Roger Kahn article on the O'Malley's

[KHenry14]

Roger Kahn wrote this article in today's LA Times as part of a series of articles the paper is running on the 50th anniversary of the team moving.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-kahn6apr06,1,2748948.story

In it Peter O'Malley commissions a guy to find out why his family was so hated in Brooklyn! Hello? Are you that clueless? I guess so...

Anyway, enjoy...

[MATHA531]

Bravo for Roger Khan...the truth hurts sometimes but at least he tries to put the lie to the bs that it was Robert Moses or that Ebbets Field was an absolute disaster or irredeemable.

[mandrake]

Bravo for Roger Khan...the truth hurts sometimes but at least he tries to put the lie to the bs that it was Robert Moses or that Ebbets Field was an absolute disaster or irredeemable.

In many of the books about the betrayal, the one item that usually is addressed (but sometimes denied) was the decay of the neighborhood. I have shown my dad many books and articles about how the hood was going down by 1957, but he insists it is a crock. Kahn has written before that it was sinking fast; so have others. What we need are facts; was the neighborhood in trouble by '57? Or earlier ? A former HS teacher of mine claimed his dad ,Jimmy Murphy, was sports editor of The Eagle and that the staff was ordered to downplay all crime the last few seasons before the Eagle folded.

The last time I went down there with my young kids, I went to the Brooklyn Museum, the Childrens Museum , the Botanic Garden, and the Prospect Park Zoo. The neighborhood now is MUCH safer then it was when I was a kid in the 70's and 80's.

You can't just renovate Ebbets Field if it eventually was surrounded by crack dens.

[Bklyn Boy since 1936]

I grew up in that neighborhood and lived there until the mid 1960s when I moved to Canarsie. In my opinion the biggest contributing factor leading to the decay of the neighborhood was the Ebbets Field APARTMENTS.

Yes, there was "white flight" to Queens, Staten Island and Long Island but those who were buying the private homes in the area were responsible working class families. It wasn't until after the EF APARTMENTS were built that the neighborhood went to hell in a handbasket.

I would also say that most of the "white flight" had more to do with the peace and prosperity of the times which led to wanting to, and being able to, give your family a home on a piece of property with a green lawn and a white picket fence "in the country" than it did with race.

[penncentralpete]

I grew up in that neighborhood and lived there until the mid 1960s when I moved to Canarsie. In my opinion the biggest contributing factor leading to the decay of the neighborhood was the Ebbets Field APARTMENTS.

Yes, there was "white flight" to Queens, Staten Island and Long Island but those who were buying the private homes in the area were responsible working class families. It wasn't until after the EF APARTMENTS were built that the neighborhood went to hell in a handbasket.

I would also say that most of the "white flight" had more to do with the peace and prosperity of the times which led to wanting to, and being able to, give your family a home on a piece of property with a green lawn and a white picket fence "in the country" than it did with race.

BrooklynBoy, hello: I agree with your sentiments/opinions re: the "white flight" from the borough of churches. My dad moved us to a single-family home into NJ in the fall of 1950 (plus, dad worked in Jersey). The move had zero percent to do with anything except a nice single-family home with a grassy backyard for us four kids. We attended Ebbets Field religiously each summer from our new digs. My first game was in 1954 (I was just turning 8). My dad had been working hard, saving his money for the move, so we as a family could live with much more space, and like I mentioned a large, grassy backyard to boot. In Brooklyn, we had lived in a 4-family house in a crowded neighborhood. We never had the white picket fence, but enjoyed not sharing bedrooms! The Brooklyn Dodgers remained the family's biggest interest, and their move ripped our hearts out in the winter of 1957. If ballclubs like Detroit, St. Louis, Philadelphia, NY (Bronx), et all found ways to stay in the inner city, so could the Dodgers. After all, they were making LOTS of money. I feel that the Bums allowed their ballpark to deteriorate, played games in Jersey City, and had the move planned well in advance of '58. To state it simply: "we was robbed".........................

[mandrake]

I certainly did not state anything about race or imply white flight. I grew up in Greenpoint in a 52 family apartment building. I loved it there.The place was very diverse; much more so than now when working people have been priced out. The brownstones on Kent Street, right behind my old bedroom window, can fetch around $2 million bucks now. When I went to college in 1979, my parents bought a house in Maspeth as their piece of the pie. I have regretted them moving out of Greenpoint ever since. (But I am sugarcoating Greenpoint as I recall riots in the summer of 1969 where helmeted cops were up and down the avenue)

Back to the topic; I read so many stories saying the area around Ebbets was going down hill, but my parents claim the ride down from Greenpoint was fine. Others say that their commute from areas like Pitkin Ave became a war zone back in the 1950's. If patrons feel unsafe, and they can watch the games on TV (a novelty in the '50's) at home then you can explain why Dodger attendance went from 1.8 million in 1947 down to 1 million in 1957. We always seem to forgive Stoneham for pulling the Giants out, but their attendance mirrored the Dodgers (drawing 1.6 million in 1947 and dropping to 854,000 by 1955).

As for O'Malley, I am not taking his side at all. He was a BUM. I am just asking for facts surrounding the neighborhood. It may have been sliding in the 50's and would have possibly hit bottom in the 60's and 70's, but like other neighborhoods it could have 'come back' in the 90's.

[aqib]

BrooklynBoy, hello: I agree with your sentiments/opinions re: the "white flight" from the borough of churches.

To a large extent though hasn't the "borough of churches" now evolved to the borough of churches, synagouges, and mosques"?

[Spirit of '55]

To a large extent though hasn't the "borough of churches" now evolved to the borough of churches, synagouges, and mosques"?

Friends:

It certainly has. A good friend of mine in the real estate business was telling me that last Thursday he had appointments with two Pakistanis, an Hispanic family, and an Indian M.D., ate lunch at a jerk restaurant, ate pizza for dinner, and brought home a dozen bagels for breakfast the next morning. He asked me to guess where he'd spent his day. My answer: "What? You didn't go to Brighton Beach for some blinis?"

I mean, come on! Brooklyn IS America!

Let's bring home the Dodgers before the Big Quake, else the fault will be ours!

[dodger dynamo]

well if the big quake comes, I'd betcha I know who's getting out first. In the 60's my dad got a job with the dupont company and moved the family to De., while I was in the army, about 61. So it was more about opportunity. I think ebbets field being rebuilt in the borough as a museum or exhibition field or something, could very well happen. If I recall correctly it sat on about 5 to 5 1/2 acres. I know a spot where it would fit nicely. battlin bake, the dodger dynamo.

[EdTarbusz]

Roger Kahn must have been a pretty poor reporter if he didn't know that New Yok city leaders had a hand in the departure of the Dodgers. Where was he in 1956 and 1957?

[MATHA531]

Roger Kahn must have been a pretty poor reporter if he didn't know that New Yok city leaders had a hand in the departure of the Dodgers. Where was he in 1956 and 1957?

Well he was there sir covering the team as also was another great sportswriter of our time, a man named Dave Anderson who spent many years as one of the top sports columnists for the NY Times.

If you mean by not bowing to O'Malley's blackmail is your interpretation of having a hand in the departure of the Dodgers, then I must continue to disagree with you. I don't know what your sources are on this move...anybody who has written a book or whatever supporting O'Malley must be right while anybody who was there and knows what happened can't be right.

The reality remains that if a city was ready to pull an immoral stunt the way the city of Los Angeles did by handing over valuable land for next to nothing, the fact that nobody in major league baseball's hierarchy had the decency to stand up for the fans of Brooklyn far outweigh the inability of the officials of the City of New York to accomodate a poor excuse for a human being interested only in enriching his pockets at the expense of the people who put the money in his pockets in the first place.

The rest is nonsense.