"The Wrong Man" is the title of a book excerpt in the 3/9/2009 issue of Sports Illustrated. The subheading says:

From the moment their beloved Dodgers moved to Los Angeles, Brooklyn's jilted fans never forgave the team's owner, Walter O'Malley. Problem is: O'Malley didn't want to go. The culprit was someone else.

O'Malley had wanted a new stadium from the time he became a part owner of the Dodgers in 1944. Ebbets Field seated only 32,000 and was not in the best shape. To match the perennial excellence of the crosstown Yankees, O'Malley would need more revenue. That quest required, in turn, a larger stadium. When Walter assumed full control of the team in 1950, he made a new ballpark in Brooklyn his main goal. He wanted a 50,000-seat stadium that would rival Yankee Stadium. However, he would need the cooperation of the city and state to accomplish his aim.

O'Malley seemingly knew how to navigate the political slalom to bring his dream to fruition. His father had been a member of the Tammany Hall Democratic machine and had held city office. Walter served as a public works contractor and the Dodgers team lawyer. However, he more than met his match in Robert Moses, "the most powerful unelected official ever to serve in a U.S. city."

Moses had been a power in New York government for many years, once holding twelve state and municipal positions simultaneously. After WWII, he wielded more power than the mayor. As the de facto city planner, Moses created his grand plan for the improvement of NYC. His conception called for a new ballpark in Queens near the site that would host the World's Fair in the mid-60s.

As early as 1954, Moses quietly ordered his aides to put roadblocks in O'Malley's way while Robert publicly appeared sympathetic to O'Malley's plan. Walter pressed his case with politicians, business leaders, and the press, unaware that what Moses wanted built got built and what he didn't want built didn't. The city created the Brooklyn Sports Center Authority to study the feasibility of a new stadium for the Dodgers. Moses pretended to like the idea, causing O'Malley to sell Ebbets Field to a developer.

However, O'Malley was repeatedly stalled and frustrated by the bureaucracy that, unknown to him, was in Moses' back pocket. For example, months after the Brooklyn commission had been created, Mayor Robert Wagner had yet to appoint anyone to it. Potential candidates knew what was going on and refused to take part in the sham.

In the meantime, Los Angeles actively sought a ML team. Officials met with O'Malley when the Dodgers stopped in LA on their way to Japan for post-season games in 1956. The Californians left the meeting with the impression that O'Malley, who had lived his entire life on the East Coast, was not enthusiastic about moving west.

Home from Japan, O'Malley tried to get his proposal moving again. He offered to raise between $4 million and $5 million to invest in sports center authority bonds and to find other investors to buy the remaining $25 million. He also agreed to pay $500,000 per season to rent the new facility. However, the sports commission's own engineering consultant was Moses' ally. So he kept asking O'Malley to pay even more to finance additional bonds to cover the anticipated cost. Finally realizing that his stadium plan was "dying a slow death" (to use Walter's own phrase), O'Malley reopened the channels to LA. The City of Angels agents sweetened the pot, telling O'Malley "Los Angeles will give you damn near anything."

The LA committee employed a double-barreled approach, persuading San Francisco officials to court Horace Stoneham, the owner of the New York Giants, who was also dissatisfied with the attendance at his ancient ballpark, the Polo Grounds. The negotiations between the two clubs and CA officials moved much faster than newspaper accounts indicated. At the conclusion of spring training in 1957, O'Malley met with Stoneham, who was thinking of moving his team to Minneapolis, to persuade him to move further west to SF.

Finally realizing the severity of the West Coast threat, Wagner called everyone to another meeting. By then, however, O'Malley had figured out Moses' game and declined. This gave Moses the opening he needed to cast all the blame on Walter should the Dodgers move. Sports Illustrated, wittingly or unwittingly, cooperated in his scheme by allowing Moses to write a long essay in the magazine in which he falsely accused O'Malley of demanding more from the city than he actually had.

Stoneham went public first, announcing the Giants move to SF. It was an open secret that the Dodgers planned to move also. A young businessman named Nelson Rockefeller, later NY governor and vice-president of the US, offered to contribute several million dollars toward a new stadium in Brooklyn, but Moses squelched the initiative. In early October, the LA city council approved the use of Chavez Ravine for a new stadium for the Dodgers. Soon afterward, the Dodgers issued a one-page press release announcing their move to LA.

The New York Times wished the Dodgers well on the West Coast. However, veteran sports writers such as Roger Kahn, Dick Young, and the Times' own Arthur Daley excoriated O'Malley, picturing him as the personification of evil, a man whose greed had caused him to break the hearts of Brooklynites. Even Red Barber, the Dodgers beloved announcer, called O'Malley "about the most devious man I ever met." O'Malley's fate in history was sealed when Kahn published his best-selling book The Boys of Summer in 1972. In addition to rhapsodizing about the great Brooklyn teams of the 1950s, Kahn portrayed O'Malley as a "cheerless, money-obsessed old man." Believing that a real man didn't defend himself, O'Malley never told his side of the story.

When the Veterans Committee elected O'Malley to the Hall of Fame posthumously in 2007, the New York Daily News said: "Say it ain't so." It repeated the characterization of O'Malley as a "blackhearted" man who "chose money over memories when he moved The Bums to L.A. after he couldn't squeeze the deal he wanted out of the city to replace creaky Ebbets Field with a new stadium."

Of course, the Dodgers flourished in California from the very first season. When O'Malley's papers were made available to a writer several years ago, a note was found from Walter to an old friend. "Bob [Moses] became an enemy when he sabotaged our plans to build a stadium in Brooklyn. He became a benefactor when his opposition became so violent that we left Brooklyn and happily became established in California."

P.S. If Dodger fans want to be mad at O'Malley for something, it should be for running off their beloved announcer, Red Barber. But that's a story for another day.

Reference: Forever Blue, Michael D'Antonio, 2009

Walter O'Malley

Ebbets Field

Robert Moses

Horace Stoneham and Walter O'Malley

Preacher Roe

Elwin Charles "Preacher" Roe pitched in the NL from 1944 through 1954. After four seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he won 80 games for the Brooklyn Dodgers from 1948-1953. In 1951, he posted a sensational 22-3 record. In 1955, the year after Preacher's retirement, Dick Young wrote an article in the new magazine Sports Illustrated entitled "The Outlawed Spitball Was My Money Pitch." Roe told Young that "I threw spitballs the whole time I was with the Dodgers." He also claimed, "I wasn't the only one who did it." One night in June 1960, while taking batting practice in Milwaukee, Cardinals legend Stan Musial was asked by Braves 1B George Crowe, "Did you know that Preacher Roe was using a spit ball when he pitched against you." "Sure," said Stan enthusiastically. "We had a regular signal for it. One day Preacher goes into his motion and Terry Moore, who's coaching at third, picks off the spitter and gives me the signal. Preacher knows I've got it, so he doesn't want to throw the spitter. But he's halfway through his wind-up and all he can change to is a lollipop [nothing ball]. I hit it into the left-field seats, and I laughed all the way around the bases."

Stan Musial

Reference: "Benching of a Legend," Roger Kahn, Sports Illustrated, September 12, 1960

One of the oft-told stories of baseball mythology involves Enos Slaughter "scoring the winning run from first on a single" to beat the Red Sox for the Cardinals in the 1946 World Series.

Boston and St. Louis played the seventh game in Sportsman Park, St. Louis. In the top of the eighth, Red Sox CF Dom DiMaggio doubled off the RCF wall to score two runs and tie the game at 3. However, he twisted his ankle while running to second and had to be replaced by Leon Culbertson. This would prove to be a fatal substitution for the Red Sox, who were in the midst of what would become an 86-year drought without a World Championship.

Here is what happened in the Cards eighth.

• Lefty Bob Klinger ascended the hill for the visitors to face the left-handed hitting Slaughter, the Cards' RF. Enos singled to CF.
• 3B Whitey Kurowski popped out trying to sacrifice.
• C Del Rice flew to LF.
• LF Harry Walker, another left-handed batter, lined a hit over the head of SS Johnny Pesky. Slaughter, running on the pitch, easily went to third. Culbertson fielded the ball in LCF and threw to Pesky, whose back was to the infield. "Country" Slaughter didn't slow around third, tearing through a stop sign from the coach. Pesky hesitated a moment before turning and throwing to the plate. Slaughter slid in easily with the go-ahead run.

Enos Slaughter scores go-ahead run in 1946 World Series Game 7.

What is lost in the retelling is the fact that Walker was credited with a double, not a single. Scoring from first on a double, especially when you were running with the pitch, is not that uncommon.

What is also forgotten is what transpired in the top of the ninth.

• Lefty Harry "The Cat" Brecheen, who already had two wins in the Series, had relieved in the eighth and returned to the mound for the ninth.
• 1B Rudy York singled to left. Paul Campbell ran for him.
• 2B Bobby Doerr singled to SS.
• 3B Pinky Higgins forced Doerr at second, Kurowski to SS Marty Marion. This put the tying run on third with only one out.
• C Roy Partee fouled out to 1B Stan Musial.
• PH Tom McBride grounded to 2B Red Schoendienst, who tossed to Marion for the forceout to end the Fall Classic.

If Brecheen had not worked out of the jam in the ninth, Slaughter's dash would have been forgotten. Instead, Brecheen added his name to the record book with his third win of the Series.

Brief video of the 1946 World Series ending with Slaughter's dash

Enos Slaughter

Dom DiMaggio

Harry Walker

Harry Brecheen

In May 2009, Albert Pujols hit a HR off the McDonald's sign in LF at Busch Stadium, busting the I in BIG MAC. The next day, with the sign not repaired yet, the club put up a sign: OUCH! MY I.

Here are some other HRs that caused damage.

• 1930s: Jimmie Foxx of the Philadelphia A's, often called "The Right-Handed Babe Ruth," clouted a HR high into the LF upper deck at Yankee Stadium, breaking a seat. Years later, Yankee ace Lefty Gomez said: "When Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, he found a baseball that Jimmie Foxx hit off me in 1937."
• 1946: Carvel "Bama" Rowell of the Boston Braves broke the Bulova clock atop the RF scoreboard at Ebbets Field. The hit sent glass raining down on Brooklyn RF Dixie Walker, who nevertheless held Bama to a double. This incident provided the inspiration for Roy Hobbs's light-buster in The Natural, which Bernard Malamud wrote in 1952. The Bulova Company had promised a watch to anyone who hit the stadium timepiece, but it took 41 years – on Bama Rowell Day in his hometown of Citronelle AL - before Rowell collected his reward.

Note: One source says Rowell attended LSU on a football scholarship. If so, he didn't earn a letter.

• 1998: Mark McGwire put a hole in a billboard at the old Busch Stadium with a 545-ft HR to dead CF. The club covered the hole with a four-foot Band-Aid. It was in this period that the "Big Mac Land" section in Busch Stadium was sponsored by MacDonald's to take advantage of McGwire's nickname. The promotion was carried over to the new Busch Stadium when it opened in 2006.

Reference: "Dinger Damage," Sports Illustrated, 6/1/2009

In 1953, the Detroit Tigers signed 18-year-old OF Al Kaline with a $35,000. The rules at that time required a player who signed for more than $6,000 to spend two seasons in the majors. This was done to discourage large signing bonuses.

The Bonus Baby didn't get a warm reception from his Tiger teammates. Let Al tell the story himself.

I wasn't accepted right away, rightfully so because when I joined the ballclub, that meant somebody had to be let go.

I was an outcast. I couldn't go have a drink with the guys, and they wouldn't invite me to dinner. The two guys who helped did so because it was their jobs. Ted Gray was our player rep, and he helped me by telling me the basics such as how much to tip the clubhouse guys.

I was mostly a defensive player and baserunner my first year and didn't play much. Our manager, Freddy Hutchinson, told me to sit beside Johnny Pesky every game to learn the ins and outs of the game. Johnny helped me a lot.

I started to be a pretty good player pretty quick, and the other players took a liking to me also because I was at the park all the time. I lived in downtown Detroit and would get there early to throw batting practice and shag for the veterans. I knew my place.

By his second full year, at age 20, Kaline became the youngest player to win a batting title.

• Al hit .340 with 27 HR and 102 RBI. He also led the AL in hits (200) and total bases (321).
• He finished second in the 1955 MVP voting to Yogi Berra.
• A fixture in RF at Tiger Stadium, he never won the batting crown again in the 22 seasons of his HOF career – all with Detroit. He ended with 399 HR and a .297 lifetime average.
• At age 33, Kaline finally played on a pennant winner, the 1968 Tigers World Champions. After hitting .287 in 102 games during the season, he went 11-29 (.379) in the Series with 8 RBI and 2 HR.

Reference: "I Remember ... Al Kaline," Sporting News, 5/11/2009