MLB: Failure to Mark History Is an Opportunity Lost

In October of 1957 the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers left for the west coast. 

The Giants would return to their old stadium to play the Mets in 1962, sweeping the series by winning four straight at the Polo Grounds.

The Dodgers never returned to Brooklyn in any fashion, and people cried when both Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds came down. 

Fast forward now fifty years after they left from Harlem and Brooklyn.  The two teams had an opportunity to mark that era.

Why is that necessary?  Why bother marking a failure, by two owners to keep their teams in their natural homes?

Because unlike so many teams, in so many professional sports, these two teams matter to those communities today.  Brooklyn, to this day, still has a strong and loyal tradition.  The Giants less so but it is still to some extent there.

Also the other reason to recognise and celebrate those two teams former home is because there are fewer and fewer people who even remember those teams.  If baseball and its fans obsess about history, and they do, this should have mattered.

Lets not kid ourselves, the Boston or Milwaukee Braves do not get a lot of nostalgia, and neither does the Philadelphia or Kansas City Athletics.

So what should have baseball done? Well first off the Dodgers and Giants could have played one series at the stadium of the Mets' farm team, the Brooklyn Cyclones.  Yes it is small but think of the interest, the positive publicity for a league that has little.

The two teams could have both worn throwback uniforms from their 1950s era.  It would have been a nice touch.  It would have been a feel good move.  Baseball fails at those a lot.

Secondly, there should have been something done at the stadium sites to do more to mark the location, maybe a visitor center, I realize neither are in nice areas but people still take pilgrimages there to see these sites.

Finally, during the All-Star game in San Francisco that year they could have paid homage to the two teams by having the National League wear Giants colors, as they did, the American wear the Dodgers colors, and have shoulder patches for both teams.

Yes, these might sound like extremes for some—but what would baseball have to lose?  It is not like the teams are moving back, or that the former owners Walter O'Malley and Horace Stoneham are going to return from the grave if they did.

So often people forget or do not realize that Yankee Stadium was the house that Ruth built because he feasted on the short porch to left in the Polo Grounds.

So many critical baseball events happened with these two teams, it just behooves baseball to do something.  But no, once again they drop the ball, last year both the Dodgers and Giants marked their entrances into Los Angeles and San Francisco but did nothing the season before.

It seems such a golden opportunity lost to baseball like so many other things get lost in the Major Leagues.