FanPost

Know Your Enemy: Dodger Blue Chapter

Some in Sox Nation are asking why some Sox fans might still have an ‘attitude’ about the Left Coast Dodge Boys.

Well, we have already cited the Travesty of 1959. Why travesty? The SOX LOST.

But there are other, deeper reasons for disliking the Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers Now of Los Angeles.

First – as any good baseball fan knows – Dodgers ownership ripped the guts out of City that loved them... Brooklyn... when they made up their minds to head out to the big dollar signs and Pacific-cold-winded beaches of Southern California.

Brooklyn tried hard to keep the Trolley Boys with offers of a new stadium... but that wasn’t going compete with the California Dreamin’ El Lay-bound California Blues and all those dollar signs and sunny days... nice beach scenery of various kinds.

Once arriving in smoggy Southern Cali, the Dodgers and the City of Tainted Angels went about their master plan.

They chose an area that was a thriving, ethnic area to put their new baseball ‘Palace’. They displaced and bulldozed that big, once-vital neighborhood. All the residents were strong-armed out of their homes. Properly agents lured the under-siege residents to sell on the cheap. Others were simply forced off their property with the use of eminent domain. One of the area schools was even fully buried and covered up during the construction of that ‘Oh So Beautiful!’ ball park.

So the ‘model franchise’ got its new park and riches with bulldozers and legal briefs and dug itself into the Laid-Back (?) El Lay Lifestyle. And the hope that people would just... forget how it all got there.

But let’s get back to 1959.

Imagine the Sox winning it in 1959. They would have become the favored Chicago ball team and their shaky ownership situation would likely have solidified under new, more substantial and better-funded local ownership.

The very dark years that led up to the Sox almost being moved out of town after the mid-60s would not have happened. The North Side ball club would still be just a local novelty act.

Look, the El Lay Rollers did not cheat to win the Fifty-Nine Series. That isn’t the issue. It’s that they won it AT ALL. And in how they treated countless people that are now forgotten in this process with a history that The Model Franchise would like buried along with that school they buried back then.

If many in Sox Nation don’t think playing the Blue Boys is a big deal, that’s OK. We all make our choices.

But the deeper one looks into the history of both the White Sox and Dodgers... the more one’s blood begins to boil. At least, within some Sox families.

And in some back yards and basements from Plainfield to Brookfield to South Shore to beautiful downtown Chesterton, Indiana... we just won’t forget. If not for ourselves, for our dear Grand Dads. Living today or looking down upon the South Side from above while still dreaming of what could have been.

If we Sox fans don't remember, then who will?



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