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Why Move? Walter considers success his due. His tenure as the Dodgers' principal stockholder, he reminds anyone who will listen, coincided with the most fabulous decade (1947-56) ever enjoyed by any National League team.* The Dodgers won six pennants, lost out in two pennant playoffs, finished as low as third only once, and drew more than 1,000,000 customers every year. Neither John McGraw's Giants nor the Gashouse Cardinals ever did any better over a ten-year span.
With business so good, why move? Brooklyn had taken the team to its heart. The romance of baseball being what it is, the entire nation was caught up in the sportswriters' fond nickname, "The Bums." There was also a sociological footnote: the Dodgers had brought up the first Negro player in the modern history of the major leagues. This made them the darlings of the vocal politico-liberals who did not know a squeeze play from a loud foul, but who knew a member of a persecuted minority when they saw one—even when he was as skilled, educated and fiercely proud as Jackie Robinson proved to be. Finally, the team was filled with fine players, a heritage from the high old days under Larry MacPhail and Branch Rickey. O'Malley's answer: All this was wonderful, but all this was changing.
What has been happening to Brooklyn itself is funny only to TV comedians. To O'Malley it is tragic. He sings his threnody at the faintest sign of sympathy. "There has been no new office building or theater built in Brooklyn since 1925.* Institutions don't lend money for building in Brooklyn. I can remember when there were four newspapers in Brooklyn; now there are none worth mentioning. And if you don't think a newspaper is important to baseball, you don't know baseball."
There is another problem that O'Malley is too shrewd a politician to complain about and too sharp an observer to miss: Brooklyn's slums have spread alarmingly. There is a burgeoning population of Negroes and Puerto Ricans. A private academy for which O'Malley served as chairman of the board had to shut its doors because its neighborhood became too menacing for mothers to bring their children. Wits cracked that ball games at Ebbets Field, the cramped (capacity: 32,111), musty cracker box that had been the home of the Dodgers since 1913, had been reduced to the social level of cockfights. A familiar complaint was that some customers were urinating in the aisles.
Agreed Diagnosis. Even more important than these esthetic considerations, the team that won the fancy of the public and the pennants of the league, is getting old and tired. Jackie Robinson, the pioneer, has fattened up and pushed on to the green fields of business. Captain Pee Wee Reese is a full step slower at shortstop than he was in his prime. Hypnotism helped Don Newcombe to lose his fear of flying machines, but no one yet has shown the lantern-jawed pitcher where to find the hop that has gone from his high hard one. Slugger Duke Snider swings away with dwindling authority and diminishing faith in his trick left knee. Roy Campanella, the great catcher, languishes in a Long Island hospital, paralyzed by a broken neck. From day to day the infield assignments are as uncertain as the tenure of a French Premier. And there are no replacements at hand.