium would be perfect at Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, near the LIRR.

However, Moses, who had veto power over the project, disagreed. Moses thought that the new stadium would be better suited in the Flushing Meadow area of Queens (where Shea stadium is today). Moses was in the process of building parkways in this area, and foresaw major traffic jam problems for a large ballpark built in the middle of Brooklyn. By April of 1957, Moses had officially offered OâMalley and the Dodgers 78 acres of Park Development property in Flushing Meadows. When OâMalley declined, perceiving Wagner and Moses to be dragging their feet about building him a new stadium, it became clear that his intentions to move the team to Los Angeles were serious. OâMalley was an excellent businessman, and saw that he could not keep the team in Brooklyn and continue to make money. ãMy roots are in Brooklyn,ä said OâMalley during the controversial period in which it was uncertain whether the Dodgers would move or not. ãThree generations of my family are buried there. I belong there. The team belongs there. But Iâm not going to have a loser. I must make money to compete.ä

Jet travel was another factor that made the Dodgerâs move to Los Angeles possible. When OâMalley and New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham made the plan to move their respective franchises West together, they did it based upon the principle that National League franchises would only foot the bill of sending their teams West a couple of times a year if there were two teams to play. Up until the move, St. Louis had been baseballâs westernmost outpost. With the availability of jets, OâMalley and Stoneham were able to convince the National League and its other franchises to support the move.

Another factor contributing to the apparent loss of interest in the Brooklyn Dodgers was television. In the Dodgersâ heyday, the games were broadcast on radio, and away-games through ticker tape (broadcasters would not be at the game, but would get accounts of the game on ticker tape and repeat them over the radio, as if they were actually at the game). However, with the popularization of television broadcasts of Dodger games, something seemed to have been lost in translation. ãTelevision had a tremendous impact on baseball,ä says Stu Feit, a Brooklyn native and longtime Brooklyn Dodger fan. ãThere was something magical about going to the park and seeing something you couldnât find anywhere else.ä Perhaps some of the romance of baseball was sacrificed for the convenience of television broadcasts in the late 1950âs. ãTo go to the ballpark used to be a special occasion,ä continues Feit. ãTelevision kind of dilutes it a little bit.ä

Finally, in October of 1957, unable to reach an agreement on a new ballpark with the city, and worried by the rapid decline in attendance and interest for the Dodgers caused by social and cultural changes over which he had no control, OâMalley packed up and moved west with probably the most beloved team in New York. ãIn view of the action of the Los Angeles City Council yesterday,ä said the official statement, ãand in accordance with the resolution of the National League made Oct. 1st, the stockholders and directors of the Brooklyn Baseball Club have today met and unanimously agreed that the necessary steps be taken to draft the Lost Angeles territory.ä

ãWith those 52 words,ä wrote The Daily News, ãbaseball died in Brooklyn. ä

* * * *

The effect of the Dodgerâs departure from Brooklyn has been the subject of some debate. While it is difficult to determine the actual economic impact that the move had on the area, to the best of anyoneâs knowledge, it was minimal. Arguments have been made that it is not what Brooklyn lost economically from the move, but what it would have gained, but these arguments are irrelevant now. Again, the Dodgerâs departure from Brooklyn was more of a reflection than a cause of Brooklynâs decline. However, the one intangible that cannot be ignored is the fact that the team meant more to Brooklyn sentimentally than in any other respect, and in this the departure was crushing.

ãIt was a very sad and disappointing time for us,ä says Radwell, who was in his early 20âs in 1957. ãWe couldnât believe it. We thought it was a mistake, that there would be a reversal. We just couldnât believe it. We were all devastated, very saddened.ä

Dodgerâs radio announcer Red Barber: ãIf the words on the Statue of Liberty meant anything at all, they applied to Brooklyn in the old days. You had blacks, Jews, Italians, Irish, Polish and others working hard to make a living, and they all cared passionately about their ball club. Iâve never seen a community that was so attached to a team, or grieved so much when it left. And the grieving goes on today. ä

Irving Rudd, Brooklyn Dodgers publicist who did not move with the team to Lost Angeles: ãItâs a funny thing, but I felt listless, really kind of down, and I didnât know why. I went to my doctor and he told me there were lots of cases just like mine in the neighborhood. People wandering around in a funk. He called it Dodgeritis, and said there was no known cure.ä

ãI really was very disenchanted at that time,ä says Feit, who had known many of the Brooklyn Dodgers personally as a result of his grandfather owning the garage across the street from Ebbetts field, where the players parked their cars. ãI stopped rooting for them, and I never really got back. It was really tough.ä

At the last Brooklyn Dodger home game in 1957, only 6,000 people showed up, fans that already knew their beloved Bums were leaving for the coast. At the end of the game, over shouts of ãDonât Go!ä and ãStay, stay!ä from the fans, organist Goodding played ãAm I Blue,ä ãAfter Youâre Gone,ä ãDonât Ask Me Why Iâm Leaving,ä ãWhen I Grow Too Old To Dream,ä ãHow Can You Say Weâre Through,ä ãIf I Had My Way,ä and ãQue Sera, Sera.ä As the fans filed out she played ãAuld Lang Syne.ä

Today, the Dodgers enjoy a beautiful stadium, lots of parking spaces, and financial success in Los Angeles. They have won the World Series 5 times, most recently in 1988. However, they do not share the same emotional connection with their community that the Brooklyn Dodgers once did. Brooklynites still go to the old bars and hangouts (the ones that still exist, anyway) and mourn the loss of their team. Some even mourn the loss of baseball, pointing out that it was the shrewd businessman OâMalley who first treated baseball as a cash cow, possibly paving the way for the way baseball is seen in society today. With conventions such as free agency and multi-million dollar contracts, real baseball romantics mourn for a time when the game was a game, and not a business. OâMalley, for his part, never claimed to be a baseball man ö he was always about the money. Perhaps, then, the move was inevitable: a team not as financially important to a city as sentimentally important, owned by a businessman who cared only about money. Whatever the causes of the move, it is easy to see that old-time Dodger fans keep a special place in their hearts for Da Bums. ãI really had a great love for the Dodgers, and I still do,ä says Feit. ãThey were very exciting times to be a baseball fan in New York.ä