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Film details Dodgers’ move to L.A.

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Times Staff Writer

It’s hard to imagine Los Angeles without the Dodgers. But if not for some poor decisions by New York politicians in the mid-1950s -- political blundering is not a new phenomenon -- the Dodgers probably would have ended up playing in a new domed stadium in Brooklyn and wouldn’t have moved here in 1958.

The story of what led to the Dodgers’ leaving Brooklyn is a major part of a two-hour documentary, “Brooklyn Dodgers: The Ghosts of Flatbush,” that will air for the first time on HBO on Wednesday at 8 p.m. The HBO schedule-makers knew what they were doing. There is no baseball that night because of Tuesday’s All-Star game.

The documentary focuses on a period from 1947, the year Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, to 1957, the Dodgers’ last season in Brooklyn. This year marks the 60th and 50th anniversaries of those events.

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The late Walter O’Malley became majority owner of the Dodgers in 1950 at the age of 47, buying out Branch Rickey. O’Malley immediately began looking into building a stadium. As son Peter says in the film, “The first thing he said was, ‘I want to solve and address the aging of Ebbets Field with a new stadium in Brooklyn.’ ”

What transpired in ensuing years was a standoff between O’Malley and Robert Moses, New York’s powerful parks, road and buildings commissioner. Moses wanted a new stadium in Flushing Meadow. O’Malley’s vision, years before the Houston Astrodome opened in 1965 and became the first domed stadium, was a domed stadium at Flatbush and Atlantic avenues.

Says author Michael Shapiro: “Moses is the heavyweight champ and Walter O’Malley is a light-heavyweight. He is punching above his weight class.”

The mismatch is displayed in a CBS News segment from 1955, long buried in the CBS archives. The footage acquired by HBO shows a tense meeting involving O’Malley, Moses and New York Mayor Robert F. Wagner Jr.

Backed into a corner, O’Malley began thinking of moving the team to Minneapolis. But in 1956 he got a call from Rosalind Wyman, then a young Los Angeles City Council member.

She had read that O’Malley might be considering moving the team, and called to suggest L.A.

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That’s what got the ball rolling.

Wyman and County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn played key roles in completing the play and Wyman and Hahn’s son James, the former L.A. mayor, are among those interviewed in the documentary.

Says Wyman: “Officials in the city of New York -- they should have been strung up. I mean, that was the dumbest decision ever made in municipalities -- to lose two baseball teams.”

O’Malley ended up persuading Horace Stoneham to also move the Giants from New York to San Francisco.

The animosity felt toward O’Malley to this day in Brooklyn comes through loud and clear in the film. But longtime Los Angeles sports columnist Melvin Durslag responds by saying, “Get with it, these are the rules of combat.”

The film touches a lot of bases.

Included are details of rifts between O’Malley and Rickey and O’Malley and Robinson. It’s pointed out that O’Malley thought Rickey got all the credit for signing the four-sport star at UCLA even though O’Malley also was involved.

Rachel Robinson, talking in the film about her late husband’s feelings after O’Malley became the majority owner, says, “Jackie felt Rickey was forced out.”

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Former Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi is more blunt: “Walter hated Jackie’s guts and vice versa.”

At a screening in New York last week, former Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca said of O’Malley: “He was a businessman.... Basically, he was way ahead of the game by going to L.A. and I don’t think you can condemn him for it, because he had an investment in a great team and I think that Robert Moses and Wagner and whomever was in charge let him down because they should have insisted that they stay in Brooklyn.”

Bavasi says in the film: “Walter thought the Dodgers were an institution in Brooklyn, and that anything he wanted he could get. But he forgot that Mr. Moses was not a Brooklyn man. There’s no way he could’ve turned down L.A. Imagine somebody giving you 352 acres in downtown New York.”

The 352 acres in L.A. were in Chavez Ravine and became the site of Dodger Stadium. Omitted from the HBO documentary is the struggle O’Malley faced in getting some of the residents there to vacate the failed federal housing project. A more minor omission is that there is no mention that the new Dodger Stadium, despite being state-of-the-art, originally had only two drinking fountains, a situation that was soon remedied.

Short waves

ESPN will have Kenny Mayne kayaking in McCovey Cove outside San Francisco’s AT&T; Park with a hand-held “scuba cam” during Monday’s Home Run Derby. Not to be outdone, Fox will have the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Eric Byrnes in a kayak along with his pet bulldog Bruin during coverage of the All-Star game the next night. Fox notes that Byrnes, who is from the Bay Area and played for UCLA, is the first active player to work an All-Star game telecast -- and that Bruin is the first pet to do so.... On Saturday, Fox’s featured regional game is the Angels and New York Yankees, with Kenny Albert and Joe Girardi announcing. Fox’s No. 1 team of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver will handle the Atlanta Braves’ game at San Diego on Saturday before heading up to the Bay Area.

A backlog of matches at Wimbledon because of all the rain will have ESPN2 today showing all four men’s quarterfinals and a women’s semifinal instead of only one men’s semifinal. The coverage begins at 3 a.m. PDT. Comparatively speaking, getting up for NBC’s coverage Saturday and Sunday at 6 a.m. will be a piece of cake. NBC’s coverage today at noon is live in the East and delayed three hours in the West.

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NBC announced Thursday it has reached a new long-term contract to continue televising Wimbledon. This year marks the 39th consecutive year NBC has broadcast the tournament. No terms were announced, but Sports Business Journal recently reported that NBC and ESPN will collectively pay up to $88 million over four years to renew with Wimbledon through 2011 and that the Tennis Channel is expected to gain rights to early-round matches starting next year.

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larry.stewart@latimes.com

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