All eyes have been on the Los Angeles Dodgers after the Major League Baseball team overcame a dramatic five-run deficit to win the 2024 World Series in five games over the New York Yankees. There was even an impromptu parade Friday in downtown Los Angeles to celebrate, with 150,000 fans turning out to cheer seven double-decker busses filled with players, staff and their families.
One thing many Wyomingites may not know is that the Dodgers have a special tie to the Cowboy State, one that’s been kept secret for decades. The incident goes back to the 1950s, according to Cowboy State Daily columnist and Wyoming history buff Rod Miller, who is friends with some of the principals who witnessed this history.
“There were three baseball teams in New York at the time,” Miller told Cowboy State Daily. “They were the Dodgers, the Yankees and the Giants. And the Dodgers played in a baseball field called Ebbets Field.”
Ebbets Field had once been a jewel. But by the 1940s, it was rundown. It was so old and rickety, and had such limited parking, that its owner, Walter O’Malley, believed it was keeping fans away. He spent an entire decade haggling with city officials, imploring them to build the team a new stadium.
O’Malley wanted a 55,000-seat domed stadium on the corner of Atlantic and Flatbush. That’s home to the present-day Barclays Center. He envisioned a movie theater along with a fully automated ticketing system as part of this new venue.
O’Malley had plenty of money to build this dream stadium, but no financing to buy the land. So, he asked New York’s public planning czar, Robert Moses, to help him by condemning the plot as blighted. That would make it cheaper to acquire.
“Moses was the only guy in New York who could make that happen,” Miller said. “He was a very powerful political figure, and he didn’t like O’Malley, so he wouldn’t do it.”
Moses Had His Own Ideas
Moses at that time had decided that automobiles were the future, and he wanted to plan accordingly.
His idea was to move the Dodgers to Queens near the present-day Shea Stadium. He felt that location would create fewer traffic jams than putting the stadium smack in the middle of downtown Brooklyn.
Eventually, O’Malley grew tired of wrestling with the powerful Moses, who refused to see things his way, and he quietly started looking for a new home for the Dodgers on the West Coast.
Los Angeles at the time was a booming and happening place, one that didn’t have its own Major League team. The city was willing to offer O’Malley hundreds of downtown acres for the team.
“I think that was the first baseball team that ever moved from the East Coast to the West,” Miller said. “There had been like, a couple of teams that moved from Boston to Milwaukee or something like that, but no other team had ever gone to the West Coast to tap into that television market back then, and that market was just getting huge.”
Another thing O’Malley did quietly was talk with the Giants’ owner, Horace Stoneham, about moving his team to San Francisco. The two ultimately agreed they would move their teams to California together to preserve their legendary rivalry.
Exterior of Ebbets Field, home of the Brooklyn Dodgers, in 1956. (Getty Images) 
The field at Dodger Stadium for the 2024 World Series Celebration Show on Nov. 01, 2024. (Getty Images) 
Freddie Freeman of the Los Angeles Dodgers hits a walk-off grand slam during the 10th inning against the New York Yankees during Game 1 of the 2024 World Series at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 25, 2024. (Getty Images) 
Fans celebrate along the parade route as the team passes by on buses during the Los Angeles Dodgers 2024 World Series Championship parade on Nov. 1, 2024, in Los Angeles, California. (Getty Images) 
Fans gather along the parade route during the Los Angeles Dodgers 2024 World Series Championship parade on Nov. 1, 2024 in Los Angeles, California. (Getty Images) 
A fan holds a miniature Commissioners' Trophy up along the route during the 2024 World Series Championship parade Nov. 01, 2024, in Los Angeles, California. (Getty Images) 
Ebbets Field during the round-the-horn double play that broke up a Dodgers threat in the first inning of the second World Series game in 1956. Robinson hit to Billy Martin at third, who threw to Coleman at second, forcing Gillman out. The relay to Collins was in time to double Robinson who is shown heading for the bag at right as Collins takes Coleman's throw. Yankee catcher Berra is following the play at left. (Getty Images) 
Ebbets Field baseball stadium during demolition, in the Flatbush neighbourhood of the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, in 1960. Ebbets Field was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball team. (Getty Images)
About That Wyoming Connection
O’Malley knew that if word got out he was moving the Dodgers to L.A., he was going to take a beating in the press. So he devised a way to keep the deal on the way down-low — a way that involved Wyoming.
“The O’Malley family used to come out to Carbon County to hunt antelope,” Miller said. “They’d done that for a few years, and they would hunt antelope on John Niland’s ranch out in the Red Desert.”
O’Malley decided he would piggyback the necessary legal meetings with this antelope hunt.
“He brought all the attorneys from New York and all the attorneys from LA to the Parco Inn in Sinclair,” Miller said. “So that is where they had this meeting, and that is where they signed the papers to move the Dodgers from New York to L.A..”
Niland was already a legendary Wyoming figure at the time, according to Miller.
“He’s an old-school sheep man from Carbon County,” he said. “He was a county commissioner, and a charter member of the Carbon County Mafia, who were a bunch of Democrat politicians. They were the 800-pound gorillas in Carbon County, guys like Niland, and John Orton, and Bud Daley and Jerry Mickey.”
When Niland sold his ranch, he was appointed head of the Department of Economic Planning and Development for Wyoming, the entity that was a precursor of the Wyoming Export Economic Development Stabilization Board, which was in turn a precursor of the Wyoming Business Council.
“So Niland may have been the first guy, but he had a position in Herschel’s administration,” Miller said. “And he was a really colorful guy, and he also wrote a book about the sheep industry.”
The book is called “A History of Sheep Raising in the Great Divide Basin of Wyoming: Personal Recollections on the End of an Era.”
Miller recalled that whenever people would visit Niland they could not help but notice all the Dodger memorabilia in his den, including a baseball that had been signed by the Dodgers’ star pitcher Sandy Koufax.
“Niland could also go to any Dodger’s game he wanted,” Miller said.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.
