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Pete Hamill's obligatory O'Malley column
2007-12-04 08:38
by Bob Timmermann

Many people were wondering when New York Daily News columnist would come out with a piece about how bad it was that Walter O'Malley was inducted into the Hall of Fame.

Ask, and you shall receive.

I think that Hamill must have had this saved up on his computer and just hit F9 + O to send it in.

Some highlights:

Forget the dithering about Barry Bonds. Send apologies to Pete Rose. Warm up a place for Shoeless Joe Jackson. All moral arguments about who belongs in Cooperstown are over forever. Walter O'Malley has been voted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

---------------------------------

They included my father. He was an immigrant from Northern Ireland who did not become an American by reading the Federalist Papers. He became an American by reading the sports pages of the Daily News.

His James Madison was Dick Young. His team was the Brooklyn Dodgers, and most of all, the team that played together 10 years after Jack Roosevelt Robinson, No. 42, first walked onto the sweet grass of Ebbets Field.

If Dick Young were James Madison, we would have had no constitutional right to root for Tom Seaver on the Mets.

Comments
2007-12-04 08:50:48
1.   grandcosmo
Why does Pete Hamil think his father is relevant to the discussion of whether Walter O'Malley belongs in the HOF?
2007-12-04 09:07:01
2.   Sushirabbit
What a goober. A Kenneth Davis Goober.
2007-12-04 09:07:10
3.   Sushirabbit
What a goober. A Kenneth Davis Goober.
2007-12-04 09:14:41
4.   Jon Weisman
So I guess the people of Los Angeles weren't entitled to any of the virtues of being Dodger fans.

Let's not spread the gospel - let's keep it for ourselves!

2007-12-04 10:06:34
5.   JL25and3
His team was the Brooklyn Dodgers, and most of all, the team that played together 10 years after Jack Roosevelt Robinson, No. 42, first walked onto the sweet grass of Ebbets Field.

With all due respect to Jon Weisman and all other LA fans, I may dislike the Dodgers even more than I do the Red Sox. And one of the reasons is that I am so damn sick and tired of the overblown "Boys of Summer" noble-loser mystical bullshit that surrounds that Brooklyn team.

Good team. There have been lots of good teams. Old Brooklyn Dodger fans seem to feel that theirs is the ne plus ultra of nostalgia.

2007-12-04 10:42:15
6.   Bob Timmermann
You would get no argument from me there. I've always argued that the Brooklyn Dodgers were overly sentimentalized.
2007-12-04 12:40:08
7.   Eric Enders
It's funny that somebody who plays up the legacy of Jackie Robinson would also worship Dick Young. Young basically thought Robinson was the antichrist, and made a career of writing columns trying to slam Jackie's image and run him out of baseball.
2007-12-04 14:22:31
8.   joejoejoe
Pete Hamill wrote one of the best memoirs I've ever read, 'A Drinking Life'. That said, whining about the past is unbecoming in a New Yorker. If the English can go to Germany in 2006 and enjoy the World Cup I think Brooklyn should let go of the loss of the Dodgers. Embrace the Coney Island Cyclones and get on with your lives, Brooklyn.
2007-12-04 14:46:34
9.   Eric Enders
It's not just the whining about the past, it's the attempt to reinvent a past which never existed. All the nonsense about how the Dodgers bonded with the community, they were so beloved, blah, blah, blah -- well, it has a kernel of truth to it, but only a kernel. People didn't go to games at Ebbets Field. And it was a run-down park whose capacity was too small. New York had a chance to replace it and chose not to. The Brooklyn people should be mad at Robert Moses, not Walter O'Malley.

Another thing is their poor-me act gets really old. They act like they're the only city that ever lost a team. What about the Giants leaving? What about Montreal? What about all the Braves fans in Boston? What about the A's leaving Philly and then KC and now leaving Oakland? What about the St. Louis Browns? The Braves leaving Milwaukee? None of those teams had any fans, I guess. Then again, judging from their attendance track record, neither did the Brooklyn Dodgers.

The Dodgers in Brooklyn averaged better than 20,000 fans only three times, and never after 1950. In Los Angeles, they averaged under that only three times.

2007-12-04 16:03:56
10.   Linkmeister
Eric, I'd pick only one nit with your 9 . In the case of Brooklyn and the Dodgers, I think the English word "whinging" is even better than the more Americanized "whining."

As to the other cities which lost teams, apparently the media's East Coast bias has been in effect for a long time.

That said, I do think Roger Kahn's "The Boys of Summer" was a classic baseball book.

2007-12-04 17:17:05
11.   Jon Weisman
We got Georgia Frontiere. Call it even?
2007-12-05 12:54:30
12.   adamclyde
A lifelong dodger fan here. I don't really know what to think of all this... now that I have lived in NY for the past 8 years, I can't tell you how many people I come across who have strong feelings toward the Brooklyn-LA dodgers. Be they a result of actual passion for the team back in the day or something that has grown in nostalgia for the past few decades, you can't argue that it is still a lightning rod for lots of people out here. If it isn't the old timers themselves, certainly their kids remember how heartbroken and crushed their parents were.

And judging the Dodgers impact in brooklyn by attendance or the state of ebbets field isn't a complete benchmark I don't think.

Don't get me wrong, I couldn't be happier that they went to LA. And I couldn't be happier that O'Malley is in the HOF... calling him a pioneer in professional sports for west coast expansion isn't an overstatement. But discounting hatred/sentimentalism/nostalgia for the Dodgers here in NY as some over inflated figment of people's imagination is also incorrect.

Just a few thoughts for an old post that I don't think anyone is reading any longer...

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