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Treatment of Brooklyn's move to LA was shockingly slanted and inaccurate

posted 10 years ago by ztnjpv
1 reply | jump to latest

The story of the Dodgers has always been special to me. And I found the story of the move to LA to be the tale of a power struggle between Moses and O'Malley. Burns, for whatever reason, tries to tell this tale as O'Malley trying to force the city to build him a new stadium and then leaving when his demands weren't met. My jaw dropped at this inaccurate account.

It didn't take much research for me to learn of the attempt of O'Malley to acquire land in Brooklyn to build a new stadium. This unsuccessful attempt played out over years while Robert Moses thwarted every move in his own attempt to force the Dodgers to move to a new city-owned Stadium in Flushing (Shea). O'Malley refused and the rest is history.

Burns got this so wrong and it's shocking. Inexcusable.

[–] JohnQ1127 10 years ago

Agreed, Burns massively romanticized the Brooklyn Dodgers story and basically made Walter O'Mally the 2 dimensional villain. Robert Moses was the real culprit in this story and Burns basically glosses over Moses' involvement.

One of my big pet peeves with Burns is that he's either historically inaccurate or he omits or glosses over certain points because they clash or repute his narrative. He's a film maker first and foremost so he wants to stick to his narrative even if that means omitting huge pieces of information.

This project was way too big for him and his style of story telling. As a resulting he omitted huge segments of baseball history. I've often thought he would have been better just doing a film on the Negro Leagues or NYC baseball from 1936-1957.

The Teens was basically Ty Cobb and the Black Sox scandal. 1920's is basically the Babe Ruth story. The 1930's is basically the Negro Leagues. The 1940's is T. Williams and J. Dimaggio in '41, ww2 and Jackie Robinson. The 1950's was the Dodgers and the Yankees and NYC baseball. The 1960's was Sandy Koufax and Bob Gibson and The Red Sox in '67. The 70's was half a program and it seemed like 20 minutes were spent on Fisk's HR. He barely did anything in the 1980's. To me it was ridiculous that the 1970's & 1980's didn't receive their own separate entry.

Way too much Brooklyn Dodger stuff and way too much Boston Red Sox stuff. Fisk's HR is one of the most overrated plays in baseball history. The '67 Red Sox story is massively overrated. Mel Ott barely got mentioned in that series. You basically don't even hear about the White Sox after 1919. You barely hear anything about players outside of NYC.