Trying to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn

Walter O’Malley’s proposed domed stadium for Brooklyn

New York City officials agree 69 years ago today to commission a $25,000 survey regarding the Brooklyn Dodgers’ proposal for a new stadium in the borough.

In hindsight, they should spend the money elsewhere in 1956 as Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley soon moves his team westward after the 1957 season to Los Angeles instead of building a domed stadium that O’Malley keeps shopping to politicians.

The Barclays Center today

O’Malley tells the politicians that to stay in Brooklyn, the Dodgers want a site that now is home to the Barclays Center, the home today to the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the WNBA’s New York Liberty.

Instead, the Dodgers spend only one more season in Brooklyn’s hallowed Ebbets Field before O’Malley moves them to southern California, where he pays pennies on the dollars for the Chavez Ravine property the Dodgers still call home today.

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