That Walter O’Malley might one day be seen as the victim, and not the villain, in the chain of events that led the Dodgers out of Brooklyn and to Los Angeles would not have seemed even remotely plausible in the immediate aftermath of the Dodgers’ departure. After all, if Moses was responsible for the “fall of New York,” as Robert Caro subtitled his classic biography of New York’s “power broker,” how much easier to pin responsibility on him for the far simpler task of driving the Dodgers out of town by blocking Walter O’Malley’s plan to replace Ebbets Field with a new stadium at the intersection of Atlantic and Flatbush Avenues in downtown Brooklyn. Jackson for the opportunity to present an earlier version of this article at the “Robert Moses: New Perspectives on the Master Builder” symposium at Columbia University in March 2007.īack in the days when the Brooklyn Dodgers toyed with the emotions of their endlessly faithful fans by having three runners end up on one base, fielding fly balls with their heads, or losing a crucial World Series game on a dropped third strike, it was said that “anything can happen in Brooklyn.” The substitution of long-reviled Dodger owner Walter O’Malley by New York City’s planning czar Robert Moses as the villain in the tale of the team’s move to Los Angeles proves that anything can still happen when the Dodgers are concerned. The author wishes to thank Professors Hilary Ballon and Kenneth T.

Robert moses and the fall of new york