What if the dodgers never left brooklyn...

[infrared41]

No Mets

Sooooo, Tank would be a Yankees fan?...

No. Everything would be exactly the same except he'd be saying it about The Dodgers.

Omar Minaya would be ruining the Dodgers?

Who's to say Omar Minaya doesn't end up running The Dodgers in this hypothetical world?

[BaltimoreFan]

I'm just curious, were the Giants thinking of leaving New York independently of the Dodgers? The documentary that I watched seemed to imply that Walter O'Malley had to convince the Giants to move with him (in order to make LA work). But before O'Malley talked with them, the Giants had no real intentions of moving. I may be remembering wrong though, its been about 3 years since I've seen the documentary.

If anyone is interested, the documentary I'm refering to is HBO's 2007 "Brooklyn Dodgers- The Ghosts of Flatbush". Very interesting and worth watching if your a baseball fan.

I've always heard that the Giants were moving regardless, that they almost had a deal with Minneapolis until O'Malley came in and requested them to move to California so that his move would work.

What I don't understand is why the Giants didn't take the Queens stadium plan and stay in NY as possibly the only NL team. I would have to assume the proposal was available to both teams. It would be better off staying in NY in that situation than in Minnesota or San Francisco. Was NY that fragmented in the 50's where the teams would consider moving across country before moving to another borough?

Ok, I guess I remembered it wrong.

Also, the city was actually very segmented back then. Many Brooklyn fans said a move to Queens and a move to LA were essentially equivalent. They would still lose "their" team. I'm not sure why the Giants didn't take the Queens deal. Maybe it wasn't offered to them. Or maybe they felt they were the 3rd string team in NY, so they were going to move regardless.

[LightningRide75]

One of many reasons the Giants & Dodgers moved west was to keep the Pacific Coast League from becoming the 3rd Major League. Also expansion in the early 60's was made to keep the proposed Continental League from forming and becoming a threat to the AL & NL.

[njmeadowlanders]

One of many reasons the Giants & Dodgers moved west was to keep the Pacific Coast League from becoming the 3rd Major League. Also expansion in the early 60's was made to keep the proposed Continental League from forming and becoming a threat to the AL & NL.

Which now has teams in 7/8 of its proposed cities...Buffalo being the lone holdout of NYC (Mets obviously not Yankees), Denver, Houston, Minneapolis, Toronto, Atlanta, and Dallas (Arlington is close enough).

[Cujo]

No Mets

Sooooo, Tank would be a Yankees fan?...

No. Everything would be exactly the same except he'd be saying it about The Dodgers.

Jeez, I can't imagine life without Shea Stadium Trivia or Tank suicide watch.....

[Gothamite]

One of many reasons the Giants & Dodgers moved west was to keep the Pacific Coast League from becoming the 3rd Major League.

I don't believe that.

The end result of the Dodger/Giant move west is that the PCL had its legs cut out from under it, but I don't think O'Malley or Stoneham had any specific intent to do so.

[infrared41]

No Mets

Sooooo, Tank would be a Yankees fan?...

No. Everything would be exactly the same except he'd be saying it about The Dodgers.

Jeez, I can't imagine life without Shea Stadium Trivia or Tank suicide watch.....

You don't have to. Just think "Ebbets Field at Citi Stadium" trivia instead of Shea Stadium and replace Omar Minaya and Willie Randolph with Ned Coletti and Joe Torre. Instead of bitching about someone like Carlos Beltran or some middle relief pitcher Tank would be going off on Casey Blake or Andre Ethier. The first time Manny Ramirez went 0-4 Tank would be demanding that they trade him etc. See? It would be about the same.

[Waffles]

Dodgers is a lot harder to spell than Mets.

[BrySmalls]

What if MLB implemented the rules of blernsball?

[BaltimoreFan]

One of many reasons the Giants & Dodgers moved west was to keep the Pacific Coast League from becoming the 3rd Major League.

I don't believe that.

The end result of the Dodger/Giant move west is that the PCL had its legs cut out from under it, but I don't think O'Malley or Stoneham had any specific intent to do so.

I agree that I don't think O'Malley or Stoneham had intentions to destroy the PCL. However I think MLB would have eventually used its anti-trust exemption to prevent the PCL from growing. They would have either moved other teams out west or set up some expansion teams.

[Gothamite]

I honestly don't know about that. On one hand, baseball was going to want in on the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets, and moving existing teams there secured it for them.

On the other, they could have admitted some PCL clubs as expansion teams, pocketed the money and still had their California foothold.

[Buster]

I think the real question that needs to be asked is: What if the A's never left Kansas City?

What if the A's were still in Philly?

[rams80]

I honestly don't know about that. On one hand, baseball was going to want in on the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets, and moving existing teams there secured it for them.

On the other, they could have admitted some PCL clubs as expansion teams, pocketed the money and still had their California foothold.

But who would have gotten the money? They likely would have wanted to have West Coast travel partners, but are there four PCL teams worth annexing in the mid-1950s?

[illwauk]

I honestly don't know about that. On one hand, baseball was going to want in on the Los Angeles and San Francisco markets, and moving existing teams there secured it for them.

On the other, they could have admitted some PCL clubs as expansion teams, pocketed the money and still had their California foothold.

But who would have gotten the money? They likely would have wanted to have West Coast travel partners, but are there four PCL teams worth annexing in the mid-1950s?

If they went that route, one league probably would've gotten San Francisco and the Hollywood Stars. The other league would've gotten the Angels and either San Diego or Oakland.

[Gothamite]

I would have said the Seattle Rainiers instead of either Oakland or San Diego, but that would have worked as well.

Maybe a combination of admitting existing teams and expansion clubs, but those are the markets I would have expected the majors to target. 2 clubs in LA, at least one in the Bay Area, and then another West Coast club to even it out.

[Swiss]

What if the Yankees moved west instead of the Dodgers and Giants? What if the Red Sox filled the void the Yankees would have left in NYC? What if all three New York teams left the city?

According to Glenn Stout in his wonderful book "Yankees Century", the pre-Babe Ruth Yankees almost left NYC in the '10s. Then Colonel Ruppert appeared and the AL NY team was to stay there for more time than expected.

[Gothamite]

Interesting.

Even if the Highlanders had moved, there would have been another club moving in - New York was too big a market for the American League to ignore.

[Swiss]

I'm just curious, were the Giants thinking of leaving New York independently of the Dodgers? The documentary that I watched seemed to imply that Walter O'Malley had to convince the Giants to move with him (in order to make LA work). But before O'Malley talked with them, the Giants had no real intentions of moving. I may be remembering wrong though, its been about 3 years since I've seen the documentary.

If anyone is interested, the documentary I'm refering to is HBO's 2007 "Brooklyn Dodgers- The Ghosts of Flatbush". Very interesting and worth watching if your a baseball fan.

I've always heard that the Giants were moving regardless, that they almost had a deal with Minneapolis until O'Malley came in and requested them to move to California so that his move would work.

What I don't understand is why the Giants didn't take the Queens stadium plan and stay in NY as possibly the only NL team. I would have to assume the proposal was available to both teams. It would be better off staying in NY in that situation than in Minnesota or San Francisco. Was NY that fragmented in the 50's where the teams would consider moving across country before moving to another borough?

Ok, I guess I remembered it wrong.

Also, the city was actually very segmented back then. Many Brooklyn fans said a move to Queens and a move to LA were essentially equivalent. They would still lose "their" team. I'm not sure why the Giants didn't take the Queens deal. Maybe it wasn't offered to them. Or maybe they felt they were the 3rd string team in NY, so they were going to move regardless.

Actually there was another factor to be considered.

It was the "momentum". The Giants had most pennants than the Yanks and the Dodgers in 1957 but if we are comparing them in the last ten years (1947-1957), the Giants had few joys: only 2 pennants and 1 WS. The Yankees won almost all the WS played in that time and the Bums won a solitary WS but alots of pennants after contending every year.

The Giants fans may have felt that their club is running back of the other NY teams and, consequently they started to assist less games at Polo Grounds situated in an increasingly deteriorated district.

I remember those photographies of the fans after the last game of the Dodgers: many of them cried. And after the last game of the Giants, alots of them had a kind of smile in their faces after storming the game field of the Polo Grounds.

So History didn't help too much to sell tickets. The A's fans at Phlly knew very well this history. When the A's left Philly, they had alots of glory than the Phillies but the NL team had the "momentum": won the 1950 NL pennant and contended several years so it drew more fans than the AL team.

Remember the misery of the Yankees after the 1964 WS... until the arrival of Steinbrenner, they couldn't drew many fans unlike the Mets who had great years selling tickets and fielding very good teams.

Ah, if the Bums had stayed in NYC and the Giants moved to Minnesota, surely it killed the old rivalry.

[DnBronc]

Didn't Robert Moses want to build a dome with equidistant outfield fences? The plans have been posted here before. It would've been really ugly.

I believe it was Walter O'Malley who wanted to build the dome. It would have been the first in baseball. O'Malley had a site picked out and plans made up to build it. I think the site was an abandoned meat packing plant or something like that. It seemed like the perfect plan. However Robert Moses refused to let the stadium be built there. He would only allow for a stadium to be built in Queens (the site that eventually became Shea). This lead to O'Malley moving the team to LA.

At least thats what I remember from an HBO documentary I watched a couple years ago on the Brooklyn Dodgers.

I have heard a lot of different things about this. There have been people that said that O'Malley planned to move to LA since the early-50's, and he just put this dome stadium up to show that he was trying to stay. Here is a comment from an article about the situation, and a link to the article above:

http://rate.forbes.com/comments/CommentServlet?op=cpage&sourcename=story&StoryURI=2009/04/14/brooklyn-dodgers-stadium-lifestyle-sports-baseball-stadiums.html&com=151265

I also think that Moses hated O'Malley because his father was part of the corruption of Tammany Hall, the political organization in New York.

[The_Admiral]

But Moses owed his entire career to Al Smith, who was the quintessential Tammany politician.