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A Chance to Vote. With Stoneham safely stashed in his hip pocket, O'Malley easily got the league's permission to move. But now that the Dodgers had gone through their last season at Ebbets Field, Los Angeles really began to bear down. Every time O'Malley sat in a conference with city officials, the promised acreage shrank. He gave up the oil rights in Chavez Ravine; he reluctantly surrendered the oil that might be under Wrigley Field. And when the city council finally passed an ordinance agreeing to a contract for Chavez Ravine, the Dodgers' opposition picked up their bats. They wanted to save the ravine for more worthy enterprises, they argued—a zoo or a cemetery. But they got their biggest financial backing from a chunky oil tycoon named John A. ("Black Jack") Smith, who was shouting "Dodgers go home" for more personal reasons. Black Jack and his brother own the San Diego Padres, and they would understandably prefer to see the West Coast saved for minor-league ball.
The opposition had just 30 days to collect 52,000 signatures on a petition to force a referendum on the Chavez Ravine ordinance. In any other state in the country, the task might have been too rough. In California, where professional signature solicitors will get all the signatures anybody needs—for a fee—it was easy. For an outlay of about $19,000, O'Malley's enemies guaranteed Los Angeles voters a chance to throw O'Malley right out of Chavez Ravine.
Chinese Theater. For O'Malley, that was a future headache. The referendum will be held in June. His immediate problem was where the Dodgers were going to play in April. Wrigley Field was clearly too small. Walter wanted to break attendance records right off the bat, he announced grandly, and the only stadium that seemed big enough was the Coliseum. As usual, Walter acted as if he ought to be paid to let his boys play there, finally signed a lease that left him only a little better off than the Coliseum's other tenants, e.g., U.C.L.A., the Los Angeles Rams.
Sportswriters took one look at the short foul lines (250 ft. in left field, 300 in right) and shuddered. The 42-ft.-high screen erected across the left-field bleachers impressed them not at all. It would protect the sun bathers, but heaven alone could help the pitchers. Oriental home runs, wailed the critics, would sail out of the park like pigeons; Walter O'Malley's Chinese Theater would make a mockery of every hitting record in the book.