Are you a property owner that wants to sell their condo, investment property or needs to rent an apartment or retail space in New York City? Call or text me: Sam Moritz, licensed real estate agent, 203–209–3640.
Do you know a property owner that might need real estate help? Refer me! I provide great and professional real estate services across all five boroughs.
Not sure if you’re following the this year’s World Series, but the Yankees and Dodgers are playing each other. I’ve been a big Yankee fan for my whole life, so I feel invested in all of it. Let’s go Yankees.
(It feels weird to send this out today – the Yankees need to win tonight to keep the series going. Alas, I already had the article written).
A few years ago, during an especially lazy Saturday, I stumbled across a PBS documentary (you can watch the whole thing on YouTube) called Brooklyn Dodgers, Ghosts of Flatbush.
As a lifelong baseball fan, I knew, more or less, that the Dodgers used to play in Brooklyn. But I didn’t know their whole story: specifically, how loved they were by their Brooklyn fans, and why exactly they left Brooklyn for Los Angeles.
The story of their departure is about real estate – and money (like most things).
I’m going to give a brief synopsis here and provide some thoughts about how I feel, as a new-age Brooklynite about the Dodgers, at the end of this article.
I remember a lot of the Dodgers’ history from the documentary, but I’m referencing a little bit from the Dodgers Wikipedia page (link here).
The Dodgers were a really good team in the 1940s and 50s. Behind star players, like Jackie Robinson, they won the National League Pennant and played the Yankees in the World Series in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, and 1957. They Dodgers lost to the Yankees every year except 1955. That year – 1955 – Yankees star Mickey Mantle did not start in the final game of the series, which the Dodgers won.
But change was coming: Ebbits Field, the stadium where the Dodgers played, was falling apartment. In the mid 1950’s, Walter O’Malley, the team’s owner, began making plans to build a new ballpark. He really wanted to build it near the Atlantic Avenue Long Island Railroad station, in Downtown Brooklyn. Some of their fans had moved to the suburbs, and O’Malley thought having the stadium near the train station would make it easy for their fans to get to games (nowadays, this is where the Barclays Center is – home of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team).
But O’Malley was met with resistance when he tried to get city approval for the new stadium’s location. Robert Moses, the infamous New York City and New York State Planner, said no. He was not an elected official, but he had accumulated a significant amount of power because he sat on various city planning boards, and had access to tons of public funds. I quote here from Wikipedia: “As head of the Triborough Bridge Authority,… [he] had near-complete control over bridges and tunnels in New York City as well as the tolls collected from them.”
Moses said O’Malley could only build a new ballpark in Flushing, Queens (where Shea Stadium was later built – where the Mets played for a long time until they built their new ballpark “Citi Field”).
The team was synonymous with Brooklyn. O’Malley said no on moving the team to Queens.
There were some other factors at play, but during all of this, the city of Los Angeles began to court O’Malley, encouraging him to move the team to Los Angeles. The decision to move the team to California seems like it would have been a no-brainer.
The Dodgers left Brooklyn, and NYC, along with the New York Giants (who moved to San Francisco), in 1958. Apparently Brooklyn fans were heartbroken, but how can you blame O’Malley? Moving the Dodgers to an emerging metropolis like Los Angeles in the 1950s seems like a marketing opportunity you don’t pass up.
I may be reaching here, but maybe the Dodgers’ westward move is an example of manifest destiny? The idea that moving west would lead to great prosperity?
When I graduated from college in 2012, my only goal was to live in New York City – really, to live in Brooklyn. My first move to Williamsburg was very intentional. I had no desire to move to any other borough, especially not Manhattan. Moving to Brooklyn seemed cool.
I know I’m not an original Brooklynite, but do I get some credit for holding fast to the borough, resisting for years to live in other boroughs, basically out of pride? (I’ve lived here for eleven years now – but I actually am moving to Manhattan soon).
I do think I deserve some Brooklyn credit, and therefore, in some ways, I feel a little bit of a connection with the Dodgers. They were Brooklyn’s team.
With that said, they are playing the Yankees in the World Series this year, and 100%, go Yankees.
Are you a property owner that wants to sell their condo, investment property or needs to rent an apartment or retail space in New York City? Call or text me: Sam Moritz, licensed real estate agent, 203–209–3640.
Do you know a property owner that might need real estate help? Refer me! I provide great and professional real estate services across all five boroughs.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.