3rd Base Dodger Stadium

There are very few people who bleed Dodger Blue the way I bleed Dodger Blue.  I don't care where you live or which team you root for, my love for the Dodgers borders on an obsession in Baseball season.  It started a long time ago in the 1950s when I rooted for the Brooklyn team.  When I heard "My Dodgies" were moving to my hometown it was heaven sent news as I was too young then to be aware of the controversy.  It is the type of controversy that now plagues every area of the country when the choices about the benefit of building a sports stadium arise.  Voters and their representatives might want to consider if the price in people and places as well as money are worth the sacrifice for the construction. 

Los Angeles paid a very big price in order to have the Dodgers.  All it required was the destruction of three communities and ripping out the heart of a whole way of life.  Before being cleared for public housing, Chavez Ravine was made up of the three mostly Latino communities of La Loma, Palo Verde, and Bishop.  The Hispanic residents in this area of Los Angeles were uprooted in order to build Dodger Stadium at Chavez Ravine. As written, sung and played by Ry Cooder the above album tells the story of this history and I've linked to the Los Angeles Dodgers and the building of the stadium at Chavez Ravine.  Even after a half century, the pain of some of the decisions made still linger in the memories of what used to be and is no longer there.

The next to the last song on the album packs an emotional wallop of the longing for home by the man from 3rd Base Dodger Stadium.

Mister, you're a baseball man, as anyone can plainly see.
The straightest game in this great land. Take a little tip from me.
I work here nights, parking cars, underneath the moon and stars.
The same ones that we all knew back in 1952.
And if you want to know where a local boy like me is coming from:
3rd base, Dodger Stadium.
2nd base, right over there. I see grandma in her rocking chair.
Watching linens flapping in the breeze, and all the fellows choosing up their teams.
Hand over hand on that Louisville. Crowning the top, king of the hill.
Mound to home, sixty feet. Baseball been very good to me.
And if you want to know where a local boy like me is coming from:
3rd base, Dodger Stadium.
3rd base, Dodger Stadium.

Back around the 76 ball, Johnny Greeneyes had his shoeshine stall.
In the middle of the 1st base line, got my first kiss, Florencia was kind.
Now, if the dozer hadn't taken my yard, you'd see the tree with our initials carved.
So many moments in my memory. Sure was fun, cause the game was free.
It was free.

Hey mister, you seem anxious to go. You could find that seat, in the 7th row
Behind home plate, where we used to meet. When we were young, we had dreams.
Just a place you don't know, up a road you can't go.
Just a thought, laid to rest in my mind, just a time.
If you care to know where I'm gonna go when I hit my last homerun:
3rd base, Dodger Stadium.
3rd base, Dodger Stadium.
3rd base, Dodger Stadium.

Hey, Mister, you are a baseball man.
Yes, I'm a baseball man myself.
Yes, I'm a baseball man, too.
Baseball been very good to me.
Yes, baseball been very good to me.

"Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine is shaping up. Construction is now about 85 per cent complete, despite a mishap yesterday, when a crane fell into some seats. Access roads are going in. And the spot (X) is already chosen for that loveable (?) left field screen from the Coliseum. It'll be covered to provide dark background for batters." 
Photo by Harold Morby, September 27, 1961 - Herald-Examiner Collection; Los Angeles Public Library

My Little Town

This week's Take This Tune is all about hometowns. I was born in Paradise.  If you click on the picture above, it will take you to the "Golden Dreams" book in the Kevin Starr series about California from its earliest Spanish years to the disaster level problems facing it now.  Golden Dreams, An Age of Abundance covers the years 1950 - 1963 which for me would be second grade to the the birth of my first child.  In my lifetime Los Angeles has gone from 1.5 million people to 3.7 million people.
Even worse the state has gone from 12 million to 38 million.  Since I can't turn back time, I can at least show you pictures of what "My Little Town" looked like when I was little.

The downtown Hillstreet Theater.  Inside it was one of the great movie palaces despite its rather utilitarian outside.  You had to drive quite a distance on city streets to get downtown until the late .50s  because the Pasadena and Harbor Freeways didn't open until  1940 and 1948 and there was still farmland between the outer and inner suburbs.  If you would like to recreate one of those drives, you can courtesy of Curating The City link for Wilshire Boulevard.

This is the May Company store (Now a museum).  Another reason to drive downtown to see the Christmas decorations in motion in the windows ... a small taste of New York in the California backwater when "The City" meant San Francisco and LA was still where the movie stars and other uncouth yokels lived.

Olivera Street - Part of El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument, Olivera Street was originally known as Wine Street.  It may be a tourist trap but if you have never been to LA, it is a must see part of both the city's history and the amazing culture.

In July 1934 a contingent of farmers pulled their trucks onto the corner of Third and Fairfax in Los Angeles. They displayed their produce on the tailgates of their vehicles.  In 1947 I read a sign for the first time by saying "This table is reserved".  Precocious little 3 year old brat.  The Farmers Market is a magic place.  If someone says, "Meet me at 3rd and Fairfax" - Go.  They are probably a native inviting you for an adventure to one of the must-see tourist attractions in Southern California.

You knew I had to give you a beach.  It was a one mile bike ride from my house (several houses actually because I moved all over the beach cities of Redondo, Manhattan, Hermosa and Santa Monica) ... can you say every weekend unless I was at Disneyland?  Speaking of which ...

Technically not part of LA since it is in Anaheim in Orange County, but it was built by a movie man so Angelenos consider it theirs.  The first day was a madhouse as the crowds overwhelmed the lines.  I got there the first month when I was 11 and they still had "E Ticket Rides".  The favorite period was as a young teen when you could pick up Navy and Army boys at Merry Go Round rock on Tom Sawyer Island and my famous date with a tree ... talk about a more innocent age.