Changing Understandings of the Dodgers’ Move to Los Angeles and the Value of Archival Sources

Abstract

Changing Understandings of the Dodgers’ Move to Los Angeles and the Value of Archival Sources Seth S. Tannenbaum (bio) Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers’ owner who in 1957 moved his franchise from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, is one of the most influential figures in all of American sport. His reputation, however, is varied. Some authors, particularly in the decades after the move, cast him as one of the sport’s most greedy villains because, in their eyes, he stole a profitable team away from Brooklyn to make even more money in Los Angeles. More recently others argued O’Malley wanted to stay in New York but was stymied by government officials like Robert Moses who refused to help him acquire his choice site for a new ballpark.1 There was not a single moment in which the understanding of the move shifted; as early as the 1970s, some writers blamed Moses, and as recently as 2017, others blamed O’Malley.2 That said, fans’ emotions and sportswriters’ frustrations at losing their beat covering one of the best teams in the National League colored many of the early narratives that blamed O’Malley. Authors who looked to fans and sportswriters to understand the move faulted O’Malley, as did many writers who grew up in Brooklyn. When scholars gained access to archival material documenting the move and especially to O’Malley’s private papers, however, they tended to discuss the move with far greater complexity. Although access to professional baseball team papers is rare, as analysis of the Dodgers’ move demonstrates, such access allows for nuanced scholarship that highlights some of the ways baseball can be used to understand themes in broader American history.3 Blaming O’Malley was essentially the norm until some of his papers were made public because it was hard to understand the actions of the somewhat reticent owner without that material, especially for fans and journalists who felt personally wounded by his decision. When some of his communication with Moses became available in the 1980s, understanding O’Malley got easier, and more writers highlighted Moses’s role in the team’s relocation. This trend continued in the 2000s when O’Malley’s family donated some of [End Page 34] his papers to the Brooklyn Historical Society and posted others to the web-site www.walteromalley.com. His family also let a select few authors access the bulk of his private papers that were not online, allowing scholars to better comprehend his intentions and make connections beyond the game. The changing understandings of the Dodgers’ move show that although archival work is often painstaking, difficult, and expensive, looking beyond the sports pages, fan memoirs, and popular perceptions of pivotal moments in baseball history allows scholars to display more complexity. Before this kind of archival research was possible, the story of the Dodgers’ move was a simple narrative blaming one man, but with those sources, baseball historians used the move to understand a host of other aspects of American history. Other sport historians have made related arguments about the general value of archival documents, but the Dodgers’ move is an oft-discussed event whose broad narrative arc is well known, making it a powerful example when coupled with detailed analysis.4 Moreover, the Dodgers’ move is an informative and important case study because O’Malley’s papers are some of the very few professional baseball team records explaining off-field decisions that are available to scholars. A few team papers are held at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, New York, and others are scattered throughout a variety of archives, but the vast majority are not available. As the Dodgers’ move also demonstrates, however, it is not impossible to display complexity and highlight baseball’s larger implications without team papers, but that access is a boon to crafting nuanced narratives that connect to themes in broader American history. background of the move The Dodgers moved into their famous home park in Brooklyn, Ebbets Field, in 1913. Over the following two decades, a mass transit–accessible, middle-class, residential neighborhood grew up around it. However, in part because team owner Charles Ebbets had to take...