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

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.)