Los Angeles Times file photo
Manager Walter Alston (24) rides in a parade down Broadway before the Dodgers’ first game in L.A. in 1958.
Posted on 10/06/2007 7:34:02 PM PDT by jazusamo
Fifty years ago, L.A. City Council voted to provide Walter O'Malley with 300-plus acres in Chavez Ravine. The rest is baseball history.
All of 22 years old and fresh out of USC, Rosalind Wiener was looking for ways to attract voters in her bid for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council.
She had 35,000 cards printed up enumerating the standard election promises: strengthen drug laws, improve the economy, eliminate government waste and provide adequate public transportation.
But she needed one more item. Something different. Something original.
Well, her family had always been huge baseball fans, so why not?
Wiener's final item: Bring major league baseball to Los Angeles.
The year was 1953.
"I didn't know about minor league rights," she said. "I didn't know you had to get a vote of the owners. I thought, you just said to somebody, 'Come visit. Come to L.A.' I didn't know how complicated it would be to bring a team here."
Complicated, but not impossible, as Wiener, who married and became Rosalind Wyman, discovered after winning a council seat.
Professional baseball in Los Angeles in those days consisted of two Pacific Coast League teams, the Los Angeles Angels and the Hollywood Stars.
On the other side of the continent, the Dodgers seemed entrenched in Brooklyn, where they had been since their inception in 1890 as the Bridegrooms. As the Trolley Dodgers and then, simply, the Dodgers, they became the soul of their community and "America's Team" long before the Dallas Cowboys were tabbed with that distinction.
But by 1953, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley had been exploring alternatives for aging Ebbets Field for seven years. Back in 1946, as a minority owner, O'Malley sent a letter to engineer Emil Prager in which O'Malley said, "Your fertile imagination should have some ideas about enlarging....
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
..is that an Edsel?
It sure is. My girlfriends neighbor bought a new 58 that year, we lived east of L.A.
We would drive North on that little piece of Golden State Freeway which became I-5 and see the progress of construction of Dodger Stadium, peaking from between the hills up in Chavez Ravine...
We were practically neighbors, I lived in Azusa and became a Dodger fan when they moved to L.A.
..went through there many times—especially after the 210 was finished.
I think Walter O’Malley should thank Douglas and Lockheed for making the Los Angeles Dodgers possible. The reason is simple: the DC-6 and Lockheed Constellation allowed non-stop flights from the US East Coast to US West Coast, which made it possible for MLB teams to locate on the US West Coast. People forget that the reason why we didn’t see MLB teams west of St. Louis, MO until the late 1950’s was due to the limitations of train travel.
Not much of a substitute for a ball park.
..if I remember my baseball history, the site where Ebbets Field was built was originally a pig farm LOL!
You’re right, air travel is what brought MLB to the west. I flew to the east coast in 56 on a TWA Super Constellation, it was a great flight except when we landed at La Guardia in a storm, we were bouncing around something terrible. lol
Yep, look at the cars in that. A 50 something Olds, 56 Chev, 58 Ford, in the middle of the road a 59 Chev and on the left a Ford T-Bird.
Yes, I went to one game at the Coliseum but it was nothing like Dodger Stadium.
Having landed at,and taken off from,La Guardia a few times in my day I can assure that the bouncing around is SOP.It's part of the charm of the Big Apple.
I’m not ashamed to say I was scared to death. I was a teenager and it was the first time I was on a plane, I wanted to be anyplace but there.
Now this is flying.
However, what really expanded professional sports in the western USA was the arrival of the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8 on a large scale in the early 1960’s. That’s what made it possible for teams in San Francisco and Los Angeles to really flourish.
Trivia question : what buildng was used as the very first Dodgers club house?
If I knew it at one time I sure can’t remember.
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