LA's Baseball Team Almost Became the 'Senators'

by Kitty Felde
From June 10, 2008
89.3 KPCC Website

Most of us in Southern California came here from someplace else. Fifty years ago, L.A.'s most famous sports transplants, the Dodgers, unpacked their bats and gloves to settle in the Southland from Brooklyn. In the second of a seven-part series, KPCC's Special Correspondent Kitty Felde tells the tale of how the Dodgers came to L.A. fifty years ago.

Kitty Felde: In the 1950s, Manhattan was the center of the universe. Chicago was "Second City." And Los Angeles? Well, L.A. boosters, like former City Councilwoman Roz Wyman, had big plans.
Roz Wyman: I felt that you were not a big league city unless you had big league sports. Because I had done some studying, and I found that major corporations especially, one of the things that they ask before they come and settle in your community was what kind of arts and what kind of sports did you have?

Felde: But not everyone was a true believer. The late L.A. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn talked about that in an interview 20 years ago.

Kenneth Hahn: Everybody said Los Angeles was not ready to be a big city. Not ready for major league baseball. But there was a baseball writer named Vincent X. Flaherty at the old "Los Angeles Examiner" who was an absolute fan. And everything he wrote, thought, and talked about was bringing a major league team.

Felde: By the fall of 1956, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors got into the act. Hahn, the youngest board member, was dispatched to the World Series to see if he could bring a major league team to Southern California. Hahn flew to New York for the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Hahn: Vincent Flaherty was going back to cover, so we went back together. And he says, "Now, Kenny, you'll never get a winner to come to Los Angeles. Let's go for the bottom of the league." I said, "Great." He said, "Well I know Calvin Griffith."

Felde: Calvin Griffith owned the hapless Washington Senators. The team was so awful, it inspired "Damn Yankees," the Broadway musical about a Washington fan who sells his soul to the devil to get his team to the World Series.

Felde: Griffith, like every baseball owner, had taken note of the Braves' move from Boston to Milwaukee a few years earlier. The team was now drawing a National League record two-million fans a year.

A secret meeting was set up at Toots Shor's, the famous Manhattan sports saloon. Griffith seemed interested in L.A. and Hahn was ready to head home with news that the Senators might come west. But at the ballpark the next day, Hahn said he was handed a message on a napkin.

Hahn: He said, "Don't make any deal with Calvin Griffith. I want to see you when I come to Los Angeles. I'm interested." And it was signed "Walter O'Malley."

Felde: That might not be exactly the way it happened. But Hahn, somehow or another, came back to Los Angeles with the idea that O'Malley might be interested in coming west. The Dodger boss had been touting a futuristic domed stadium in Brooklyn to replace the cramped and aging Ebbets Field.

But New York's powerful city planner Robert Moses wanted O'Malley to build in Queens. Queens! The owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers was appalled. Here's Walter O'Malley in an interview 30 years ago:

Walter O'Malley: We wanted to stay in Brooklyn, but we had exhausted a 10-year campaign to make it possible for us to buy land and to build a ballpark with adequate parking. When we struck out on that, it appeared that we had our choice of going to San Francisco or Los Angeles.

Felde: Horace Stoneham, the owner of the New York Giants, had his own attendance and parking lot problems. O'Malley said he heard Stoneham was closing in on a deal to move his ballpark to Minnesota.

O'Malley: And I told him if he went to Minneapolis and I stayed in Brooklyn, the old Giant-Dodger rivalry would be dead. And maybe both of us should consider moving, and I told him there were possibilities in both San Francisco and in Los Angeles. He expressed a strong feeling toward San Francisco. I said, "Well, that's fine. We'll go to Los Angeles."

Felde: Again, that's not exactly how it happened. O'Malley was talking to L.A. officials before he heard that the Giants might leave town. But the telling of the tale says a lot about Walter O'Malley. Next Tuesday, we'll tell you more about the old Irishman, the most hated man in Brooklyn.

by Kitty Felde
From June 10, 2008
89.3 KPCC Website
and walteromalley.com

Dodgers Move to LA Wasn't Popular

by Kitty Felde
89.3 KPCC Website
From June 03, 2008

Fifty years ago, Angelenos packed the polls for one of the biggest elections in city history. On the ballot was a referendum on LA's deal to swap land so the newly-arrived Dodgers could build a baseball stadium in Chavez Ravine. Proposition B - "B" for baseball - passed by a whisker. It was almost the last step in the Dodgers' journey west from Brooklyn. KPCC's Special Correspondent Kitty Felde begins a seven-part series looking at the politics and the personalities that brought major league baseball to Los Angeles.

Kitty Felde: It's hard to imagine Los Angeles without the Dodgers. But there was a time when it didn't seem that L.A. cared all that much about bringing a major league baseball team to town. The Dodgers' late owner Walter O'Malley remembered it well in a 1970s interview.

Walter O'Malley: We did not have an idea that we would be received as well as we have finally been received. We immediately, on coming here, ran into all sorts of political problems: a referendum, lawsuits. How we ever survived all of that, I don't know, but we did.

Roz Wyman: People will say now, "Was it really that controversial?" I cannot tell you how controversial.

Felde: Roz Wyman was a 22-year-old USC graduate when she ran for L.A. City Council in 1953. She won, and became the youngest person and only the second woman on the L.A. City Council. Wyman credits her victory to a promise that resonated with voters.

Wyman: I had on this little piece of literature: "Let's bring major league baseball to Los Angeles." And I must say, this was the one thing I hadn't studied in depth. (laughs) I just thought you went out and said, "Why don't you come to our city?" Well, it just doesn't work like that.

Felde: Wyman's promise of big league baseball in Los Angeles became more difficult to fulfill when voters rejected a 1955 city ballot measure to build a baseball stadium. That meant any team that settled in L.A. would have to build a ballpark with its own money.

That didn't stop Wyman. She wrote a letter to Walter O'Malley and asked if he was interested in moving his Brooklyn ballclub west. O'Malley replied that L.A. already had "two teams in organized baseball," the Pacific Coast League's Los Angeles Angels and the Hollywood Stars.

Besides, he was busy trying to build a new stadium in Brooklyn to replace Ebbets Field, the Dodgers' 40-year-old ballpark in Flatbush that O'Malley thought was too old and too small. Longtime Dodger announcer Vin Scully remembers Ebbets Field:

Vin Scully: Well it was very small, it was very intimate. The fans were very much closer to the players than they are here. They were very vocal. But because they were so close to the players, you were aware of the vocalness of the crowd.

Also, it was a hodge podge. It was, in those days, a team that was built on, on poor play, so when the good years came, they were relished thoroughly.

Felde: The Brooklyn franchise was one of the oldest in professional baseball. Born in 1884, the Trolley Dodgers were named after the citizens who dodged the trolley cars that crisscrossed the borough. After a half-century of mediocrity, the Dodgers got good in the 1940s.

In a span of 16 years, they won seven National League pennants, and almost grabbed four more. In 1947, team president Branch Rickey put baseball's first black player, Jackie Robinson, into Dodger blue. In 1955, Brooklyn won its first and only World Series. That was also the year Americans bought more new cars than ever before. For Walter O'Malley, that was a problem.

O'Malley: In Brooklyn, we didn't have a single parking lot. We parked in the driveways of people who had homes in the vicinity. The day of the Brooklyn trolley dodger was over. And we had to reckon with the automobile.

Felde: The Dodgers also had to reckon with the Milwaukee Braves of the 1950s, a team with a newer stadium, more fans, and better players. O'Malley's public solution was to scrap Ebbets Field and build a futuristic domed baseball stadium in Brooklyn. And if city planners in New York didn't go along, O'Malley had a private solution, too: Los Angeles. That's for next time.

by Kitty Felde

From June 03, 2008

89.3 KPCC Website

and walteromalley.com

Player Injuries During Cal Ripken's Streak

Cal Ripken, Jr. Autograph on a 1987 Topps (#37)

During Cal's Streak there has been tons of injuries. Here are some of the stranger ones.

This is from an article by Knight-Ridder Tribune News Service.

In what must be considered the quintessential modern athlete injury, Tony Gwynn missed a couple of games after he smashed his thumb in the door of his luxury car. While going to the bank.

• Rickey Henderson missed several games because of frost- bite. In August.
• Vince Coleman missed the 1985 World Series when he got rolled up in the tarp machine.
• Pascual Perez missed a start in Atlanta when he circled the city for more than two hours searching for the exit ramp from Highway 285 to Fulton County Stadium.
• Kevin Mitchell strained a muscle while vomiting.
• Twins farmhand David Foster was knocked out for the season when a lightning strike through a phone line zapped him while he was making a call.
• Pitcher Steve Foster injured his shoulder knocking over milk bottles during a segment with Jay Leno on "The Tonight Show."
• Wade Boggs missed several games after straining his back while pulling on his cowboy boots.
• Paul Molitor dislocated a knuckle when it got stuck in another player's glove.
• Milwaukee's Dave Nilsson missed part of this season with Ross River Fever, a mosquito-borne virus that annually affects 200 out of Australia's 17 million residents.
• Twins general manager Terry Ryan required dozens of stitches when he was scouting a game and a bat flew out of the hitter's hands, sailed through a space in the backstop and struck him in the forehead.
• Pitcher Jeff Juden had a start early in the 1994 season pushed back after getting an infection from a tattoo.
• Outfielder Bret Barberie missed a game when he accidentally rubbed chili juice in his eye.
• Ken Griffey Jr. missed a game after his protective cup slipped and pinched a testicle.
• Doc Gooden missed a start when Coleman accidentally hit him with a golf club in the Mets' clubhouse.
• Mark Portugal missed a start because of food poisoning from eating bad mahi-mahi.
• Pitcher Steve Sparks dislocated his shoulder while tearing a phone book in half.
• Reliever Larry Anderson strained a rib muscle getting out of a Jacuzzi.
• Pitcher Ted Power pulled a hamstring jumping off the bullpen bench to join a brawl.
• Kent Hrbek missed the final 10 games of the 1990 season when he sprained an ankle while wrestling with a clubhouse attendant.
• Florida's Randy Veres hurt his hand pounding on a hotel room wall trying to get the people in the next room to quiet down.
• Dennis Martinez injured his arm tossing his luggage onto the team bus. He was diagnosed with Samsonitis.
• Chris Brown missed a game with a strained eyelid after sleeping on an eye a funny way.
• Former Seattle shortstop Rey Quinones was unavailable as a pinch-hitter because he was in the clubhouse playing Nintendo.
• Terry Harper (OF-Atlanta) Injured his shoulder after giving another player a high five.
• Greg Harris (RP-Texas) injured his shoulder trying to flick sunflower seeds into the stands from the Bullpen.
• Baltimore's Mark Smith was hurt when he stuck his hand in an air conditioner to see why it wasn't working properly. As if the Orioles would let Ripken test the air conditioner?

Popular Former High School Baseball Star Lay Paralyzed, Nearly Forgotten in Nursing Home.

Laurie Green, left, the high school friend who discovered Patrick Chawki, right, was living in a nursing home and had not died like his High School friends had thought, has organized a fundraiser to pay for therapy that she hopes will help Chawki walk and talk again.

Barbara Davidson / Los Angeles Times

Grant High classmates find a long-lost friend -- paralyzed. His old friends had lost touch with Pat Chawki years ago and thought he had died. Now they find that he's been in a Canoga Park nursing home, unable to communicate. They take steps to help.

By Bob Pool - Los Angeles Times
March 27, 2009

Pat Chawki's classmates thought he was dead -- they'd even memorialized him two years ago at their 20th high school reunion.

But when one Grant High School alum wrote to Chawki's sister to express her condolences, she learned that the popular former baseball star lay paralyzed and nearly forgotten in a Canoga Park nursing home.

Laurie Green discovered that for the last nine years, Chawki has suffered from a rare disorder that renders him fully cognitive, but unable to move or speak. Because he cannot talk or write, he was unable to tell his family how to reach his friends.

Green, 38, of Studio City, immediately went to the nursing home. She snapped pictures of the 41-year-old Chawki and posted them on Facebook, explaining to friends that their buddy was still very much alive -- and very lonely.

Soon, a parade of former classmates was making regular trips to visit him. On one visit, Green noticed that Chawki could move his thumb up and down. Taking a cue from the movie "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly," about a man with a similar disorder called "locked-in syndrome" who wrote a book by blinking his eyes, Green devised an alphabet poster that friends could use to help him communicate.

His old buddies were stunned to find that Chawki was not only alive but was alert and mentally active. With his thumb, he slowly used the poster to spell out: "I love you all."

"At the 20th reunion, people said he had a brain tumor and had passed away. That's all we knew -- that he'd passed away," said former Grant High baseball player Harlan Berk, now a 40-year-old charter fishing boat owner who lives in San Diego.

"When I saw the pictures Laurie had posted on the computer, I sat there for an hour in tears. I called my mother to tell her that Pat Chawki is still alive. I called up all the other team members -- these are friends you have for life.

Pat Chawki celebrates after his Grant High team beat Granada Hills High 5-1

to win the city 4-A baseball championship, June 12, 1986 at Dodger Stadium.
(Handout)

"Berk played first base on the Grant team. Chawki, described then by The Times as "a defensive specialist with a good arm and good speed in the outfield," played left field. The team was propelled to the city championship in 1986 by pitching standout Rod Beck.

Classmate Stacey Beck, 40, said she almost fell out of her chair when she read Green's Internet posting.

Her husband, who had gone on from high school to pitch for the San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Boston Red Sox and San Diego Padres, died in 2007 from an accidental drug overdose.

"I was amazed someone could kind of fall off the planet," said Beck, of Scottsdale, Ariz. "If Rod were alive he'd be doing everything he could to help Pat. If we don't have help, we don't have anything."

Friend Stuart Schneiderman, a 43-year-old Manhattan trade association research director who had previously tried without success to track down Chawki, was also surprised to learn of the paralysis, apparently the result of brain damage brought on by hyper-acute multiple sclerosis.

"I wondered first whether I'd been better off if I hadn't learned this. But I'd rather know. I wrote a letter to him on his birthday and sent him some old Yankees baseball cards. I'm going out to California and visit him," Schneiderman said.

Friends who gathered at Chawki's room at Topanga Terrace for his birthday last month were in tears as Schneiderman's letter was read aloud.

Workers at the nursing home were puzzled when after all these years Chawki started having large numbers of visitors.

"Once there were 10 or 15 of his friends at the same time with him on the patio. The facility called and wanted to know what was going on. I told them that everybody had thought Patrick was dead, that I hadn't known how to contact them," said his mother, 72-year-old Rose Chawki of Van Nuys.

She takes the bus to visit her son three times a week and give him some physical therapy. Medicare and Medi-Cal pay for his nursing care but do not cover therapy.

That's why Green and her public relations business partner Tracy Rubin have organized a silent auction fundraiser for 7 p.m. today at the Gibson Musical Instruments Showroom at 9350 Civic Center Drive, Beverly Hills.

Proceeds from the $75 per person event will be channeled through a nonprofit group the pair have created and used for professional therapy for Chawki, they say.

"I told Pat the other day we're going to get him out of here," Green said.

"His thumb shot straight up."

bob.pool@latimes.com

Dodger Stadium's Chavez Ravine - Once a Jewish Cemetery

Would you believe it if I told you that Dodger Stadium's Chavez Ravine was once a Jewish cemetery?

Back in 1855 the local Jewish community started the process of obtaining land to establish the cemetery and it is located near the corner of Lilac Terrace and Lookout Drive adjacent to the stadium. The cemetery was eventually moved in the early 1900's to Home of Peace Memorial Park in Whittier. The original cemetery site was designated as California State Historical Landmark 822 in 1968.

Read about the history of this location, taken from the Western States Jewish History website

READ THE ENTIRE PAPER AND SEE PHOTOS AND A MAP HERE

Volume #1, Issue #3, April, 1969
FIRST JEWISH COMMUNITY SITE LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 1855
by Thomas Cohen

CALIFORNIA STATE HISTORICAL LANDMARK NUMBER 822, was dedicated amid colorful ceremonies on the morning of September 29, 1968, in the Chavez Ravine, Los Angeles. This first Jewish community site was formerly the sacred burial grounds established by the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles in 1855. The dedication was the culmination of research begun by Dr. Norton Stern in the fall of 1966, who was soon joined in this task by the writer of these lines. This joint research, by Stern and Cohen, was partially motivated by the fact that although the existence of this old cemetery was well-known, its exact location was not. An accurate and documented location was needed to proceed.

None of the known reference sources on Los Angeles Jewish history indicated the precise location of the cemetery other than that of the corner of Lilac Terrace and Lookout Drive. This corner, a mile from the city hall, is just south of the Dodger Stadium in the Chavez Ravine. Subsequently it was realized that the land previously occupied by the ceme­tery is now being used by the Naval Reserve Armory.

To relocate the site of this first Jewish community prop­erty required a study of the history of the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles and a title-search through various offi­cial city and county archives. This was undertaken.

On July 2, 1854, a group of Jewish men met in Los Angeles to organize a benevolent society. The contemporary newspaper account states that:
The Israelites of this city formed themselves into a so­ciety under the name of the Hebrew Benevolent Society. At a meeting held on the 2d inst. the following gentlemen were elected officers of the Society: S. K. Labatt, president; Chas. Shachno, vice-president; Jacob Elias, secretary and treasurer; S. Lazard and H. Goldberg, trustees.

This organization was the first such group in Los An­geles and marked the beginning of community effort and cooperation. Our present vast and complex Jewish community structure of greater Los Angeles stemmed from this small beginning one hundred and fifteen years ago.
Solomon N. Carvalho accompanied Colonel John C. Fre­mont on his cross-country expedition of 1853, as an artist. Upon his arrival in June, 1854, he helped in the organization of the Hebrew Benevolent Society. In recognition of this, the following was adopted:

Resolved, unanimously, that the thanks of this meeting be tendered to Mr. S. N. Carvalho for his valuable services in organizing this society, and that he be elected an honor­ary member; also that these proceedings be published in the Occident.

Carvalho had opened a studio on the second floor of the building in which the Labatt brothers, Samuel and Joseph, operated their store. Thus it was only natural that the Labatt brothers, one of whom was elected the first president, brought Carvalho to the initial meeting of the society.
The organization's purpose is stated in the preamble to its Constitution and By-Laws:
Whereas: the Israelites of this city, being desirous of procuring a piece of ground suitable for the purpose of a burying ground for the deceased of their own faith, and also to appropriate a portion of their time and means to the holy cause of benevolence unite themselves for these purposes, under the name and style of "The Hebrew Benevolent Socity" of Los Angeles.

On July 6, 1854, the society incorporated, ". . . for the purpose, among others, of owning and holding certain real estate to be devoted to burial purposes for deceased members of the Jewish faith." 6 The very next day, at the City Coun­cil session, the minutes record the fact that the Mayor said that the Council might designate a ". . . piece of public land for a graveyard for those belonging to the Hebrew Church." The Council indicated that this matter should come up prop­erly by petition with an accompanying map. Jacob Elias, secretary and treasurer of the society, engaged Mr. George Hansen, a surveyor, to make a map of survey of a plot of land suitable for a cemetery. The survey was made on July 12, 1854. At the July 14 City Council session, the society sub­mitted a petition asking for land for a burial ground.

Later a request was forwarded to his Honor the Mayor and the City Council:
Gentlemen: A petition was handed to your honorable body . . . requesting the donation of pi(e)ce of ground to be used as a burial ground and other benevolent purposes, for the benefit of the Hebrew Benevolent Society of this place. Desiring to know your intention with regard to it, we beg leave to call your attention to the same. By order of the Board of Trustees, Los Angeles, September 20, 1854. Jacob Elias, Secty.

The city approved the request and title was ordered made out on September 22, 1854. Title was granted to the Hebrew Benevolent Society on April 9, 1855:
Between the corporation known as the "Mayor, Recorder and Common Council of the City of Los Angeles" . . . and .. . of the Hebrew Benevolent Society of Los Angeles .. . in consideration of the sum of one dollar... do grant, convey and quit claim ...that certain tract of land. .. North 84 degrees West two hundred yards thrence North 42 degrees East seventy-five yards, thence South 48 degrees East two hundred yards, thence South 42 degrees West seventy-five yards10... as a burying ground for the Israelites forever.

The recordation took place on April 17, 1855.

READ THE ENTIRE PAPER AND SEE PHOTOS AND A MAP HERE