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Good historical background. Liked the history on the Dodgers moving to LA. Also liked that it didn't just give Robinson sainthood and showed some flaws.
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The Last Good Season: Brooklyn, the Dodgers, and Their Final Pennant Race Together
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In the bestselling tradition of The Boys of Summer and Wait ‘Til Next Year, The Last Good Season is the poignant and dramatic story of the Brooklyn Dodgers’ last pennant and the forces that led to their heartbreaking departure to Los Angeles.
The 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers were one of baseball’s most storied teams, featuring such immortals as Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, and Roy Campanella. The love between team and borough was equally storied, an iron bond of loyalty forged through years of adversity and sometimes legendary ineptitude. Coming off their first World Series triumph ever in 1955, against the hated Yankees, the Dodgers would defend their crown against the Milwaukee Braves and the Cincinnati Reds in a six-month neck-and-neck contest until the last day of the playoffs, one of the most thrilling pennant races in history.
But as The Last Good Season so richly relates, all was not well under the surface. The Dodgers were an aging team at the tail end of its greatness, and Brooklyn was a place caught up in rapid and profound urban change. From a cradle of white ethnicity, it was being transformed into a racial patchwork, including Puerto Ricans and blacks from the South who flocked to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers’ black stars. The institutions that defined the borough – the Brooklyn Eagle, the Brooklyn Navy Yard – had vanished, and only the Dodgers remained. And when their shrewd, dollar-squeezing owner, Walter O’Malley, began casting his eyes elsewhere in the absence of any viable plan to replace the aging Ebbets Field and any support from the all-powerful urban czar Robert Moses, the days of the Dodgers in Brooklyn were clearly numbered.
Michael Shapiro, a Brooklyn native, has interviewed many of the surviving participants and observers of the 1956 season, and undertaken immense archival research to bring its public and hidden drama to life. Like David Halberstam’s The Summer of ’49, The Last Good Season combines an exciting baseball story, a genuine sense of nostalgia, and hard-nosed reporting and social thinking to reveal, in a new light, a time and place we only thought we understood.
From the Hardcover edition.
The 1956 Brooklyn Dodgers were one of baseball’s most storied teams, featuring such immortals as Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Gil Hodges, and Roy Campanella. The love between team and borough was equally storied, an iron bond of loyalty forged through years of adversity and sometimes legendary ineptitude. Coming off their first World Series triumph ever in 1955, against the hated Yankees, the Dodgers would defend their crown against the Milwaukee Braves and the Cincinnati Reds in a six-month neck-and-neck contest until the last day of the playoffs, one of the most thrilling pennant races in history.
But as The Last Good Season so richly relates, all was not well under the surface. The Dodgers were an aging team at the tail end of its greatness, and Brooklyn was a place caught up in rapid and profound urban change. From a cradle of white ethnicity, it was being transformed into a racial patchwork, including Puerto Ricans and blacks from the South who flocked to Ebbets Field to watch the Dodgers’ black stars. The institutions that defined the borough – the Brooklyn Eagle, the Brooklyn Navy Yard – had vanished, and only the Dodgers remained. And when their shrewd, dollar-squeezing owner, Walter O’Malley, began casting his eyes elsewhere in the absence of any viable plan to replace the aging Ebbets Field and any support from the all-powerful urban czar Robert Moses, the days of the Dodgers in Brooklyn were clearly numbered.
Michael Shapiro, a Brooklyn native, has interviewed many of the surviving participants and observers of the 1956 season, and undertaken immense archival research to bring its public and hidden drama to life. Like David Halberstam’s The Summer of ’49, The Last Good Season combines an exciting baseball story, a genuine sense of nostalgia, and hard-nosed reporting and social thinking to reveal, in a new light, a time and place we only thought we understood.
From the Hardcover edition.
384 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,2003
This edition
- Format
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384 pages, Paperback
- Published
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March 9, 2004 by Broadway
- ISBN
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9780767906883
- ASIN
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0767906888
- Language
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English
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Surprisingly good account of the aging Dodgers in the 56 pennant race, O'Malley's eventual move to LA, and a changing Brooklyn.
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This is really two books in one. The first is the story of the Dodgers 1956 season and the last pennant that they won in Brooklyn. The pennant race was exciting, a three team race that came down to the last weekend. The old guard Dodgers; Robinson, Reese, Hodges, Snider, Campanella, summon enough grit to put together one last pennant run.
The second story is the societal, cultural, and demographic changes that led to Walter O’Malley wanting to build a new ballpark, and, not getting much help from the city, ultimately accepting an offer to move to Los Angeles.
The book is well written, and should be a must read for anyone interested in New York baseball of the 50’s.
The second story is the societal, cultural, and demographic changes that led to Walter O’Malley wanting to build a new ballpark, and, not getting much help from the city, ultimately accepting an offer to move to Los Angeles.
The book is well written, and should be a must read for anyone interested in New York baseball of the 50’s.
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As a 72 year-old lifetime Dodgers fan, I have read a lot of Dodgers books, but this is one of the very best. 1956 was the last National League championship in Brooklyn. In 1958, the Dodgers were in Los Angeles. The book does an excellent job of describing the season, each section of the book focusing on one month of the season. But the book is also about Brooklyn and the sociological dynamics and changes in that borough, and the politics involved in trying to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn.
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fascinating look at the reasons for the Dodgers move to LA and their last season in Brooklyn.
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A unique look at NYC politics and the Brooklyn Dodgers and why they ended up leaving
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I did not think that I would be interested in any more writing about the well-documented Brooklyn Dodgers, and their exodus from Brooklyn. But The Last Good Season takes a different point of view that paints Walter O'Malley not has the villain he is usually portrayed as, but rather as a victim of Robert Moses, and the City of New York, who were not committed to helping O'Malley build a new stadium in Brooklyn. O'Malley was a businessman who wanted to make a profit, he was not terribly sensitive to what cities meant to their inhabitants, but he is not the villain in this story. He would have kept the Dodgers in Brooklyn had the opportunity been there. The book gets caught up in the play by play of baseball games. But overall, this is a different take on a familiar story, and an entertaining read.
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The last good season is the Brooklyn Dodgers next to last season in Brooklyn. It is a year after the Bums finally beat the Yankees in the 1955 World Series and their team is aging, their home ballpark decrepit, and their owner apparently losing a political battle with Robert Moses that might have kept the Dodgers in Brooklyn. In 1956 the Dodgers win the pennant on the last day of the season, take the first two from the Yankees in Brooklyn before losing three at Yankees stadium, winning game six at Ebbets Field and then getting blown out in game seven. Los Angeles and O’Malley have secretly been negotiating. Moses has been quietly subverting plans for a new ballpark at the closed meat market near the railroad yards next to BAM. Shapiro does what he can to lift the blame that has always been laid almost exclusively on O’Malley’s shoulders onto another of New York’s favorite villains, Moses. But the case isn’t fully convincing, making the sections devoted to it less than riveting. The baseball writing is okay but lacks the voice and knowledge of an old time sportswriter, say Roger Kahn. He tries to inject drama (where no such injections should be necessary) into a flat chronicle of games by overstating things as the season approaches its end. For example, he hypes the meaning of a blown chance for the Braves to deliver a “mortal” blow when such a blow, had it been delivered, that is the game won by the Braves, it would have only backed the Dodgers up from a two game to a three game deficit with weeks yet to go. When I was done with the book I immediately started Roger Kahn’s The Era to accomplish what Shapiro’s book failed to do, bring the time and personalities to life and to get me through the final weeks of spring training.
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