Ties that Bind - Brooklyn & Montreal

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Hope this will be of interest ...

April 15th was celebrated as Jackie Robinson Day across Major League
Baseball. This annual event recalls the day in 1947 when the game's
infamous colour line was broken, and commemorates what commissioner
Selig has appropriately described as the "most powerful moment in
baseball history."

Jackie Robinson Day also recalls the sad story of the Brooklyn
Dodgers, a franchise that was relocated to California despite a strong
fan base and long-standing relationship between the team and its
community. As such, marking Robinson's courage in the face of
tremendous abuse will, in time, also draw attention to a bond between
two cities that helped him realize this bold ambition but were chased
out of baseball by bad faith beyond their control: Brooklyn and
Montreal.

Standing alone among the modern horrors generated by World War II was
the realization that Nazi Germany had implemented a plan aimed at the
total extermination of the Jewish people. This had a profound impact
on European and North American culture. In the United States, it cast
light on a deep divide between the heroic role the country's soldiers
had played in opposing cruelty and oppression overseas, and the
tradition of cruelty and racial oppression that still thrived at home.

In baseball, this manifested itself in the on-going prohibition
against black players in the Major Leagues. To some, segregation was a
small part of a larger system of social injustice. To others, it was
one of the last remaining traditions through which white and black
people were kept apart. America was painfully torn. For one
organization in Major League Baseball, however, the question had a
practical dimension that couldn't be ignored.

Branch Rickey, visionary head of the Brooklyn Dodgers, championed the
idea that baseball was wasting an enormous untapped pool of talent by
keeping blacks out of the Major Leagues. In 1945, Rickey presented
Jackie Robinson with the awesome challenge of breaking that colour
barrier.

Citing the need for Robinson to hone his skills in the minor leagues,
but also acknowledging that his transition might be facilitated by
playing in a city where his presence would not lead to riots in the
streets, Rickey sent him to Montreal. The Royals frequently traveled
down to the United States so Robinson was not completely insulated
against the controversy that his presence generated. Nonetheless,
Montreal was judged to be a comparatively safe refuge. This played out
during Robinson's first weeks with the Royals. He started the 1946
season on the road where slurs and taunting followed him daily. When
the team finally returned to Montreal, Lorimier Stadium had a carnival
atmosphere. Robinson would later describe it as "love at first sight."

The Royals were a great minor league team that summer and Robinson led
by example. He was the league's best hitter and thrilled local fans
with his unmatched base stealing ability. The affection between
Montrealers and their adopted team leader ran so deep that, during the
playoffs, once the Royals returned home from Louisville where Robinson
was booed and cursed at every turn, local fans taunted the Louisville
side relentlessly in retaliation.

In fact, Rickey had been wrong about the likelihood of Robinson's
presence causing riots in Montreal. Following the Royals' championship
victory over Louisville, Robinson was called back to the field by fans
who climbed down from the stands to cheer and sing until he came out.
The jubilant crowd rushed Robinson and lifted him into the air. That
moment, when the same fans who'd shouted down a visiting team in
Robinson's defense, carried him on their shoulders around a stadium
that had been electrified by his presence, was Montreal's finest in
baseball.

This is the oft-forgotten pinnacle of Montreal's legacy. A statue of
Jackie Robinson stands outside one of the entrances to Olympic Stadium
but the facility is so strangely designed that it doesn't really have
a main entrance. Most fans enter the ballpark without noticing the
monument. In fact, this captures the spirit of the Montreal-Robinson
connection; it's there but few take the time to give it its due.

Jackie Robinson was an even bigger sensation when he landed in
Brooklyn after one summer in Montreal. His connection to Brooklyn and
association with Dodger-blue are both well-known aspects of baseball
lore. In 1947, he stepped onto baseball's biggest stage and turned
himself into an icon; loved, hated and scrutinized along the way.

By 1958, Robinson bristled under a pair of betrayals. Plans to sell
Ebbets Field and relocate the team to California were well underway.
These wildly unpopular moves contributed to Robinson's open
consideration of retirement. There was nothing left for him to prove,
no reason for him to start over in Los Angeles. Making his decision
that much easier was the added insult of having been traded to the
rival New York Giants, a franchise also being relocated to the West
Coast that same year. Move cross-country to play for long-time rivals
and become an enemy of tortured Dodger fans back home? Jackie Robinson
retired instead.

This is where the crossover between baseball's collapse in Brooklyn
and its breakdown in Montreal really starts taking shape. As mentioned
before, certain facets of Brooklyn's case clearly don't apply to
Montreal. For one, the Dodgers had very strong fan support. For
another, local boosters were making headway in their effort to replace
Ebbets Field. In Montreal, there is a strong sense that the franchise
is dead one way or another. The Dodgers were still kicking when Walter
O'Malley pulled the proverbial plug.

O'Malley is an extremely controversial figure. He is reviled for the
cynical profit-maximization that supposedly drove his decision to
relocate the much-loved Brooklyn Dodgers. Of late, however, this
characterization has been called into question and the revised history
of his infamous maneuvers sheds some light on the connection between
those Dodgers and this summer's Expos.

For one thing, Walter O'Malley's interest in the Brooklyn Dodgers was
initially quite small. He represented the team as a lawyer in the
early 30s before purchasing a minority ownership share. By the time
Branch Rickey came into the picture in the 40s, O'Malley had increased
his controlling interest in the club by increments, eventually forcing
Rickey out by taking majority control in the 50s. The relocation of
Brooklyn's franchise occurred because O'Malley succeeded in turning
his minority interest into a total stranglehold on the team.

Though the process ran its course much more quickly in Montreal,
Jeffrey Loria turned a similar trick by manipulating an otherwise
benign clause in his ownership agreement to hoist repeated cash-calls
on other minority stakeholders. When those owners balked at demands
for money to pay for acquisitions such as Hideki Irabu and Fernando
Tatis, their interest in the club reverted to Loria by default. The
current crisis in Montreal is, at least in part, the product of this
aggressive takeover.

More significantly, stadium development drove Dodger relocation.
O'Malley felt, perhaps correctly, that there was no future at Ebbets
Field. He was prepared to finance the construction of a new facility
out of his own personal fortune but wanted local government to use
legislation, which allowed it to donate land in support of public
purposes, to provide him with property for free. Brooklyn was
reluctant to play this game. Los Angeles, which feared the optics of
making land available for socialist projects like affordable housing
more than the optics of giving land to a baseball team, jumped at the
opportunity. As a result, O'Malley pocketed the deed to Chavez Ravine
and the Dodgers had a new home.

Obviously, baseball was a very different business a half century ago
than in it is 2004. The case of the Dodgers doesn't exactly mirror
that of the Expos. Still, the fact that O'Malley turned his minority
interest into outright control of the team, and then made free
property donated by local government a prerequisite in his Dodgers
sweepstakes, highlights some undeniable parallels.

None of this, in any way, diminishes Jackie Robinson's legacy. Nor
will it ever draw undue attention away from this amazing man and his
startling endurance. However, the cities of Montreal and Brooklyn were
both homes to him during that lonely quest to integrate America's
national pastime. They also suffered the indignity of being abandoned
by cavalier owners as well as Major League Baseball itself. In the
years to come, just as Jackie Robinson Day will continue to rightly be
celebrated around the league, so will the unfortunate story of these
cities continue to be told.

(This piece first appeared at ProSportsDaily)

In article <215a4e1b.0405051331.7413bdb6.RemoveThis@posting.google.com>,
oppositefield_columns.RemoveThis@yahoo.ca (ProSportsDailyLuchuk) wrote:

> That moment, when the same fans who'd shouted down a visiting team in
> Robinson's defense, carried him on their shoulders around a stadium
> that had been electrified by his presence, was Montreal's finest in
> baseball.

One more reason that Selig's attempts to pull baseball out of Montréal
hurt so much -- and one more reason that if the Expos ever got a new
stadium in Montréal, it should be called Jackie Robinson Stadium
(instead of Labatt Park or any other corporate name).

Another point you made was about the Robinson statue outside Stade
Olympique. Most people probably enter the ballpark via the métro or the
underground parking these days, so they miss it. I was also surprised
when I finally found the sculpture that it was smaller than life-sized.

(Another great column, as usual, BTW.)