But the situation was not hopeless, and that is thanks chiefly to two men. One is Branch Rickey, baseball's "Mahatma," hired away from the Cardinals to recreate the formula of small-budget success that had worked so well in St. Louis.
The work of Branch Rickey in rejuvenating the Dodgers has been well-documented. He is noted not only for signing Jackie Robinson and breaking baseball's color barrier, but for creating a true dynasty out of the Dodgers, which would win four pennants with him as the team's General Manager.
But the role of Walter O'Malley in the Dodgers' turn-around has gone virtually unnoticed. If Rickey's greatest accomplishments came with putting talent on the field and building up a farm system, O'Malley (who finally bought out the squabbling heirs) managed to turn the once-laughable franchise into a profit-making enterprise. He was helped not just by the club's on-field success, but by the nationwide baseball boom that came after World War II.
The relationship between Rickey and O'Malley was thorny, undoubtedly. But despite rumors of a deep hatred, the two men managed to work with each other remarkably well. What ultimately brought about Rickey's departure from Brooklyn was not personal animus, but the Mahatma's princely salary. Rickey left to run the Pirates while O'Malley became the unquestioned leader of the Dodgers.
In Rickey's absence, the team managed to do the unthinkable: win a World Series. Having lost the fall classic to the Yankees in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, and 1953, the baseball world was understandably shocked when the 1955 Dodgers defeated the hated Yanks in an exciting, seven-game thriller.
The success of 1955 was undercut, however, by persistent reports that O'Malley was considering moving the team to Los Angeles. O'Malley asserted that he was committed to keeping the Dodgers in Brooklyn. But the Dodger faithful's worst fear was realized after the 1957 season, when the team confirmed the rumors that it would be moving to Los Angeles for 1958.
This decision has been the central factor of the O'Malley biography ever since. In the standard version of the story, O'Malley is evil, scheming owner, with the slicked-back hair and the big cigar. He became the symbol for all power-hungry business owners who would sacrifice anything for money.
D'Antonio devotes the bulk of Forever Blue to debunking this myth, with great success. It would be impossible to list here all the evidence offered in the book to counter the prevailing sentiment, but suffice to say that O'Malley was not the evil man of myth. On the contrary, he went to great extremes to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn, including: sounding out prominent architects (including Buckminster Fuller) to design a new, domed stadium; offering to pay for the stadium entirely with private money; and even considering a compromise location in Queens (where Shea Stadium would eventually be built). We can never know exactly how devoted he was to staying in Brooklyn, but O'Malley was absolutely right when he said that he had tried everything to keep the team in Brooklyn.
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