Seeds sown for Dodgers departure on this date
Semien goes yard
Good morning all and happy Tuesday!
MLB is in its All-Star game break. The home run derby was held last night and the All-Star game is tonight. It’s a perfect time for me to delve into some baseball history.
On this date in 1955, seven National League owners awakened feeling good about things, after making an eighth NL owner happy. (Baseball’s American and National Leagues each were made up of eight teams, a far cry from today.) Little did the seven who voted on the eighth owner’s request, realize the seeds had been sown for a dramatic change in the National Pastime.
The day before, July 13, 1955, the owners approved Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley’s request to play seven Dodgers home games at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, NJ. Each team would play a night game there during the 1956 and ‘57 seasons. The announcement of the Dodgers moving seven home games each season would not be made until the following month.
O’Malley was done with the Dodgers home park at Ebbets Field. The building was falling apart, the neighborhood in which it was located was also decaying and Dodgers fans were fleeing to the suburbs. Roosevelt Stadium would have parking for 15,000 automobiles. Ebbets Field had room for 700.
O’Malley also made it clear the Dodgers were done with Ebbets Field, after the 1957 season. His deal with Jersey City officials was a two-year lease, with the proviso the Dodgers would play all of their home games there in 1958, if their new ballpark in Brooklyn was not completed.
The Dodgers announcement caught the attention of New York City and state officials and soon a stadium commission was formed to take a closer look at O’Malley’s plan for a new ballpark at the corner of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues - coincidentally the sight of the current arena that is home to the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets.
But city and borough officials dragged their feet, never believing O’Malley would actually move the Dodgers out of Brooklyn. To his credit, despite those in the media who to this day paint O’Malley as the villain, the Dodgers owner did try to keep the franchise in Brooklyn. Why wouldn’t he? He lived there; worked there.
Attendance was dwindling at Ebbets Field. O’Malley needed to act and act fast. Listen to the Brooklyn Dodgers radio broadcasts from that season - and they are readily available on You Tube - and broadcasters Vin Scully, Jerry Doggett and Al Helfer repeatedly talked attendance figures. In one broadcast, July 28, 1957, with Brooklyn at Cincinnati, Scully talked about the big crowds for the three-game series against the “Redlegs” and how the Dodgers would go over the one million mark in road attendance, during the current road trip. The suggestion, of course, was why weren’t the Dodgers fans turning out at Ebbets Field?
In the end the Dodgers never did play all of their home games at Roosevelt Stadium in 1958. The politicians kept dragging their feet, believing O’Malley would never move his team out of Brooklyn. They even believed O’Malley, when he told a congressional hearing about baseball’s antitrust exemption in 1956, that the “Dodgers were not leaving Brooklyn.”
But leave they did, and the seeds of their departure were sown 71 years ago, when O’Malley’s fellow owners granted him permission to take that first step.
Semien goes yard
It has been a long season for the New York Mets. This was the year they were supposed to overcome last year’s collapse and return to the playoffs. Instead, the Mets are 40-57, the most games they have been below .500 at the All-Star break since 1995. The additions of Luis Robert Jr. from the White Sox and three-time All-Star Marcus Semien from the Rangers were designed to boost the lineup. Instead both have been injured; Robert Jr. with a herniated disk and Semien with a hip flexor.
On Sunday, both players were on a rehab assignment with the Mets AA affiliate Binghamton, playing against the Hartford Yard Goats. Robert Jr. had two hits in four trips with an RBI and Semien went 2-for-3, including this three-run homer:
That is going to do it for today’s newsletter. Enjoy the All-Star game and have a terrific Tuesday!
DAN