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But while O'Malley rounded up cash, the Sports Authority died on second. The Authority was not given enough money to do more than study its problems. As the Long Island Rail Road site faded into improbability, politicians began suggesting other places, but none of them were pleasing. "One," says O'Malley, "was between a cemetery and a large body of water. I pointed out that we weren't likely to get many customers from either place." With $5,000,000 in his pocket and no place to spend it, with only a short-term lease on Ebbets Field and no place else to go, O'Malley began an unabashed scramble for a new playground.
The very suggestion that he might leave town touched off sentimental blasts on the front pages of every New York newspaper. Sportswriters bled by the column that Walter was betraying the Borough of Brooklyn. Brooklyn, Walter answered, was betraying him. Fans were staying away from Ebbets Field in droves.
At the winter baseball meetings of 1956, O'Malley cornered his old friend Phil Wrigley, owner of the Chicago Cubs, and poured out his troubles. He wanted to buy the Cubs' minor-league franchise in Los Angeles. "I wanted to bring the New York situation to a head," says he blandly. "I wanted an anchor to windward." A couple of months later, O'Malley announced that Wrigley had agreed to sell, touching off the fanciest baseball guessing game since the Black Sox scandal.
Farewell to Brooklyn. Were the Dodgers really going to the West Coast? O'Malley's critics were convinced by then that he would go anywhere he could make a rapid dollar—provided, of course, that he was handed the necessary real estate for next to nothing, and the Dodgers were handled like benefactors of the body politic. Still O'Malley played coy. He insisted that he would stay in Brooklyn if he could. But between the time he spoke to Wrigley and the time he announced the deal, he had visited Los Angeles. He scarcely wasted a glance on the small (23,000), antiquated Wrigley Field, where his newly acquired Los Angeles Angels played their games. There was a place called Chavez Ravine that he wanted to see. Walter took one look at the slumbering goat pasture just north of the heart of the city, saw four lovely freeways funneling cars in every direction around the vast acreage, and said his private farewell to Brooklyn.
Los Angeles' Mayor Norris Poulson promptly set about converting Walter's anchor to windward into a permanent mooring. Gathering up half his city government, Poulson trailed the Dodger president to the Dodgers' spring training camp at Vero Beach, Fla. A loud, impulsive man who manages to give the impression of enjoying himself hugely without quite understanding what is going on, Norris Poulson began to wave his arms wildly and spout promises the moment he met O'Malley. With all the sentimentality of a process server, Walter stopped the harangue by handing the mayor a paper. Somehow, Walter had already found time to spell out in detail just what he wanted.