This post begins a new series…Major League Baseball Divisions. Each post will feature a map showing the ball clubs of one of 6 MLB Divisions. Featured here is the National League West Division. It includes the two ball clubs that moved from New York City to California, in 1957 (the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants). The pair became the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. They abandoned New York City, and their fans, because California was just too lucrative to pass up. If the two clubs had weathered a few more years of indifferent political power brokers, they would have gotten new stadiums on the tax payers dime. But the lure of free, soon-to-be valuable land in the Golden State, was irresistible. It tore the heart out of Brooklyn, and it took 3 decades for the Borough to recover. I know there were over-arching socio-ecomomic conditions that made continued tenancy in Brooklyn, and northern Manhattan, a real problem, but it just killed the fans. There is no way you can tell me it was justified to rip two huge, successful, well-supported clubs out of the capital of Baseball, New York City. O’Malley and Stoneham (the Dodgers and Giants owners) sold out, and turned their backs on the fans who made the clubs huge in the first place {see this, and look at the 5th paragraph}. And the salve provided by National League, of a new team, 5 years later, in the form of the New York Mets, was hardly adequete…just go to Shea Stadium, home of the Mets, and try to relax and watch a ball game, while jet airplanes are roaring above, every 3 minutes (what a hole, Shea Stadium is). But I digress.
Also in this division are the San Diego Padres (est. 1969); the Colorado Rockies (est. 1993); and the Arizona Diamondbacks (est. 1998).
In addition to a list of each ball club’s origins, and titles, I show each club’s cap logo, and the script logos on their primary home and away uniforms. The map functions mainly as a locator.
The main graphic display is on the Auxillary Chart (see below), which shows each ball club’s uniforms, and logos, through the years (with choice alternate logos also shown, depending on space). **Click on the segment below.**
On the Auxillary Charts, I will have mini-essays, at points where I decided that just a description of the uniform or logo didn’t do the image, and the time period, justice. Basically, all the old storied franchises will get a little write-up on the Charts. On this Chart, that means the Brooklyn Dodgers {click her, for photos & team history}, and the New York (Baseball) Giants (click here, for photo & team history). [ these two links are to the sports e-cyclopedia site ].
The plan is to post one of these every two weeks.
Thanks to the SSUR site (http://www.sportscolors.org).
Thanks to Chris Creamer’s Logo Site. Thanks to the Logo Shak site. Thanks to the National Baseball Hall Of Fame’s “Dressed To The Nines” site. Thanks to the Logoserver site. Thanks to Marc Okkonen, for his incredible book, “Baseball Uniforms of the 20th Century”, 1991, by Sterling Publishing Co, NY.
