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Sven-Göran Eriksson's spider-sense is tingling.
You mean being co-opted by the Mets.
Nah, Frank McCourt has sold it to the Mets for $5M and 2% of the gross from the Citi Field parking lots.
As a Dodgers fan, #### you.
What a ####### prick. You can't just steal another team's history, you slimy, peabrained shitbrick.
####. I need coffee.
We should judge the new owner of the Mets not by the amount of skin he has in the game, but by the content of his character.
An Australian rules football player? A Serie A player?
How about any professional athlete who 1) doesn't play baseball, or 2) doesn't care about or know who Martin Luther King III is?
AO
What a ####### prick. You can't just steal another team's history, you slimy, peabrained shitbrick.
As tempted as I am to return the expletives, I will instead simply say that Jackie Robinson's legacy can just as validly be argued to be part of New York baseball history as it can be part of Dodger history. That history unfolded in Brooklyn, not Chavez Ravine. It helped to cement and deepen the bond between the Brooklyn fans of that team and its players. Believe me, I know -- my mother was one of them. Walter O'Malley left that legacy behind, and the Mets and Joan Payson inherited it. It is to Fred Wilpon's great credit that, for all the mistakes he's made, he's tried to be a good heir to that particular piece of the New York baseball legacy, and remind today's fans of their connection to the single greatest thing that ever happened in the city in its baseball life.
Fred Wilpon and the Mets didn't steal a damn thing. Jackie Robinson's history is shared by New York and the Dodgers, in equal measure, and it always has been.
What a ####### prick. You can't just steal another team's history, you slimy, peabrained shitbrick.
As tempted as I am to return the expletives, I will instead simply say that Jackie Robinson's legacy can just as validly be argued to be part of New York baseball history as it can be part of Dodger history. That history unfolded in Brooklyn, not Chavez Ravine. It helped to cement and deepen the bond between the Brooklyn fans of that team and its players. Believe me, I know -- my mother was one of them. Walter O'Malley left that legacy behind, and the Mets and Joan Payson inherited it. It is to Fred Wilpon's great credit that, for all the mistakes he's made, he's tried to be a good heir to that particular piece of the New York baseball legacy, and remind today's fans of their connection to the single greatest thing that ever happened in the city in its baseball life.
Fred Wilpon and the Mets didn't steal a damn thing. Jackie Robinson's history is shared by New York and the Dodgers, in equal measure, and it always has been.
So Jackie Robinson was a Yankee?
Uhh, I suppose lifelong Mets' fans may feel this way--although this is the first time I have ever heard it--but Robinson's legacy is IMO:
1. A national thing--Robinson's story as it exists today is part of AMERICAN history more than New York or baseball history.
2. In baseball terms, Robinson was a Dodger. His uniform, when you see pictures of him, says "Dodgers" more often than "Brooklyn."
3. An MLB thing--the decision to retire #42 around the majors, whether one likes it, shows the intent to establish and commemorate the idea that Robinson is bigger than any one team or one city. Certainly New Yorkers may feel a special connection to Robinson, but he is in some respects bigger than baseball and bigger than New York. People who don't care about baseball or about New York know who Jackie Robinson was and what he did.
I have been a baseball fan my whole life, have read a lot about Robinson and have taught stuff about him in my job, and this is the first time I have ever seen him identified in some special way with the Mets.
I'm pretty sure he played for a team in Brooklyn.
I agree with 14, but I imagine if I lived in New York, there would be some pride in having the event happened there. Heck Jackie never even played in LA.
2. In baseball terms, Robinson was a Dodger. His uniform, when you see pictures of him, says "Dodgers" more often than "Brooklyn."
3. An MLB thing--the decision to retire #42 around the majors, whether one likes it, shows the intent to establish and commemorate the idea that Robinson is bigger than any one team or one city. Certainly New Yorkers may feel a special connection to Robinson, but he is in some respects bigger than baseball and bigger than New York. People who don't care about baseball or about New York know who Jackie Robinson was and what he did.
I have been a baseball fan my whole life, have read a lot about Robinson and have taught stuff about him in my job, and this is the first time I have ever seen him identified in some special way with the Mets.
Of course it's part of American history. But you can say that about Lincoln, too, and that doesn't stop Illinois from putting "Land of Lincoln" on its license plates. Jackie Robinson played major league baseball and broke the color line as a BROOKLYN Dodger. It is really preposterous to try and claim that he was just a "Dodger" and ignore the central place that Brooklyn and its fans had in that story. That whole team, with Robinson at its core, has been mythologized and immortalized (Da Bums, The Boys of Summer) as distinct from the Dodgers who left. Robinson never played an inning for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
And of course Robinson wasn't a Yankee, and they have no genuine claim on his legacy. The Mets were the team that took the place of the Dodgers -- in fact, moving into the stadium that the city wanted to build for O'Malley in Queens, but which he refused, insisting that he wanted a new park in Brooklyn or else. Robinson is identified with New York and New York baseball, and the Mets, as the placeholders of New York National League baseball, are an excellent choice to carry that legacy forward. No, they don't have the Dodger name on their jersey, but then again, the Dodgers don't occupy the city in which Jackie played. So both sides are missing something to their claim. Both carry part of it, and both should tell the story to future generations of fans. The Mets are doing it pretty damn well in the Jackie Robinson Rotunda, even though Wilpon has been criticized for it.
But to be fair, Robinson was from NY - what? He grew up in LA, a short distance from where the Dodgers play now?
But still, he's a NY phenomenon, because NY marketers want it to be so.
Again, maybe to New Yorkers. But as a non-New Yorker non-Dodger/Met fan, I've never heard anyone say this. Seriously, this is the first time I've ever heard him associated with the Mets.
First they have to switch names to New York Revisionists. NY Revs doesn't sound that bad.
Or better yet, do some good stuff they can feel proud of in the future so they don't have to Forrest Gump baseball history.
Fair enough, but you are connecting him to the NEW YORK Mets, not the BROOKLYN Mets. If the Mets had been birthed in Brooklyn in 1962 and Ebbets Field had not been torn down and they had played there, I think you'd have something. Instead, they played in the Polo Grounds and used the Giants' inerlocking orange NY on their caps, and while they used blue as the base uniform color, it was and is, specifically not Dodger blue. My understanding is that this was done to appeal to Dodger AND Giant fans when the franchise started out. So this is another reason it seems odd to tie Robinson specifically to the Mets.
The difference is that there has not exactly been a huge legacy associated with the Milwaukee Braves of the 1950s, and the players on that team (forgive me, Harvey's . . .), which has permeated the popular culture and -- in the case of one player in particular -- changed the country. The Brooklyn Dodgers of the late '40s and '50s, especially Jackie Robinson, have perhaps the greatest legacy in the history of the game, when you combine both on-field accomplishments and off-the-field impact. The more impact that a player and team have on a city and the game, the more likely they are to become indelibly associated with that city. I find it amazing, to be honest, that anyone would question the association of Jackie Robinson and the Dodgers with New York. Other than Sandy Koufax, there isn't a single L.A. Dodger who has ever been even close to as famous or as big a figure in baseball lore as several Brooklyn Dodgers.
And that history took place in New York. If you know any history of baseball, you know that the departure of the Dodgers and Giants was a critical turning point, and that the resulting absence of National League baseball in New York was a huge impetus towards forcing expansion (because of the threat of a rival league starting up, with the suddenly available New York market as its lynch-pin). Of course there is a link between the Mets and the Dodgers. The Mets are the heirs to the entire history of New York National League baseball.
To me, this is about an obligation, not a right. It's not that the Mets "own" any part of Jackie's legacy, or that they own it in place of the team for which he played. As the National League team in New York, they have an obligation to tell that story, to claim proudly their place as the Brooklyn Dodgers' heir, and to have something very like the Rotunda. Rachel Robinson certainly thinks it was and is a great thing, the way the Mets have associated themselves with that history. The Dodgers have a parallel obligation, since he wore that jersey. I hope they are fulfilling it. It's not, after all, an either/or thing.
but this still is horse manure.
It's a shame that New York NL fans are still pissed over the loss of the Dodgers to LA, but that doesn't mean that the Dodgers forfeit all of their local Brooklyn history to some other unrelated start-up franchise. The Mets certainly try like hell, but that's always struck me as sleazy and vaguely creepy - It's like rich children who are proud of how much money they have, even if they had nothing to do with the making of it. You can benefit from the vacuum created by the Dodger's absence, but you can't claim responsibility for the decisions of the people who created it for you.
Having grown up a Dodgers fan, and read books all about them as a kid, I can say that the move from NYC to LA is an inextricable part of Dodger history - it's one of the fundamental things that MAKES them the Dodgers. Every franchise has made a series of choices that has defined their legacy, and which provide the foundation of their team - and fan - identity. The Dodgers moving to LA was precisely that kind of decision, and is, in fact, probably the most important decision they've ever made - after signing Jackie Robinson, of course. It was controversial, sure, but that's what makes it so remarkable. It doesn't forfeit their legacy, it solidifies it. The Dodgers have a history of controversial but courageous moves - I'm not a student of baseball history in the way that a lot of people here are, but it seems to me that, though they may not have won as many championships as the Yankees, they have as much historical importance as any team in baseball, and have shaped the modern game as much as any team has, and those two moves in the 1950s are the defining examples of why.
If you want to say Jackie Robinson belongs to New York as much as the Dodger franchise, fine, go ahead. I have no qualms with that. But to say his legacy belongs to the Mets now is bullcrap - sure they're in the same town, in the same league, but they're a different franchise whose major figures had absolutely no say in that decision - no member of the Mets is in any way responsible for the courage and intelligence of Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey (and the teammates who supported them). The Mets didn't even exist yet. The awesome power of your righteous butthurt isn't going to change that.
And the Mets are in Queens.
Of course, we can always compromise. I think we all know, deep down inside, that Jackie's legacy belongs to Kansas City anyway.
Once you acknowledge that, then there is no reason not to simply agree that it is totally appropriate (and indeed, in my view, an obligation) for the Mets to take the lead role, as the New York NL baseball team, in keeping very much alive in NY baseball fans' minds Robinson's story. Of course he wasn't associated with the Mets -- duh. As many have pointed out, they didn't exist until several years after he'd retired. But he was as associated with New York baseball as anyone you can name, up to and including Ruth and DiMaggio. They are honored at Yankee Stadium, their legacy kept alive for New Yorkers who love the game. It is absolutely fitting for the Mets to do that for Jackie Robinson, despite the team's lack of direct association with him, because it they don't, nobody else can or will stand in for the team that left. And I'm sorry, but that is a hole that should not be left unfilled, just because a bunch of L.A. Dodger fans think they have some sort of exclusive on the brand.
And no, I'm not bitter about O'Malley taking the team to L.A. That is a complex story in which there is as good an argument that O'Malley was forced to head West by Robert Moses being a stubborn SOB as there is that O'Malley was a greedy SOB looking for west coast riches. I'm simply arguing that there are two parts to Jackie Robinson being a Brooklyn Dodger, and the Mets are the only reasonable candidate to honor the Brooklyn part. If they've had to claim an association that is somewhat indirect, so be it. It's association enough to be doing the right thing (allusion intended).
pie for the Dodgers heading west.
Edit: as Sam said.
Maybe not for you, but for someone from Milwaukee the Braves have an enormous legacy. And frankly that team and the players on it have had an enormous and lasting impact on baseball, which you are glossing over.
I don't think anyone is doing this. I think people are questioning the idea that Jackie Robinson is as closely tied to New York as with Dodgers franchise, and then they are out-and-out laughing at the idea that he is as important to the METS as to the Dodgers.
I chose the Milwaukee Braves specifically for this reason. The Braves were the FIRST team to make the cross country move, and thus have an enormous legacy and impact on the history of MLB; they made it much easier for the Dodgers and Giants to make their moves, since the Braves were immediately successful and financially flush after the change. The M-Braves Braves have a critical and lasting legacy, as well as a group of very important historical players. But you won't find anyone claiming those players to be just as much Brewers and Braves.
I don't follow this at all.
As to the first, they can question that all they like. Jackie Robinson is indelibly associated with the Brooklyn. Dodgers. Both. Brooklyn as much as the Dodgers. But I'm never going to convince you of that, so I'm going to quit trying.
And as to the second part, no one is claiming (that I know of, and certainly not on this thread) that he's as important to the Mets as he is to the Dodgers. The argument is that Jackie Robinson is a monumental figure in New York baseball history, and because of the geographical and historical place the Mets occupy -- having replaced the Dodgers in New York in the National League shortly after they left -- they are the right franchise to recognize his monumental place. It is completely unnecessary to claim that he is as important to the Mets as he is to the Dodgers to say, instead, that the Mets are connected to the history he represents, and should make a place for that in their own home park. As they have.
And, by the way, if the Brewers want to make a place at Miller Park to honor the legacy of the important heroes of the Milwaukee Braves' past, because that history belongs to the fans of Milwaukee and their memories as much as it belongs to the Braves, I say "Hooray" for the Brewers. I would applaud them for that, just as I applaud Wilpon for what he's done at Citi Field to honor Jackie Robinson, in the face of some Mets' fans criticism that the park should be ONLY about the Mets. To take another example, it's a hell of a lot more appropriate for Johnny Unitas to be honored in Baltimore than in Indy, but I guess you would say that since the Ravens have nothing to do with the Colts' legacy, that would be BS, too. Sigh.
I don't follow this at all.
Maybe you should visit the Jackie Robinson Rotunda.
Yes, but that's just because "This license plate manufactured by a former Governor" doesn't leave enough room for the numbers.
Robinson is a Dodger, not a New Yorker. The Mets were very much tailored to serve the NY Giants crowd anyway, not the Brooklyn Dodger crowd (look at where they first played, and their hat logo!), so the attempts to claim them as a spiritual sequel to the Dodgers stinks of pure opportunism.
Jackie left you long ago, New Yorkers. You don't get him back. The attempt by the Mets to pretend that they are somehow the true spiritual heirs to his playing legacy, to steal that honor away from the only Major League team on the planet that has a right to claim it, is both egregiously insulting AND smacks of classic NYC self-centered arrogance.
I'm not sure if you know this, but these two places, Brooklyn and Queens, are near one another. Contiguous even. And both counties within the City of New York. Oddly, people sometimes think of them together.
Baltimore Colts and Cleveland Browns fans are telling you to screw yourself right now. You realize that, right?
What you call an "accident of location," historians call their life's work. The accidents of location make Gettysburg . . . Gettysburg, and the Texas School Book Depository the Texas School Book Depository. Things happened where they happened, and if we care about history we pay attention to that. Brooklyn and the fans at Ebbetts Field were an integral part of the Jackie Robinson story, not just a Hollywood back lot. The fact that the Dodgers left doesn't change what happened from 1947 to 1956, nor does it change where it happened.
It'd be great if Ebbetts Field had been preserved, if we cared enough about history to have kept it and could honor Jackie Robinson there. But that's not Fred Wilpon's fault. It's a nice second-best alternative that he cared enough about preserving that legacy to want to dedicate a huge part of the space at Citi Field to doing it. Call it pure opportunism if you want to, or crass marketing. Nobody can accuse me of being an apologist for Wilpon after the stuff I've said about him on the sale threads the past couple of days. I'm going to stand absolutely resolute that he's doing the right, the appropriate thing, not to "steal" any legacy from the Dodgers. That dimension of Jackie Robinson's history is secure (although the protests of a bunch of people on this thread sure make me wonder if some of you think it's not). But it has many layers, and the New York part of it should be honored and kept prominent, no less than that of the Yankee greats is kept alive in Monument Park. Citi Field is the place to do that.
I will incidentally point out that in my (pretty friggin' educated) cultural web of associations, I don't equate Jackie Robinson with New York at all. I equate him with "the Dodgers," wherever that team happens to be. His playing for Brooklyn is, as I said above, pretty orthogonal to the tale. He was an L.A. kid who cut his teeth in the Negro Leagues and Montreal, and was brought up to play in Brooklyn. Could've just as easily been St. Louis, or Detroit, or wherever. The place itself is irrelevant to the Robinson story, what matters is the FRANCHISE. The Dodgers. Now the L.A. Dodgers. Not the N.Y. Mets. For people to pretend that the Mets have some special purchase on his legacy due to the coincidence of playing in the same city where he did once upon a time is the height of comedy.
Jim Brown and the Cleveland Browns.
I guess I've been crazy all these years to associate those immortal giants with those cities. It was just a coincidence that they ended up there, and the legacy went with the franchise when Irsay picked up and moved to Indy and Modell moved to Baltimore. And we should just wipe out the history, erase the tape and pretend that events didn't occur where they occurred, and make Johnny U. an Indianapolis icon, right? Only the Colts have any right to honor him.
To say that "the place is irrelevant to the Robinson story" is -- pardon me for being harsh -- one of the single most ignorant things that has ever been said on this site. Rachel Robinson would tell you to read a little history and gain a little understanding of Jackie's story, and then come back and talk about it. Because right now, you have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. The franchise -- the O'Malleys and Rickey -- matter a lot, too. So does Brooklyn. There's room enough for both here. Sorry you can't see that.
No, it's really that your post is inexplicably angry, makes no real point, dumbs down a discussion that was already pretty pointless, and yet somehow manages to exude arrogance.
Why? For one thing, because it honestly *is* sort of outrageous for the METS to try and claim a piece of Robinson's legacy (that's pure New York hucksterism) -- while Jackie truthfully does belong to Brooklyn as well as the Dodgers franchise, it's a non-transferable legacy.
But mostly because hey...it's the Mets.
That said, I think saying that Jackie's legacy has "essentially transferred" to the Mets is going too far. (I can't imagine the remark stands up to the level of scrutiny we're giving it -- I hope we don't seriously think MLKIII is investing his money on this basis; it's just a PR thing that somebody says -- but I guess we're off now.)
The Mets, as mentioned, have tried to position themselves as the Brooklyn Dodgers' successors, especially in the last few years. (We've actually had many articles posted here on this subject -- Met fans generally really dislike it!) And, one enters Citi Field through the Jackie Robinson Rotunda. (The "rotunda" was the defining feature of Ebbets Field.)
I strongly suspect that the reason for that has far more to do with Wilpon being an old Brooklyn Dodger fan who wishes that he owned the Brooklyn Dodgers than it has to do with anything else. But, whatever. It's a nice gesture, as far as Jackie goes, anyway. There's no reason that the Mets shouldn't celebrate Jackie. (Hell, we made the Arizona Diamondbacks retire his number. I don't think they had much connection with him either.) But "essentially transferred" means that the Dodgers don't also have that legacy, and I don't think that's right.
Robinson played a key role in Yankee history by stinking out the joint in October. He was no Derek Jeter.
Nits. But if that's the case then fine, we'll give the legacy to the Brooklyn Cyclones.
A METS MINOR LEAGUE AFFILIATE DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN SPOOKY MUSIC.
Li'l Strom Thurmond, Jr.?
And this is where you are wrong. Dodgers fans know, understand and appreciate the connection the Dodgers have with Jackie Robinson, The Dodgers still have members of that 1955 Dodgers team such as Don Newcombe come to the stadium and tell of their shared history. We still have Vin Scully waxing poetically when the moment warrants it. Dodgers fans know.
As noted above, the Brewers do make a place in Miller Park to commemorate the Braves of that era. That is not the point. Honoring people who played in Milwaukee is not the same as thinking that those guys are as closely related to the Brewers as the Braves, or that their legacy has somehow transferred to the former.
That the Mets choose to honor Jackie Robinson at their stadum does not make him just as aligned with the Mets as the Dodgers. Unless you think that The Braves have the same claim to Ty Cobb's legacy as do the Tigers.
Well, I think you're wrong. So there.
This may be true. Some of the literature would certainly indicate as much. Rickey might not have tried it in St.Louis, although then again he was Rickey. But I don't buy this Mets/Brooklyn connection as anything but:
1. Wilpon's personal needs
2. A certain subset of Mets' fans who had/have Dodger fan forebears.
The idea that there is some special connection that other teams, fanbases and the rest of baseball should recognize--don't see it, not from a team who uses the NY Giants insignia, played in the Polo Grounds, had Casey Stengel as their first manager (yes, I know Gil Hodges managed the '69 team, but then they also had Yogi Berra) and calls themselves the New York Mets.
EDIT: Seriously though, how exactly was I ignoring your earlier post? Was it that we made similar points?
This was good, BTW.
Yeah--I noticed that we were the two guys who mentioned the NY Giant hat thing. BTW, you have been outstanding on that music thread--great stuff.
Which is all as it should be. And the Mets have fans who were actual Brooklyn Dodgers fans at the time. And fans who have been told about it by their fathers and grandfathers. And an owner who preaches the meaning of Jackie Robinson to their fans.
I think this is really a silly debate actually. Neither the current Dodgers nor the current Mets deserve any credit for Jackie Robinson, because breaking the color barrier was the act of men who no longer are involved with the current franchises and no longer have any descendants who are involved with the current franchise. A baseball team is no more than the custodian of the goodwill of it's fanbase. Yes, the Dodgers were the corporate organization that brought Jackie Robinson to the major leagues, and it is a moment in their corporate history they should honor. And they should very well teach their customers of the noble history of their corporation, whether or not current management had anything to do with it. And if the Dodgers have former customers who switched allegiances en masse to a new product when the Dodgers betrayed those customers, by all means the new corporation should honor the moment when a large portion of their current customers supported a noble endeavor of the corporation to which they formerly dedicated allegiance. But no current Mets nor any current Dodgers get any credit here (and honestly, I haven't seen anybody trying to claim any). It's all about honoring the legacy of Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Both organizations have reason to do so, and I can't see any issue if they both choose to. Isn't that a good thing?
In that case, please carry on.
Hell yes!
Other than that, I'm really not sure I even have a position on this particular issue.
You do know that their primary colors are orange and blue, and that those colors come from both New York NL teams, right? Also, the skyline in the baseball logo includes at least one building from Brooklyn.
The blue and orange uniforms are intended to combine the Dodgers and Giants colors. I for one didn't know this until maybe 5 years ago, but there you go.
EDIT: damn you, bobm
Arguing over which people not involved have a "right" to a moral legacy is pretty silly. If I have an unborn son who happens to fly on United Airlines or become a pilot for United Airliens why should he get credit for a piece of the legacy of Flight 93?
/thread
As it is, I hide in the crowd!
Yes, I know that and suggested as much in an earlier post. And the Mets are also the team that brought Willie Mays and Casey Stengel--Giant and Yankee icons--back to NY for good-byes. So, like I said, the Mets are a New York team. Not a Brooklyn team.
Inasmuch as they play in Queens, not Brooklyn, there is some force to your logic. My understanding is that Giants and Yankees have always played, and the Dodgers have for 50 odd years played, outside of Brooklyn as well.
You know who thinks there's a huge difference between Brooklyn and Queens? Mostly people not from NY.
When the team changes its name to the Queens Mets, let me know.
And you made my point for me: to people outside of NY, and probably a lot of people in NY, connecting the Mets to Jackie Robinson in some special way makes little sense. Robinson was a national figure who played for the Dodgers, and the NY-based images from the Mets' history--Stengel, Hodges, Mays, the Polo Grounds, the unis--are tied to NY baseball history in general, not to that of the Dodgers in particular.
Mmm... now I'm not a native, so I see that I'm not allowed by you to have an opinion on this, but my friends who live in NYC certainly treat them as distinct entities. And from the time I've spent there, Brooklynites certainly have a fairly strong local identity, quite separate from the adjacent boroughs.
---Jackie was a Brooklyn Dodger first and foremost, a Los Angeles Dodger only by projection, and a New York Met not at all. He was a "Los Angeles Dodger" on about the same purely technical level that Johnny Unitas can be said to be an "Indianapolis Colt" or Leo Durocher is a "San Francisco Giant." Los Angeles had less to do with Jackie Robinson's baseball career than Montreal or Havana.
---That said, AFAICT the Los Angeles Dodgers have done far more than the Mets over the years to honor Robinson's legacy. In fact I'd say that taken as a whole, the Dodgers franchise is right up there with the Yankees and the Cardinals in terms of honoring their past.
---And as to the ownership bid: Pardon my rudeness, but what in the hell does Martin Luther King III have to do with baseball, the Mets, or anything other than trying to live off his father's name? First he tries to Mau-Mau congress into overpaying for his father's papers, after the inner core of them had already been removed, and now he's trying to use his father's name to get part ownership of a baseball team. There's no question that it would be great to see minority ownership in baseball, but of all the potential African American owners I can think of, MLK III would have to be somewhere below the 100,000th---and that's being charitable.
----------------
Los Angeles would have a much more legitimate claim to the legacy of Jackie Robinson if they hadn't, y'know, traded him to the New York Giants before the Dodgers moved to California.
Just for the record, Robinson was traded to the Giants before the Dodgers' last year in Brooklyn, not after it.
Uhh, Robinson is from LA and went to UCLA. There are many reminders of him on campus. Not that you are 100% wrong, but LA is a big part of the Robinson story.
I know, to people from Colorado living in Park Slope, it's quite significant that they not be confused with residents of Sunnyside or Jackson Heights. For the vast, untrendy majority, not so much.
I see what you did there.
Yeah, not an accurate description of the people I'm referring to. I'm assuming you are from one of these two areas?
This strikes me as dead-on exactly backwards. (Having lived both inside and outside the city.) From my experience, no one outside of NYC gives twoshits about the difference between Brooklyn and Queens, mostly because they aren't even aware what you're talking about. That's not a denigration.
For the vast, untrendy majority, not so much.
I know a whole lotta natives. It matters to them, trust me. Not in a fighting manner, but as a matter of pride and place, seriously. "I'm from this place."
If this statement were expressed in terms of set notation I would feel particularly singled out.
Republicans are a myth. In reality, there only normal people and trolls.
...just kidding, I don't care if you're a Republican, I was raised liberal but I've never understood why people get so dandered up about politics. Even if you were a self-proclaimed Nazi, you're still just a dude. Presumably.
I think it makes sense, seeing as the Mets were designed to carry on the legacy of both NYC NL clubs. You can make a legitimate argument as to whether the LA Dodgers or the NY Mets are a more appropriate successor to the Brooklyn Dodger legacy.
Sometimes a club moves and takes the legacy with them, and sometimes it doesn't. I see the Mets much like the Cleveland Browns... a large contingent of the local fans would not support a team that left the city, and the new franchise was designed to embrace the legacy left behind. The football identity of Jim Brown is tied to the current Cleveland Browns, not the Baltimore Ravens (although that is a special case). Unitas refused to acknowledge any connection to the Indianapolis Colts.
Yes, yes, everybody has a connection to where they're from. What I'm saying is that the Mets' being located in Queens is not an affront to residents of Brooklyn. They're not the "Queens Mets" either. We're taking, what, 8 miles?
But the Browns made a written-in-stone point of keeping that history, no? I mean, Cleveland's retention of the franchise history was a negotiated part of the "divorce" with Modell, was it not? I don't believe the comparison holds.
Oh, lord no, I wouldn't say it's an affront. But, I do recall a lot of Brooklynites saying "We finally have a team again!" when the Cyclones started up. O Rly? There was, at least - and really possibly ONLY, not disproving your point - to the old-timers always a lack of acceptance of any other team, I think.
FWIW, I agree that the guy in the article is a tool -- the idea that Jackie's legacy was somehow "transferred" is stupid (or, to be all Brooklyn about it, stoopid). As I've tried to say repeatedly in this thread, there is a part of it that is connected and always will be to the Dodgers, because that is the team for whom he played, and that is the franchise that broke the color line. And there is a part that is connected to and always will be to New York because of where he played, and because Brooklyn played such a wonderful role in making the experiment a glorious success. This is not a zero-sum game: the Mets recognizing his connection to New York doesn't diminish his connection to the Dodgers. And it's not attempting to create a false history, either, in which the Mets somehow imagine that Jackie was a Met.
The distinction between Brooklyn and Queens is pretty trivial, really -- there isn't a major league team in Brooklyn any more, so if any National League team is going to honor him where he played, "New York" in general and the next borough over from Brooklyn is just going to have to do. So if somehow the argument is that because the Mets play in Queens there should be no recognition of Robinson in New York, but everything would be different if Robert Moses had been willing to build the park for the Mets at the Astoria & Flatbush location after he wouldn't for O'Malley? I honestly don't get that.
Have the Dodgers ever done that? Obviously, O'Malley coming back in 1959 or 1965 would have gone over about as well as Rushdie in Khomeini's Iran, but how about, say, 1988?
No, I get that. Just my last bit of inflammatory speech there, in reality I know what you're getting at and I'm cool with it, personally.
####, why didn't I hear about that? I live in the East Village, I would've at least checked it out, just to see a WS trophy. Or was it for team-affiliated people only?
Was it that bar that always has the giant SF logo in the window? I live like a block away from that place, and have always thought it odd that there's a Giants bar in New York (forgetting, of course, the historical connection).
If this was something I could have gone to, then this is the second time in the last week that I could've seen something really awesome but didn't hear about until too late (the other being Cashman bartending in midtown).
I think the place was Finnegan's (?) I was going to go down but last-minute family stuff got in the way.
There were a bunch of stories on the tour in the Times. I think the trophy and traveling party also went to a hotel in Midtown for awhile.
It is an example of how some fans may believe that a club that moves is no longer entitled to past legacies. Since we're talking about whether Robinson's legacy is tied to the laundry or to the locale, I think it's an appropriate example. Obviously, there is no "right" answer here.
In the interests of full disclosure, I am a Met fan that would prefer a bit more Met identity. I would be fine with a balanced approach to NY Giant and Brooklyn Dodger legacy, but between the Ebbets facade (which I do like), the green color (black or blue would have been more appropriate, as there is no connection between the Mets and green and orange would be a bit much), and the Jackie Robinson rotunda, it doesn't really feel like the home of the Mets so much as a monument to the Brooklyn Dodgers. That is part of the Mets' legacy and should be acknowledged, but I really would like more of a connection to the actual club playing there.
Uhh, Robinson is from LA and went to UCLA. There are many reminders of him on campus. Not that you are 100% wrong, but LA is a big part of the Robinson story.
Of course I know that Robinson moved to Pasadena when he was very young, and that he went to UCLA, but when he was at UCLA he made his mark in football and basketball, not baseball. That's why I said "baseball career" and not "athletic career" when I wrote what I did. When the Daily Worker was campaigning to integrate the Majors, they would frequently run long feature articles on black sports figures. When they ran a big story on Robinson and Kenny Washington, they barely even mentioned Robinson's talent as a baseball player. LA had plenty to do with Robinson's development as a man, but little or nothing to do with his baseball career, much less than Montreal or Havana or Kansas City.
That said, if people see Jackie Robinson as a legacy of their New York baseball fandom, and they are now Mets fans, I don't really see what the harm is. 'Claiming' Robinson for the Mets seems extremely peculiar, but I'm not sure many people (anyone) really wants to do that.
That's totally the place. Crazy. The thing about New York City that never gets old is just how often something that would be HUGE anywhere else, even in a moderately-sized city like Portland, can happen right next to you without you even knowing.
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