Stay It Ain’t So
Could New York have done more to keep the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants?
Written by Filed under Sports
Walter O’Malley, left, and Horace Stoneham. Image used by permission. Copyright 2009 Robert E. Murphy, Sterling Publishing Co.
On opening day in 1957, New York had three beloved major league baseball teams—the New York Yankees, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. A year later, only the Yankees remained in New York, the Dodgers and Giants having departed for Los Angeles and San Francisco, respectively, leaving behind countless distraught fans.
In the intervening years, much of the blame for the loss of the teams—the Dodgers especially—has been assigned to Robert Moses, a New York “power broker” and one of the most polarizing figures in the history of urban planning. In the new book “After Many a Summer: The Passing of the Giants and Dodgers and a Golden Age in New York Baseball” (Union Square), author Robert E. Murphy offers a balanced and comprehensive account of the events that led to the departure of both clubs, one that assigns responsibility in an even-handed manner.
In the following Failure interview, Murphy explains why he took on the ambitious task of telling the Dodgers-Giants departure story.
Why did you write “After Many a Summer”?
I wanted to provide a historically accurate account of the events that transpired. Others have written about [the Dodgers and Giants] and skewed things in one direction or the other. Although it’s hard to be completely fair if you were born in Brooklyn in 1949 as I was. I’ve always had it in my gut.
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