Hall of Fame: Bonds, Sosa NO! Roger Maris, YES!

MLB thank god stopped with all this moving nonsense decades ago.Wish the same thing could be said for the NFL.the NFL has become a joke the way teams can move at the drop of a dime. The Rams going back to LA is a right being wronged so that for sure is one move that IS justified just like it was justified move with the Raiders moving back to Oakland since a wrong was being righted then as well the fact they never should have been allowed to leave in the first place same as the Rams.

I just hope the Chargers dont leave for LA as well or the NFL will go back to being a joke again allowing a team that has played in its community for over 50 years to leave but the idiots in the NFL are pushing for two teams and the chargers have made it clear they dont want to stay same as the Rams.

speaking of the Milwaukee Braves,yeah I have a friend who used to live there and he experienced and felt the same kind of heartbreak and depression I felt of the Rams leaving LA when the Braves left Wisconsin for Atlanta.Same as me,he also got very depressed about it back then when it happened so he knows first hand what I am going through with the Rams.

 

The St.Louis Rams returning to Los Angeles as the LA Rams would be a mere shell of their former selves - like the Indianapolis Colts, playing in "skunktown-USA" and still not eclipsing the former greatness they had when they were the powerful Baltimore Colts. Ravens are not representative of that reputation either, nor are the Cleveland Browns of today; or the Tennessee Titans of the old "House Of Pain" Houston Oilers.

Ravens; Browns; Colts; Titans; Texans; Rams; Cardinals; Panthers and Jaguars? All teams created by the NFL bypassing Los Angeles. Pining for a return of the Rams to LA is like rooting for the Philadelphia Warriors; Seattle Supersonics; Kansas City A's; Rochester Royals; Syracuse Nationals; Buffalo Braves, or New York Titans (still in existence as the Jets - but the Titans is a much better nick name).

Moving the San Diego Chargers, formerly the Los Angeles Chargers for one season, an original AFL club, would mean that every team in the Western Conference of the AFC except Denver has relocated at least once. Chargers became the San Diego Chargers; Dallas Texans became the Kansas City Chiefs; Oakland Raiders became the LA Raiders, than Oakland Raiders again. The Raiders and the motherhouse of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang located there, are the only things that make that city interesting, and sometimes I think the bikers get better publicity.

As I have posted time and again, let us know when the first shovelful of dirt is dug for the new stadium in Carson or Inglewood for the most anticipated sports story of the century (LOL). Until that happens - I don't think the NFL owners are going to vote to move the Rams to the Coliseum in Los Angeles for two years, waiting while the townships out there dicker back and forth about building a stadium. If they had a decent one - the city would have received a club back years ago in a heartbeat. Kronke has the money to build that stadium himself if he really wants to leave St.Louis - if it so important to him, after all, it is the Los Angeles media, entertainment market and massive population, which makes the city attractive to professional sports, isn't it worth it to the Rams owner? Oh, I get it, he wants the bankrupt Los Angeles County to foot that bill - which is the reason the Rams bailed in the first place. You don't understand professional sports - fan loyalty means nothing whatsoever in any of the sports, they could sell out every game, and if the owner gets a burr up his butt over anything; attendance; crummy stadium; small market advertising; weather - anything - and they would move. The only thing the NFL is interested in, is advertising revenue, same as baseball, otherwise, Miami would never have gotten a Major League baseball team called the Florida Marlins, and Montreal wouldn't have lost theirs.............

 

The reason the Brooklyn Dodgers, who just happened throughout their heyday in that borough of NYC, made more money every year than the New York Yankees did, with a smaller budget, was because it was a neighborhood-borough team. Ebbets Field was in Brooklyn. The Dodgers nick name came about because right in front of Ebbets Field there was a six track trolley switching station, and people used to say you had to be a "Dodger" to get across the street to get to the game without getting run down by a trolley - and the name stuck. Brooklyn moved because of a major influx in first Puerto Rican's moving into the neighborhood, than low level unemployable people started to live on the streets, and the borough became dangerous, and crowds, despite the Dodger's on-field success, became smaller and smaller. They might have led the league in attendance, but 33,000 was rarely met, the had crowds like 22,000-25,000.

Walter O'Malley, who ranks right up there with Hitler as one of the most disliked people in Brooklyn, N.Y., saw the writing on the wall. Greener pastures were out west in wide open Los Angeles to be had - money to be made - and, although he gave the borough the 1956 (Giant's pennant year); 1957 (Milwaukee pennant year), to improve sales and attendance, it continued to fall to dangerous levels. The Dodgers were still Brooklyn's team, but the demographic of the neighborhood where all the players lived, shopped, took their kids to the parks and attended school's in Brooklyn, collapsed, the city went down, and O'Malley moved em.

Surprisingly, they played their first year in Los Angeles in the LA Coliseum. That's how old that dump is. O'Malley than convinced Harold Stoneman to move the New York Giants out to San Francisco, to retain the rivalry, successfully, and make MLB nationwide. Up to that point, the St.Louis Cardinals were the farthest team west, and had, and still have, a tremendous following.

Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds, home stadiums for the Dodgers and Giants, were the first of the old 1900's ballparks to be demolished. Forbes Field in Pittsburgh; Crosley Field in Cincinnati; Busch Stadium in St.Louis; and Coney Mack Stadium in Philadelphia also was demolished.; Only the Chicago Cubs maintained the small ball park atmosphere into modern times. Most of the American League clubs had large stadium's, Yankee Stadium in NYC; Memorial Stadium in Cleveland; Tiger or Briggs Stadium in Detroit; Comiskey Park in Chicago, and could maintain attendance levels into the mid 1960's and 1970's when those awful all-purpose circular stadiums replaced the venerable old National League ballparks. You needed a pitcher to throw you a golf ball, not a baseball, to hit home runs out of Comiskey Park and Cleveland Municipal.

To show how things changed for the worst for the National League (whose signing of Black players far preceded the American League), giving them a much better on-field product because of the influx of guys like Don Newcombe; Ernie Banks; Willie Mays; Hank Aaron; Willie McCovey, etc., only 38,000 fans were in the ballpark in 1960 for Game 7 of the World Series, when Bill Mazarowski hit his walk-off winning home run against the Yankees, the only time it has ever been done in the World Series. Had that game been played in Yankee Stadium, at least 62,000 would have been in attendance.

Surprisingly, both leagues have since gone back to modern ballparks, with excellent downtown locations, resembling the old ballparks of the 1950's. The trend with the wonderful HOK Design Firm out of Kansas City designing ballparks, was Pilot Field in downtown Buffalo, a gem, that is the largest minor league park in the country, capacity 44,000. It was followed by Baltimore's Camden Yards, about the most beautiful new baseball stadium ever constructed, the new Yankee Stadium and Mets ballpark, can't hold a candle to the beauty and design of Camden Yards.

Miller Park in Milwaukee is another gem, designed by Brewer great Robin Yount - it was designed for players to hit, and attempt to make triples in. Great American Ballpark in Cincinnati, another gem, and the Giants finally moved out of hurricane country on Candlestick Point, and have a marvelous new ballpark. I remember attending a Giants-Houston night game in the middle of August at old Candlestick Park, and froze, and I had flown in from Buffalo. That bay wind there is awful. Dodger Stadium, of course, continues to be a superb facility for baseball, and the San Diego Padres have a brand new swanky stadium - too bad the city can't emulate it with a football one in Mission Valley, might save the Charger franchise from moving to Los Angeles.

Tastes and times change in sports, but baseball itself marks the time for America, the game continues to hold its popularity in spite of all sorts of underhanded cheating and scandals, the Pete Rose one, now a distant memory.

 

It's much more than that. Mostly: Ebbets Field was crumbling, he wanted to build a new park. He was stonewalled several times, and finally drew a line in the sand. Tammany Hall kept tap-dancing...and O'Malley proved-in dramatic fashion-that he was not bluffing!

The Dodgers and Giants would move together or not at all. There was never any chance of only one of them moving.

Probably because Forbes Field only held 35,000 people. Also, by 1970, there were many problems. The city and the University of Pittsburgh had grown up around it, and there was no parking, the structure was crumbling. Plans had been floated to replace it since 1948!

The Chargers want a stadium, let THEM pay for it. The team is worth more than $900,000,000!

 

That's not the way the NFL or other MLB clubs work, doesn't matter a bit what the "value" of the team is, could be $2 million alone, worth is measured by what the last person who purchased a club in the league paid for it. Although the Miami Marlins owner desperately wants the Ne York Mets franchise, because he advertises himself as an art dealer, with galleries in New York City, it is all reproduction print art, not authentic artistic paintings, more in line with supplying Wal Marts and places like that with prints. Some very nice stuff, but reproduction is reproduction. Against the advice of almost every person in South Florida who decided to chime in on the story, almost 100% told the Marlins not to move downtown, they would lost their entire North fan base from W.Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale. The went ahead, convinced the city to build them a gem of a stadium in Little Havana, where they promised routinely, that the neighborhood would improve remarkably, and it didn't. Than they got a city ordinance prohibiting the Hispanic community from street selling (which was one of the iconic lures of the neighborhood - genuine Cuban cuisine, sold at umbrella stands). So - the Marlins not only failed to improve the neighborhood, they even punished the neighborhood, by eliminating hundreds of small one-two person jobs on the street. Delicious corn and cheese Arepas and hot italian sausage right off a grill is delicious - prices about $4-$5 apiece. Now they can't sell - you have to purchase the same items in the stadium and they cost $10-$15 each, so much for capitalism, and good intentions by the Marlins owner.

He wants the Mets on the cheap, and of course, the Wilpon family isn't going to give it to him, you can't buy a New York City sports franchise for nickels and dimes, even if it stinks. The Marlins got their pretty little dome ballpark in LIttle Havana, and lost 15,000 season ticket holders in the process, and average about 15,000-18,000 a game since they moved out of Sun-Life on the Broward-Dade County line.

Same thing happened with the Dodgers - NYC had many chances to save them - everybody thought because of the neighborhood following of them, that they would never move (and the move was singular - I don't recall reading anything about Stoneman agreeing with O'Malley to move the Giants in tandem), and happen to be a major Dodger fan, although I never saw them play in person as the famed Brooklyn Dodger, only in Los Angeles, where O'Malley put up Dodger Stadium with private money, nothing constructed used a penny of public funds, and they Changed Chavez Ravine forever for the good. It never would have happened in Brooklyn - low attendance, a crummy but beloved ballpark, and a major change in population shift in the city, caused attendance to plummet.

BTW, the capacity of Pittsburgh's Forbes Field in 1960 was 41,000, they didn't sell out Game 7 of the World Series with the Yankees. You would have though all those steelworkers, it still was known as the smokey city, would have taken a day off. I was in Forbes many times as a kid, fans used to sit on the lawn in center field, and they kept the batting cage in the field of play in center, because straight-a-way center field was something like 462 feet. They turned the open end of the batting cage against the wall and the back of the cage was used as fair territory. To sit on the lawn fans had to agree not to touch the ball in play, and from my memory, it rarely happened. They also had an 87-foot high wall in right field. Babe Ruth, playing for the Boston Braves in his final professional game, hit three home runs in Forbes Field, the last, over that wall and roof in the Mononghela River, only person ever to do it - talk about an exit.

When playing for the Pirates, Don Clendenon hit probably the longest ball in the history of major leagues, when he bounced a ground rule double off the top of the batting cage, over the wall and into Shenley Park behind. Since it was a double, nobody though to measure it, like Mickey Mantles 565 foot shot in Washington out of Griffith Stadium. Baseball experts later estimated that if it hadn't hit the top of the cage, and the ball was a liner, not a high fly, it would have traveled 700 feet before striking anything. Would have been the longest HR in MLB history............

 

For the whole story of the Dodger-Giant move to California, you need to read Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O'Malley, Baseball's Most Controversial Owner, and the Dodgers of Brooklyn and Los Angeles by Michael D'Antonio.

 

Oh, I know the story, but it wasn't a contingency move by the Dodgers or the Giants. The league wasn't stepping in and making sure that if Brooklyn went West, another NL team had to go with them. Both clubs, and owners, O'Malley and Stonemen, were in separate negotiations with both NYC - where they wanted to put the Dodgers in Flushing Meadows - which is where Shea Stadium finally went up for the Mets. O'Malley wanted NYC to condemn land so he could purchase it at a reduced price to afford a new stadium, and the city government said no way. So he notified Los Angeles officials, which had been in negotiations with the Washington Senator's for a move, that he would be interested in a move to LA if he could get the right land deal. They gave it to him, the rest is history. Meanwhile, Stonemen, having the same difficulty with the NYC government as O'Malley was, went into major negotiations to move the Giants to Bloomington, Minnesota, the home of their AAA farm club. That spot eventually went to the old Washington Senator's in 1961 becoming the Minnesota Twins. Stoneman and O'Malley put their heads together, San Francisco was a natural rival, without professional sports, and they made the move in 1957 together, but it wasn't a collaboration. Both teams were moving out of NYC, and when the Dodgers got the Chavez Ravine land deal in Los Angeles, San Francisco followed with one for the Giants and the ancient rivalry was renewed on the West Coast. Also, had trans-continent airline travel not become commonplace at the time (the big Constillations were flying), along with the DC-3, if would have been impossible for either club to move, train travel in those days was 3-days out and back to the West Coast. Scheduling would have been impossible, so that was another consideration that fell into place allowing the Giants and Dodgers to move. Along with the Dodgers and Giants - Milwaukee to Atlants; Kansas City to Oakland and Montreal to Washington were the last successful moves by MLB clubs..........