OT....brooklyn dodgers on HBO premires tonite

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Posted By: dennis

i think everyone here would/should enjoy this 2 hour show. i know it's probably alot of rehash but it's still a wonderful era of baseball. here's a listing of times it will be shown.
http://www.hbo.com/apps/schedule/ScheduleServlet?ACTION_DETAIL=DETAIL&FOCUS_ID=631912

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Posted By: Dan Bretta

Thanks for the reminder....I saw the commercial for it last week and completely forgot about it until this post.

I think espn is rerunning "The Bronx is Burning" tonight. It's about the 1978 Yankees (Not my favorite team ). I caught only a few minutes of it the other night and it was pretty interesting.

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Posted By: Lee Behrens

Watched the show tonight but missed the 1st 1/2 hour. Did they do the whole history of the Dodgers or just the 40's to the move? It had alot of information I never knew, especially that O'Malley had plans of building a dome stadium before moving.

Highly recommended,

Lee

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Posted By: dennis

a minor history of the team and brooklyn was included in the beginning.

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Posted By: barrysloate

I saw most of it and it was really quite good, with some excellent footage and a good group of talking heads. Don't worry if you missed it, as HBO will repeat it at least 20 more times.

There was a brief early history, with some footage of the 1941 club celebrating their pennant, but the focus was the signing of Jackie Robinson to the team's move to Los Angeles.

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Posted By: T E

Walter O'Malley became the first owner to buy a jet to transport his team in January of 1957, even while still "negotiating" with the city of New York.

Until the Dodgers and Giants moved, teams could and did travel city to city by train. Even after the Braves, Browns and A's all moved, there was no reason to change this mode of transportation. There were no teams south of Baltimore or west of Chicago, making baseball's ML universe quite small.

I missed the special but will certainly catch it.

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Posted By: Kenneth A. Cohen

I thought it was excellent.

I couldn't stop laughing when one of the guys from Brooklyn said if Hitler, Stalin, and O'Malley were in a room together and he had a gun with only two bullets - he'd have shot O'Malley twice.

Seems to me like Commissioner Moses was the bigger villain of the piece.

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Posted By: Neal Kane

I enjoyed the special. Not necessarily for the stories of the players, as we already knew those, but more for the O'Malley portion and the move to LA. I never knew about Moses. Never heard of him. I was telling a buddy of mine last night about the Moses cat, and neither of us could believe that Robert Moses is not discussed more in Brooklyn Dodger lore. He seemed to be the real villian.

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Posted By: MVSNYC

very cool special, i really enjoyed it...

it was produced so well (as all of HBO's documentaries are), it made me really feel for the Dodger fans when the team left...they were heart broken.

my dad, growing up was a NY Giants fan, and explained how pist he was when they left...he did not become a SF Giants fan, his team was no more. period.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

I think Robert Moses' role in the Dodgers move to LA was first 'outed' in a book by Michael Shapiro entitled "The Last Good Season." Shapiro was one of those offering commentary on the show last night. Great book.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

The city all but told him not to let the door hit him on the way out, demanding that he move from Brooklyn to Queens or get nothing. Can you imagine today having an owner who is willing to foot the entire cost of the stadium provided the city condemn the land for it and sell it to him on the cheap? No tax incentives, no sales tax increase, no partnerships, nothing. I had no idea that O'Malley tried to stay; I thought he simply decided to make more money out west.

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Posted By: Jeff Lichtman

By all accounts, O'Malley was a disgusting human being. But Adam, you're right; the average person never knew that most of the fault for the move to LA was Moses's. When you read the letters between the two men you'd be shocked. O'Malley basically begged the guy for years to help out on a new stadium. Moses dismissed him every time in the most obnoxious manner.

But the one thing that never really gets talked about (barely touched upon last night) is that the Dodgers never drew all that well in Brooklyn. As they noted last night, the last home game drew less than 7000 fans. Brooklynites always talk about how much they loved their Dodgers -- but less than 7000 fans for a night game? They were drawing better in Jersey City at the end.

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Posted By: boxingcardman

That was actually a Manhattan-based team but it never quite drew the interest of the other two following the war, even with two pennants and one WS win.

BTW, I think I recall that Robert Moses wanted to build an expressway that would have gutted lower Manhattan but a preservationist campaign at the grass roots level thwarted him.

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Posted By: T E ebay ID easthamptonauctions

Robert Moses was weird, very far-sighted in some ways, and short-sighted to the point of blindness in others.

He wanted to build a expressway across lower Manhattan that would have destroyed the lower Village, Little Italy and China Town. DUMB!

BUT he invented and designed NY's auto highways, making blunders along the way but leaving us some truly fine parkways (as long as it is not rush hour).

I believe, but can not say for certain, that he encouraged the destruction of NYC's cable car system, truly a historic blunder.

I haven't seen the special, but I don't know that it would be correct to call Moses a villian if he simply opposed public funding for private enterprise. But clearly, looking back, the Dodgers should have had a stadium at the Atlantic Train yards, as the Nets are now about to build, and the Giants should have had the Shea Stadium area.

I was heavily involved in the Jets failed efforts to build a stadium on the West Side. I thought it was a great idea, most of my neighbors thought I was nuts. Go to WestSideStadium.org for more info-

Tom

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Posted By: Julie Vognar

Didn't Oisk look GREAT?

him. too, about 70 years ago, at UCLA (track photo)

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Posted By: Pcelli60

Another soppy love letter to bklyn..Lets go Giants!

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Posted By: MVSNYC

i watched the special again yesterday (for the 3rd time)...

it is such an incredible documentary, HBO did a super job!

you do not have to be a dodgers fan to appreciate it, you simply have to be a baseball fan...

if you haven't seen it yet, you must...