| Sportswire | Sep 29 2015 |
The boys of summer headline autumn’s biggest event.
The Los Angeles Dodgers board a United Airlines DC-7 charter plane headed to Chicago, where they would battle the Chicago White Sox in the 1959 World Series. Pictured are Sandy Koufax, Don Zimmer, Pee Wee Reese, and other stars. The Dodgers won the series four games to two. The three games played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum drew huge crowds, with game five’s attendance of 92,706 remaining a World Series record to this day. The photo was made today in 1959.
Los AngelesChicagoLos Angeles Memorial ColiseumLos Angeles DodgersChicago White SoxSandy KoufaxDon ZimmerPee Wee Reesebaseball
| Sportswire | Sep 16 2013 |
What happens if you stand in the way of progress? You get run over.
The above photo shows the groundbreaking today in 1959 for Dodger Stadium, a venue that would become the home of Major League Baseball’s Los Angeles Dodgers. In a mostly Latino barrio of Los Angeles known as Chavez Ravine, a long process of buying land from willing sellers, forcing land sales via eminent domain laws, and finally sending in cops to forcibly evict the remaining homeowners resulted in clearing a site about 350 acres in size. The land had originally been slated for public housing, and most of the purchases and eminent domain sales had occurred between 1950 and 1953 for that purpose. But the 1953 election of conservative mayor Norris Poulson halted those plans, because he opposed public housing as “communist” in nature. The land sat idle for five years, but when the parcel was given to the Dodgers in 1958, the remaining occupants had to go. They were smeared in the press in order to turn public opinion against them, and were then evicted, resulting in ugly scenes of families being dragged from their homes. Sulfur and Cemetery Ravines were filled in and the entire site was graded. An elementary school was simply buried whole. A total of eight million cubic yards of earth were moved. Today, Dodger Stadium is considered one of Major League Baseball’s crown jewels.
