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| Introduction |
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| The Early Years |
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| Entering The... |
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| The Dodger Saga |
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| A New Era Begins |
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| Ebbets Field Revisited |
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| The Memorable... |
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| Searching for New... |
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| L.A. Sends a Message |
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| This is Next Year! |
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| Putting Their Domes... |
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| The Political Game |
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| 1957 |
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| Page 36 |
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| Page 37 |
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| Page 38 |
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| Page 39 |
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| Page 40 |
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| Page 41 |
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| Page 42 |
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| Page 43 |
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| Page 44 |
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| Page 45 |
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| Page 46 |
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| Page 47 |
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| Page 48 |
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| Page 49 |
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| Los Angeles Bound |
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| Where to Play in L.A. |
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| Curveball Right... |
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| The Red Head is a... |
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| 1959: A Year of... |
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| Home Sweet Home |
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| Construction of... |
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| L.A.'s Sparkling New... |
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| 1963: A Taxing Year... |
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| The Business of.. |
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| Growing the Game... |
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| Moving to Chairman... |
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| The Last Inning |
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“That, too, becomes part of a civic purpose in trying to assemble the land at Atlantic and Flatbush. Then there is a question of parking in that area of our community where our department stores are located. Some parking facilities were needed in that area. There was also the observation that the property for the most part was substandard, and had been so designated by Mr. Moses as subject to a study for slum clearance.
“Then we had a railroad station at that project, an old-fashioned, real old country depot that also was dirty and improperly planned, and when the Long Island Railroad came out of bankruptcy, part of the agreement under the Railroad Redevelopment Act passed by the Legislature of New York provided that the railroad would have to purchase, I believe it was, $200 million worth of modern rolling stock and put on that railroad.
“At the time I presented this site for consideration, none of that new equipment, which was then on the tracks of the railroad, could come into Brooklyn, and those of us in Brooklyn were embarrassed because, if you wanted to get into a modern car, an air-conditioned car, you had to go to Manhattan, which meant that women coming in from the island to do their shopping in the summer months would not come in in the old Camp Yaphank troop trains into Brooklyn when they could get a modern air-conditioned car right into the shopping center of Manhattan.
“This plan would have provided for track curvatures so that the new railroad equipment could come into Brooklyn. We then would have had a railroad depot that we could have been proud of in Brooklyn. We would have relocated our meat market. We would have had parking facilities. We would have cleared up a traffic intersection that was terrible. And all of this would have magically left enough acres of land on which a ball park could be built, at the cost of the owners of the Brooklyn Ball Club, not one penny of which was to be paid by the city of New York. I think that is very important to know.”70
In its “Study of Finances Required for Brooklyn Stadium” report of August 5, 1957, consulting engineers for the Brooklyn Sports Center Authority Madigan-Hyland concluded that a domed stadium would run an estimated $12,502,000 and approximately $3 million less without the dome. “The stadium should be considered as a general-purpose facility which would be of wide service, not only as a major league ball park, but also as the site for staging other events. The principal use of the stadium is to serve as a home for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Since there are only about seventy days a year when the stadium would be used for Dodgers events, the facility is available for other uses during most of the year.
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Even in 1957, which would be the Dodgers’ final season in New York, there were plans on the table to build a new domed ballpark on the land at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues in Brooklyn. |
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