After Many a Summer: The Passing of the Giants and Dodgers and a Golden Age in New York Baseball

For New Yorkers—especially Brooklynites—1957 will always be the year that lives in infamy. It was when the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants delivered a one-two punch to the city by both abandoning their hometown for California. Millions of bereft and angry baseball fans wondered how such a thing could be allowed to happen: Who was to blame? After poring relentlessly through archives, original news stories, and government documents, Robert Murphy gives the most fully-researched answer to that question yet offered. Packed with history, rich in baseball lore and legend, this is a book that any New York history buff and all lovers of America’s national pastime will relish.

 

AFTER MANY A SUMMER reveals:

 

How baseball commissioner Ford Frick helped facilitate the teams’ move to California

 

Which plan for a new stadium would have appeased Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley—and saved Brooklyn baseball

 

How Robert Moses, who has received much blame, actually tried to solve the problem

 

How O’Malley and Giants owner Horace Stoneham worked in tandem to make sure their popular rivalry would continue in LA

 

How the two owners managed to carry out secret talks with California officials even while insisting they had no plans to leave New York