Full Description
By the mid-1950s, New York had been the unrivaled capital of America's national pastime for a century, a place where baseball was followed with truly fanatical fervor. The city's three teams—the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers—had over the previous decade rewarded their fans' devotion with stellar performances: from 1947 to 1957, one or more of these teams had played in the World Series every year but one. Yet on opening day 1958, the Giants and the Dodgers were gone. Their owners, Walter O'Malley and Horace Stoneham, had ripped them away from their longtime home and from the hearts of millions of devoted and passionate fans and taken the teams to California.
How did it happen? Who was to blame?
The relocation of the Giants and the Dodgers, an event that transcended sports and altered the landscape of New York City, has never been addressed with the depth, detail, and insight offered here by Robert E. Murphy. As informed as it is entertaining, After Many a Summer is rich in baseball lore, civic history, and the wheeling and dealing, alliances and betrayals, and sharp-elbowed machinations of big-city business and politics.
Contents
Introduction
Part I. Looking Backward, 1957-1845
Where Baseball Came From
The Teams, the Ballparks
Brooklyn: We Simply Live Here
Stoneham and O'Malley: Sinful Fathers
Stoneham and O'Malley: Favored Sons
Citizen McLaughlin and Commissioner Moses
Part II. Into the 1950s
Gold and Tarnish
Mid-Century Movement: Veeck--as in Veeck--as in Veeck
Rumblings in New York
The Man in the Middle
Inching Westward?
A Stadium on Stilts
Atlantic and Flatbush, Continued
Part III. 1957
New York 1957
O'Malley in Winter
Buying in Los Angeles, Looking All Around
Opening Day
A Trip to Flushing Meadow
The Harlem and the Mississippi
Enter Mayor Christopher
Going? Where?
In and Out of the Race
In Congress
A New Idea for Flushing Meadow
The New York Giants--1883-1957
Voices in the Twilight
Summer's End
Pafko at the Wall
Obit
Till the Last Man Is Out
Aftermath: Sunshine and Shadow
Acknowledgments
A Note on Sources
Bibliography
Notes
Index
