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namely, that a new ball field for the Dodgers cannot be dressed up as a ‘Title I’ project,” Moses wrote. “If the Board of Estimate on the advice of the Borough President of Brooklyn wants to put through a reasonable sensible plan for highway, railroad terminal, traffic, street, market, and relative conventional public improvements, and incidentally, wants to provide a new Dodgers Field at Flatbush and Atlantic, you can be sure that my boys will fully respect the wishes of the Board and do everything possible to help.”
    Flatbush and Atlantic was the location of the deteriorating Fort Greene meat market but also a subway and Long Island Railroad nexus with room for considerable parking as well. It stood as the preferred site among approximately a dozen locations in Brooklyn that were explored for accommodating a new stadium. “Our present attendance studies show the need for greater parking,” O’Malley said in a press release that announced the Dodgers would begin scheduling select regular season games in New Jersey’s Roosevelt Stadium in preparation for the inevitable transition out of Ebbets Field. “The public used to come to Ebbets Field by trolley cars, now they come by automobile. We can only park 700 cars. Our fans require a modern stadium—one with greater comforts, short walks, no posts, absolute protection from inclement weather, convenient rest rooms, and a self-selection first-come, first-served method of buying tickets.”
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    The Dodgers made a huge splash upon their arrival to Los Angeles on October 23, 1957, just 15 days after the announcement that they’d leave Brooklyn and head west. Despite a two-hour delay, an enthusiastic crowd anxiously waited for their new professional baseball team. Photo courtesy of www.walteromalley.com. All rights reserved.
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    O’Malley argued that these weren’t luxuries, but necessities. “Baseball, with its heavy night schedule, is now competing with many attractions for the consumer’s dollar and it had better spend some money if it expects to hold its fans,” he said, “Racing has found a way to get State legislation and financing for a super-colossal proposed race track. I shudder to think of this future competition if we do not produce something modern for our fans. We will consider other locations only if we are finally unsuccessful in our ambition to build in Brooklyn.”
    In the coming months, the Dodgers won their first World Series, and O’Malley got his first look at a model of a domed stadium that, if given the space, would address the needs of baseball in Brooklyn. In April 1956, with the support of New York mayor Robert Wagner and 100 civic leaders, Governor Averell Harriman raised hopes for a Brooklyn solution by signing into law the creation of the Brooklyn Sports Center Authority “for the purpose of constructing and operating a sports center in the Borough of Brooklyn at a suitable location.”
    But the momentum soon fizzled.
    Three years earlier, Roz Wyman, running in part on a campaign to bring baseball to Los Angeles, became the youngest person ever elected to the L.A. City Council. The following year, the council wrote to Major League Baseball’s owners asking them to consider moving a team there. None of this had the slightest significance until dreams of a new Brooklyn ballpark began to fade before the year was out. A decade after O’Malley had begun trying to address the demise of Ebbets Field, a cross-country move emerged as an option. Almost as if to give the Dodgers a little push, Moses recommended that the city of Brooklyn excise the proposed stadium from the redevelopment of downtown Brooklyn.
    Moses did have an idea for keeping the Dodgers in New York, however, and proposed to throw support to a 50,000-seat stadium in Flushing Meadows, the geographic center of Queens. O’Malley visited the site and said afterward it had