Who Says Trump Should Decide What Makes America Great?

This is a story from the Summer of 1956, when Dad came home from work one afternoon and took me to Jersey City to see the Brooklyn Dodgers play a game against the Milwaukee Braves.

Why were the Dodgers playing in a minor league baseball stadium built by WPA and named after President Roosevelt? Because the owner of the Dodgers, Walter O’Malley, had gotten into a spat with Robert Moses over getting a new stadium built in Brooklyn but Moses wanted the stadium to be built in Queens (where the current Mets stadium happens to be located today.)

At this point during what had become a rather rancorous argument, Moses made the mistake of saying that he and only he alone would decide where the Dodgers could play. Whereupon O’Malley replied that he happened to own the team and would have them play wherever he wanted them to play.

Hence, eight games were scheduled in Jersey City and when we arrived at the ballpark that evening, the stadium was sold out, but Dad bought standing-room tickets which got us behind a four-foot-high fence in the outfield. My father found a very nice easy chair, read his newspaper, and promptly fell asleep. I ended up standing on a pile of broken desks surrounded by several older, black men.