“But the Colts should never have been allowed to leave, nor should the Senators have been allowed to leave DC.”
Strange how the Senators deal worked out.
In 1956 Los Angeles officials went to the world series to try to get the Senators to relocate to LA.
The Senators ended up going to Minnesota as the Twins and both the Dodgers and Giants relocated to California, keeping their rivalry alive.
If NYC had played ball with O’Malley the Dodgers would have stayed in NYC but the city planner wasn’t a sports fan and wouldn’t use imminent domain to give O’Malley land at below market cost. He did offer the property that eventually became Shea stadium but at market value.
Both my dad and granddad were lifelong Dodgers fans. When the team moved to LA they both refused to follow the LA version of the team.
They refused to even read Dodgers box scores in the paper.
O’Malley was second only to Judas on the Betrayers list.
Robert Moses wanted to build the Dodgers a stadium at Flushing Meadow in Queens (where Shea Stadium would eventually get built, and then Citi Field), but Walter O’Malley said, “Then they wouldn’t be the Brooklyn Dodgers, would they?”
O’Malley wanted a place near Atlantic and Flatbush, at Atlantic Yards, an old railyard. Moses told him that was not a fit place for a stadium. O’Malley took the Los Angeles offer to build a ballpark in Chavez Ravine (it’s still there — Dodger Stadium, the second oldest ballpark in the National League) and after a four-year absence of National League baseball from New York, the Mets were born (owned by Joan Payson, the only Giants stockholder to vote against moving them.)
(They used Dodger blue, with the Giants’ orange script crossed NY on it, then said they were just using the colors of the City of New York. Right, and you didn’t steal those pinstripes from the Yankees either.)
The expansion that created the Mets, Colt .45s (now Astros), Angels, and Senators II was forced by the Continental League. (BTW, O’Malley tried to stop the AL from going to LA, but the Yankees threatened to keep the NL out of New York if that happened.)
After a couple of years at the Polo Grounds, the Mets moved to Shea Stadium — at the Flushing Meadows site Moses wanted the Dodgers to take.
Oh, and the Brooklyn site that O’Malley wanted? it’s now the location of the Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets.
All that’s left of the Polo Grounds is a stairway. But in another irony, when peter Magowan, an old Giants fan from New York, bought the San Francisco Giants, he approached Ralph Lauren to be the corporate sponsor of his ballpark. Lauren turned him down, unfortunately. he wanted to name the place after Lauren’s “Polo” brand — the Polo Grounds.
You know the real reason Calvin Griffith relocated the Senators to Minnesota? He owned Griffith Stadium; at DC Stadium he would have been a tenant.
He was offered a location in Virginia, near Routes 7 and 123. Calvin said nobody would go out there; it’s way out in the country.
Today, that location is known as Tysons Corner — one of the biggest shopping complexes in the DC area. it’s owned by the Lerner family — who, as it happens, also own the Washington nationals.