City of Dreams: Dodger Stadium and the Birth of Modern Los Angeles

by Jerald Podair

Overview

A vivid history of the controversial building of Dodger Stadium and how it helped transform Los Angeles

When Walter O’Malley moved his Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1957 with plans to construct a new ballpark, he ignited a bitter half-decade dispute over the future of a rapidly changing city. For the first time, City of Dreams tells the full story of the controversial building of Dodger Stadium and how it helped create modern Los Angeles. In a vivid narrative, Jerald Podair tells how the city was convulsed over whether, where, and how to build the stadium. Eventually, it was built on publicly owned land from which the city had uprooted a Mexican American community, raising questions about the relationship between private profit and “public purpose.” Indeed, the battle over Dodger Stadium crystallized issues with profound implications for all American cities. Filled with colorful stories, City of Dreams will fascinate anyone who is interested in the history of the Dodgers, baseball, Los Angeles, and the modern American city.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691192796
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	07/09/2019
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	394,071
Product dimensions:	5.70(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Jerald Podair is professor of history and the Robert S. French Professor of American Studies at Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin. He is the author of The Strike That Changed New York and Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Preface: Opening Day In Los Angeles xi

1 Roads West 1

2 Walter O’Malley’s Los Angeles 25

3 Fighting the Dodger Deal 51

4 The Referendum 91

5 In the Courts 127

6 Whose Land? 153

7 The Arechiga Dispossessions 181

8 Private Gain, Public Good? The Business of Baseball in Los Angeles 201

9 Building the Dodger Stadium Experience 233

10 The Rise of Sam Yorty 263

11 The Modern Stadium 279

Epilogue: Dodger Stadium And Modern Los Angeles 307

Notes 313

Bibliography 345

Index 353

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“[An] excellent new book.”—Alexander Nazaryan, Newsweek

“[Podair] is a sure-footed guide.”—John Buntin, Wall Street Journal

“Careful research and straightforward prose make this an excellent introduction.”—Publishers Weekly

“Jerald Podair sets the record straight. . . . With exhaustive documentation he takes us through every step of the Dodgers' move west.”—Marshall Goldberg, Weekly Standard

“An exhaustive, thoroughly researched and fair-minded account.”—Henry D. Fetter, History News Network

Editorial Reviews

Winner of the 2018 Dr. Harold and Dorothy Seymour Medal, Society for American Baseball Research

Finalist for the 2018 PEN/ESPN Award for Literary Sports Writing, Pen American Center

From the Publisher

03/13/2017
When Walter O’Malley dragged the Dodgers out of Brooklyn in 1957, he unwittingly triggered a battle over the future of Los Angeles. Lawrence University historian Podair recreates a protracted conflict that saw the suburbs face off against an unlikely alliance of unions and big corporations including oil, and the L.A. Times. Frustrated by the Machiavellian New York urban planner Robert Moses, O’Malley, like so many before him, headed west to a city that had deliriously morphed from orange groves to a tract-house megalopolis. Eager to shed their provincial status—and inflate the value of their real-estate—L.A. power brokers offered O’Malley a stadium site in Chavez Ravine, where a Mexican-American community had been devastated by a failed plan for public housing. The new stadium was a fait accompli until “the Folks” (mostly white middle-class homeowners) ignited a multi-year conflict that ranged from the courts to the voting booth and resonated across the country. Podair frames the Dodger Stadium struggle as a collision between two very different visions for L.A.: one an endless suburb of low taxes and minimal government, and the other more centralized and hierarchical, with generous state funding for cultural monuments that, not coincidentally, would make the rich even richer. Careful research and straightforward prose make this an excellent introduction, though unimaginative repetition of theses smacks of a high-school textbook. The semi-heroic portrayal of the team owner borders on partisan, but Podair does have a point: O’Malley sweated for his vision. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly