June 22, 1957
By now, presumably, people who voted for the $40,000,000 bond issue to
extend the city’s park and recreation system and expand the zoo know
that $2,000,000 of the money will go for roads into Chavez Ravine,
where someday the Brooklyn Dodgers may have a ballpark.
Apparently many of them didn’t know it on election day.
In fact, they were unaware of this allocation until the matter came
before the City Council this week and was steam-rollered through there
too.
Suddenly, indignation has taken hold.
A woman writes:
"I can’t figure the voters. Maybe they live in boxcars and pay no
taxes. Maybe their kids can pick up the tab. My husband and I sweat
blood to get our house paid for. But, oh boy, we’ve got to have more
taxes, no matter how unjustified, just so the politicians can take a
bow on bringing major league baseball to Los Angeles. I feel like a
dancing bear with a ring through my nose."
Another letter:
"That was a real sneaky job, letting the taxpayers foot part of the
bill to bring the Brooklyn Dodgers, a private, moneymaking enterprise,
to Los Angeles."
Another:
"No one has asked my opinion about the baseball situation in L.A. But here it is: Dodgers go home!"
ONE OF THE big problems of the day is what’s going to happen to backyard incinerators when they’re outlawed.
The other day, G.B., a Hollywood apartment dweller, put the question to the landlady:
"I’m going to leave it exactly as it is," she said firmly. "About the
time I’d get it torn down the Supreme Court will declare the law
unconstitutional. I figure the people who make incinerators aren’t
going to give up without a fight. They’ll take their case to the
highest court in the land."
ladailymirror.com 
The City of Los Angeles had people dragged kicking and screaming out of their homes in Chavez Ravine, so they could give the land to Walter O’Malley, then they railroaded the citizens of LA to pay for improvements to the land. When O’Malley’s heirs sold Dodger Stadium, did they pay back the city or recompense any of the dispossessed of Chavez Ravine? And what of the new owner, will he try to develop the ill gotten acreage by filling it with condos?
–The story of the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles is a long, complex saga. I’ll be touching on it often in the blog. It is interesting to note that not everybody was excited to see them in L.A.
–Larry
LikeLike
“not everybody was excited to see them [the Dodgers] in L.A.”
A bit of an understatement.
The City of Los Angeles did own the land that was sold to the Dodgers at the time.
The trouble with the sale of Chavez Ravine to the Dodgers was that the City of Los Angeles had obtained the land years earlier using eminent domain for purpose of building public housing. This would turn the deal with the Dodgers into one huge controversial and stormy issue that echoes to this day.
Things got interesting in the next year or so, fifty years ago, with the Dodgers and Los Angeles. No?
LikeLike