After Many a Summer: The Passing of the Giants and Dodgers and a Golden Age in New York Baseball

by Robert E. Murphy

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780803253216
Publisher:	Nebraska Paperback
Publication date:	12/01/2013
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	440
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Robert E. Murphy lives in Brooklyn, New York. He has been a senior writer for The New York Times Guide to Essential Knowledge, and his books have focused on New York City history. His articles have appeared in the Village Voice, the New York Times, Brooklyn Magazine, and Travel & Leisure, among other publications.

Table of Contents

Introduction xi

Part I Looking Backward, 1957-1845

Where Baseball Came From 3

The Teams, the Ballparks 11

Brooklyn: We Simply Live Here 19

Stoneham and O'Malley: Sinful Fathers 25

Stoneham and O'Malley: Favored Sons 37

Citizen McLaughlin and Commissioner Moses 55

Part II Into the 1950s

Gold and Tarnish 65

Mid-Century Movement: Veeck-as in Veeck-as in Veeck 73

Rumblings in New York 85

The Man in the Middle 101

Inching Westward? 127

A Stadium on Stilts 145

Atlantic and Flatbush, Continued 155

Part III 1957

New York 1957 171

O'Malley in Winter 180

Buying in Los Angeles, Looking All Around 183

Opening Day 193

A Trip to Flushing Meadow 197

The Harlem and the Mississippi 207

Enter Mayor Christopher 213

Going? Where? 215

In and Out of the Race 228

In Congress 231

A New Idea for Flushing Meadow 243

The New York Giants-1883-1957 257

Voices in the Twilight 268

Summer's End 273

Pafko at the Wall 289

Obit 293

Till the Last Man Is Out 313

Aftermath: Sunshine and Shadow 319

Acknowledgments 337

A Note on Sources 339

Bibliography 345

Notes 355

Index 403

Editorial Reviews

"I have never quite been reconciled to the Dodgers' being taken from me," admits freelance writer Murphy, who grew up within walking distance of Ebbets Field and still lives in Brooklyn. He is able to put his feelings aside, however, in this objective reappraisal of the sequence of events that led Walter O'Malley (who "[left] Brooklyn a rich man and a despised man") to take his team to Los Angeles-while, at the other end of New York City, Giants owner Horace Stoneham was making his own plans to leave town. Murphy is particularly eager to restore the reputation of Robert Moses, who has been accused of squeezing the Dodgers out. The city planner did offer solutions that could have kept the team in Brooklyn, Murphy reports, but the sites where O'Malley wanted to build his own stadium weren't zoned for that purpose. The Giants' story, though it runs concurrently, is much less dramatic; Murphy's most significant accomplishment lies in breaking down the nostalgic myths and sorting through the historical archives to get the real story behind the transformation of New York's baseball landscape. (June)

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