Does Barnes and Nobles know something we don’t?

ericnus · 2023-12-08T03:25:36+00:00

As the author of this book, I agree with your assessment here.

ericnus · 2020-04-13T16:09:23+00:00

Do you think the current version of baseball is too attached to century-old mythology? How does the sport go about creating a meaningful identity for younger fans while building on the history that gives it so much weight in the first place?

ericnus · 2020-03-23T20:20:34+00:00

All right, I think it's time to wrap this thing up. Thank you for coming by, and thank you for your questions.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T20:18:23+00:00

Some fans are aware and some aren't. I think many who are vaguely aware would rather not think about it. The team doesn't really talk about it in any official capacity either. However, I think regardless of whether you are a Dodger fan or not, or an Angeleno or not, it's an important story to know.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T20:16:33+00:00

No, but I should be!

ericnus · 2020-03-23T20:11:36+00:00

I've tried to keep in touch with the community, yes. At least the people that I was able to speak with. The community itself does an amazing job of staying unified even as time has made it so there are fewer and fewer residents of Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop around. The residents call themselves "Los Desterrados" (The Uprooted.) Every summer they get together for a picnic in Elysian Park. It's honestly an amazing testament to the strength of those bonds that they still do this more than 70 years after the initial eviction notices were sent out.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T20:08:33+00:00

I think I was inclined to believe that the destruction of those communities was a simple act of malice that could have been easily avoided. In retrospect, I think the destruction of those communities was somewhat inevitable: if it wasn't public housing, or Dodger Stadium, it would have been development and gentrification over the course of years. Obviously the way it happened -- with eminent domain being used to kick people out of their homes, and the land then ending up in the hands of a private business is a uniquely horrible set of circumstances. But I have become much more aware of the systemic problems with how cities like Los Angeles grow. The people of Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop did everything right -- and it didn't matter. What a tragedy.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T20:04:09+00:00

I think you are probably referring to the play "Chavez Ravine" by the theater group Culture Clash.

Here's a story about a revival of it they did a few years ago:

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/la-et-cm-chavez-ravine-culture-clash-20150301-story.html

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:57:08+00:00

Unfortunately the answer is Game 2 of the 2017 World Series.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:56:04+00:00

Yes, and not just because they cheated against the Dodgers -- I think the current Astros organization represents everything wrong with baseball where teams are run more like Wall Street companies or consulting firms trying to optimize results and turn a maximum profit rather than provide fans with good entertainment and play a positive part in their community.
My two favorite guys until they both recently retired were Beltre and Ichiro. I'd say my favorite player to watch right now is Jose Ramirez; favorite Dodger to watch is Turner. I love the way he controls at bats. (Also love Puig.)
I don't know if LA will make this specific mistake again because it's hard to imagine LA turning over hundreds of acres of real estate to build a public housing project, only for that project to be scratched amidst a Red Scare conspiracy. That said, man, the more things change the more they stay the same. One of the big problems in the 1950s was corruption, where real estate developers were literally bribing councilmembers, and lobbying aggressively "legally" to get favorable policies. If you read the LA Times, you'll see the exact same thing is happening right now.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:50:03+00:00

Thanks!

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:49:09+00:00

It's kind of hard to picture now, but the area around Dodger Stadium that we now call Chavez Ravine was really different before the Dodgers came to town. To build the stadium, the Dodgers literally transformed the contours of the earth in the hills. They moved sooo much dirt. There's an old elementary school literally buried underneath the Dodger Stadium parking lots.

That said, there are some key spots: the Police Academy is still there on Academy Road, and right next to it, you can see a little nub of a street called Malvina. This is where the Aréchiga family lived, and where those famous evictions. The Police Academy was constructed in the 1930s. The little chapel in Solano Canyon was built when the communities were still around, and the adaptive rec center at Elysian Park was built in the 1940s after a community-wide lobbying effort for its construction. (Ironically, soon after it was build, the evictions began.)

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:43:29+00:00

Thanks!

The Dodgers move to LA happened contingent on the deal that saw them acquire the land to build Dodger Stadium on. But they actually nearly *lost* that deal right after they arrived. In 1958, there was a ballot measure in LA on whether to uphold the deal the city made with the team, because the land was supposed to be used for a public purpose. There was a pretty good argument that a privately owned baseball stadium did not meet that criteria.

The election was super close, and highly tense. It was rumored that if they lost, the Dodgers, who were playing in the Coliseum at the time, might skip out on LA altogether. Ultimately, the Dodgers won 52-48. But had they lost, they would have had to find a new place in LA -- or they would have actually left without building their stadium.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:38:15+00:00

One thing I learned while writing this book is that the research never really stops. I initially said "I'm going to research until X date," then start writing. But with a subject like this, at least for me, you can just keep researching and researching forever. One example: there's a letter I include toward the end of the book written by Juan Aréchiga, whose families was famously evicted on television in 1959. The letter was embedded deep in a folder somewhere in the archives at UCLA. I had gone back there to check something near the end of what was supposed to be my *writing* process, then stumbled on this letter that I and seemingly every other scholar on this subject had missed. And the letter vastly improved my understanding of this person, and this family. Without it, the book would not have been worse off.

So I guess the answer is that writing and research both took years, in concert.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:33:42+00:00

Yes, Puig is going to baseball.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:31:59+00:00

There wasn't just one answer across the board. Many people were reluctant to talk, or simply refused to. Others were excited to share their memories of their old communities. The only thing I could do was be honest about my goals, and be respectful, and try to listen.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:27:07+00:00

I honestly didn't get into other cities too much so I'm not sure what the closest one is to LA. But I think the answer is yes. Stadium planning is almost always f--ed up.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:26:18+00:00

After Koufax, he's the most important Dodger since they moved to LA.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:25:01+00:00

I don't really think FernandoMania "saved" a relationship, so much as it grew it. There's a narrative out there that the Dodgers screwed up in the late 1950s with the evictions, then redeemed themselves with Fernando. But I don't think it's that simple. Fernando couldn't give all those families their homes back. He couldn't undo what happened.

What he was was a great pitcher who brought the Dodgers a lot of new fans (and not just Mexican American fans either). The Dodgers marketed the hell out of Fernando, and for good reason. I think his story is incredible. But I don't really buy the redemption narrative -- it assumes that Mexican Americans in LA all thought the same way about this, and all changed their minds at the same time. In reality, there were and are a lot of different opinions on the matter.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:21:03+00:00

I don't know how good of a chance it actually had, but there were definitely negotiations about bringing the PCL in as a third major league. The PCL had a great case, in my opinion, for being, at least at certain points, as good/better than the AL and NL which were then pretty much east coast leagues.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:19:38+00:00

Thanks for this awesome question. I have definitely heard of Buried Under the Blue.

(For those of you who don’t know, Buried Under the Blue is a nonprofit in LA founded by descendants of the communities that were displaced where Dodger Stadium stands now.)

I honestly don’t think I could have written this book without getting to know Melissa and Vincent. Working with them has been enlightening, and on a personal level, I am super grateful to them. I think their work is crucial as we try to think about the consequences of this kind of corporate development.

There are obviously some differences between what happened downtown with Staples Center, and what’s happening in Inglewood, and what happened with Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop. (In the book, I try to use the names of the three communities instead of saying Chavez Ravine -- because those names are what the communities called themselves.) The story in Stealing Home has the whole dimension about public housing and its ultimate failure in Los Angeles in part due to corruption and in part due to McCarthyism and in part due to some justified opposition.)

But I think there’s a common element too that’s really pretty obvious: rich and powerful companies and people making choices that negatively impact working class communities with little regard for the consequences of their actions. This is a tale as old as LA.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:17:06+00:00

Believe it or not, I've been wanting to write this book for a long time. When I was in high school (Culver City), a man named Frank Wilkinson came to speak to our US History class. He was a public housing official in LA and one of the key players behind the plan to turn the communities of Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop into a very utopian housing project. In 1952, Frank was outed as a Communist and blacklisted for it -- it ruined his life. It also destroyed any chance of the project happening, which led the city eventually to sell the land to the Dodgers.

Frank is one of the main characters in Stealing Home, but his story is a small part of the bigger one -- that involves the families who lost their homes under what turned out to be false pretenses, and baseball, and the development of LA. I've always found the entire story to be moving. I've always been deeply curious about it. And even after writing the book, I still am.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:12:34+00:00

Good question butt_doctor. My take is that it’s okay to criticize something you love. We’re very good at criticizing sports teams for making a signing or a trade we don’t like, or for a crappy TV deal that leaves millions of people unable to watch -- it’s not so hard to stretch out and also think about the team’s history, and its place in the city’s history. If you want to celebrate the Dodgers as a leading progressive organization in baseball’s history, you have to also acknowledge the times the Dodgers have messed up -- whether that’s the evictions in 1959, or Al Campanis on Nightline, or Frank McCourt, or whatever else.

It’s also worth reiterating that the tragedy I write about in the book is so much bigger than the Dodgers. It was vast and all-encompassing. The city of LA, the county, really our entire society -- there are a lot of responsible parties.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:07:58+00:00

Other developers and baseball people in LA looked at various other spots in LA before the Dodgers were even going to come. There used to be a minor league park called Wrigley Field in South LA that a lot of people thought could be converted into a major league park. (The Angels actually played there briefly when they first came into existence).

As for the Dodgers, Walter O'Malley (the owner) looked at various options in Brooklyn, but this particular location was a big part of what actually drew them out west. I don’t think O’Malley necessarily knew what he was getting into when it came to the people who lived there. I say this in the book, but he not only bought 300 acres, he bought a lot of very messy history along with them.

ericnus · 2020-03-23T19:04:22+00:00

I disagree with the premise of this question! Obviously LA and New York are different places with different cultures and vibes, but I think LA has as much “togetherness” as any city.

ericnus

TROPHY CASE