Dodger Stadium and the Battle of Chavez Ravine

When eternal Dodgers hero Johnny Podres threw the first pitch to Cincinnati Reds shortstop Eddie Kasko on April 10, 1962, it marked the official opening of Dodger Stadium as the new home of the Los Angeles Dodgers.1 Less recognized and certainly less celebrated was how it represented the definitive end of what has come to be called the Battle of Chavez Ravine.

The Battle was a multifaceted conflict, one that offered insight into the business side of baseball as well as the distinctive demographics that characterized Los Angeles and indeed all of California, while also reflecting the tenor of the times, the decade of the 1950s. These two forces were bridged by the political realities in California, soon to be the nation’s most populous state. At the same time, while the Battle of Chavez Ravine had its roots in actions that predated any plans the Dodgers had to relocate to the West Coast, much less build their new ballpark in that location, it was, nevertheless, a political, social, and cultural battle in which the Dodgers played no small role.

Indeed, the controversy split the Los Angeles area while also leaving the Dodgers to spend more than two decades trying to woo and then placate a part of the local populace, the Mexican Americans who should have been enthusiastic boosters but instead resented what they saw as an insensitive money-grubbing power play. Only with the arrival of Fernando Valenzuela in 1981 would fences begin to be mended in a way that allowed the major leagues’ largest attendance base to include the thousands of fans whose fellow Mexican Americans had at one time resided in what would become the team’s geographic home.2

One of the great ironies of the whole saga is that the central elements of the conflict predated the team’s decision to leave New York, much less to build a stadium in Chavez Ravine. In fact, when the conflict began, Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley was in the midst of an almost decade-long battle, one that began in the late 1940s, with New York power broker Robert Moses over the possibility of building a new ballpark that would allow the Dodgers to remain in New York.3

Indeed, the Battle of Chavez Ravine had its roots in the 1950 decision by Los Angeles authorities to use federal money made available to local municipalities under the Federal Housing Act of 1949 to build public housing in the suburban area outside of the city known as Chavez Ravine.4 While technically a part of greater Los Angeles, the semirural area, made up of three neighborhoods – La Loma, Palo Verde, and Bishop – was a distinctive area, and the home to a predominantly Mexican American population. Indeed, it was an area that city officials had never quite known what to do with, but as they contemplated where to use the expected infusion of federal funds, Chavez Ravine seemed to check every box for the new project that would “have to be sited in a thoughtful way to fit with planned freeway construction, potential rezoning, and perhaps most importantly, the remaking of downtown LA into a business and cultural hub befitting the city’s ruling class.”5

And while downtown was fully accessible, the construction of the 110 freeway served to physically separate the area from downtown Los Angeles.6 But more importantly, and reflective of an often overlooked or at least unacknowledged cultural bias, not to mention political disconnect, while most residents of Los Angeles viewed Chavez Ravine as basically at best “antiquated and backward,” and at worst a slum, often referring to it as an “eyesore” and a “vacant shantytown,” its residents, many of whom had moved there to escape the discrimination they had experienced elsewhere in the city, saw it as something very different.7 For those who lived there it was home, “a self-sufficient and tight knit community, a rare example of small town life with in a large urban metropolis.”8 They took pride in it, having developed the area into a vibrant, thriving community, one that included its own church, elementary school, and recreational center, and where they grew much of their own food.9

But all of this was set to be upended when city planners, led by Frank Wilkinson of the Los Angeles Housing Authority, targeted the area for redevelopment as part of an effort to turn Chavez Ravine into Elysian Park Heights, a public housing project that would cover 54 acres. The initial plans called for the construction of 163 one-story buildings that would provide 3,600 low-cost apartments.10 The notification of the intended plan was received by the residents of Chavez Ravine in July 1950.11

The letters explained the city’s plan and not only ensured residents that if they were eligible for public housing they would not only have “top priority to move into any [Los Angeles] public housing development,” but promised that once the new development was completed they would “have the first chance to move back into the Elysian Park Heights Development.”12 The letters also announced the opening of three area offices to which residents could come for help and guidance in getting relocated.13 While rumors of such a possibility had “been whispered for years,” to the many families for whom the area had long been a community it was nevertheless a crushing, and still unexpected, blow, especially given the reality that since most of the area residents were undocumented, they did not meet the eligibility requirements for residency in the new project.14 The city’s efforts to console the soon-to-be-transplanted residents represented little more than idle promises.

The real trouble began soon after the notices arrived as many families, recognizing that they were not eligible to continue living there, and fearing that they would lose everything, took low offers for their homes and began to move out. With each departure the community was diminished, while at the same time those who remained lost whatever political leverage they might have retained. The exodus was large and fast. By the summer of 1952, Chavez Ravine was, in the words of one commentator, “essentially a ghost town.”15

But in another ironic twist, at the same time that the land was being prepared for the creation of Elysian Park Heights, the proposed project was upended by politics – both national and local. First, in 1952 Frank Wilkinson, the city planner leading the effort to build the public housing, became a victim of the developing power of the Cold War anti-Communist movement.16

While most commonly labeled “McCarthyism” on the national level, in fact, the California Senate Factfinding Subcommittee on Un-American Activities, commonly known as the Tenney Committee, after its chairman, Jack Tenney, a state version of the US House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), was already a powerful force in the state, one whose influence was in full bloom before US Senator Joe McCarthy arrived on the scene waving his list of alleged Communists in the federal government.17

Indeed, with battles raging over alleged Communist influence in the movie industry, as well as loyalty oaths in the state universities, the public’s concerns in the Golden State predated the national fears that were embodied in McCarthy. Consequently, when it was discovered that Wilkinson had once been involved in radical politics, he was not only fired from his job (and subsequently tried and found guilty of contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before HUAC, a conviction for which he would ultimately serve time in prison after losing an appeal in the US Supreme Court), but opponents sought to use Wilkinson’s taint to discredit the whole public housing effort.18 Although the city council’s attempt to cancel the contract for the project ran into a legal roadblock, when longtime California politician Norris Poulson, running on a platform that sought to bar the construction of any new public housing projects – efforts that were seen by conservatives as radical efforts that ran counter to solid capitalist principles as well as being spending that they characterized as “un-American” – was elected as mayor of Los Angeles, ousting incumbent Fletcher Bowron, a staunch proponent of the Elysian Park Heights project, by a 53-47 percent margin, the project’s fate was essentially sealed.19

With the Elysian Park Heights project clearly dead and the federal government looking to cut its losses, once Poulson took office, his administration was able to buy from the federal government the land intended for the Elysian Park Heights project at a significantly reduced price. The only stipulation, one that would later prove to be a sticking point when the area was identified as a potential site for the Dodgers’ new home, was that the land needed to be used for a public purpose.20

While the political landscape was changing, a group of boosters of Los Angeles, including members of the city council led by Roz Wyman and Ed Roybal, the only Mexican American on the council, were seeking to launch the city into the ranks of the nation’s top metropolitan areas, an effort they believed would be greatly enhanced if they could land a major-league sports team.21 Despite being the third-largest city in the United States, Los Angeles could lay claim only to the NFL’s Rams, who had moved from Cleveland in 1946. The city now sought to expand their number, believing that being the home of a pro franchise was a sign of true big-league status as New York, Chicago, Boston, and Detroit, among others, all claimed teams in the major sports and in some cases multiple franchises in the same sport. Meanwhile, back in New York, despite the Brooklyn Dodgers having finally broken through years of frustration to win the 1955 World Series in seven games over their longtime rivals the New York Yankees, O’Malley’s efforts to get any help or support from Robert Moses or New York City Mayor Robert Wagner in his quest to build a new stadium continued to meet nothing but opposition.22 Consequently, he turned his attention west, where Los Angeles officials, although previously rebuffed, were ready to welcome him and the Dodgers.23

Yet as enticing as Los Angeles officials had made the proposition appear – and upon agreeing to come to Los Angeles, O’Malley had convinced New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham to join him in the cross-country move, with Stoneham, who had been considering a relocation for several years, planning to make San Francisco his team’s new home – O’Malley discovered that not all of Los Angeles was ready to welcome him and the Dodgers with open arms. At least not as far as a decision on a home for the Dodgers was concerned.24

Indeed, while Chavez Ravine had been one of many places mentioned as a possible site for a new stadium, in the years since Poulson’s election and the death of Elysian Park Heights, a number of ideas had been proposed on how to best use the now all-but-deserted area. One popular suggestion was to turn it into a zoo, an option that all agreed satisfied the public-use condition attached to the city’s purchase from the federal government.25 Meanwhile, all but ignoring that potential problem, some city council members were offering O’Malley Chavez Ravine as a possible stadium site. The prospect became all the more enticing after the Dodgers owner was treated to a helicopter ride over the city, where the aerial view made clear the site’s potential, its location ideally situated near the developing freeway, a factor that would make for easier stadium access, a critical consideration in a city and culture that was increasingly based in automobile travel.26 Finally, in 1957, after continued wrangling and many debates about what constituted public use, the city council approved the transfer of the Chavez Ravine land to the Dodgers. But organized opposition halted the transfer, successfully petitioning for a public referendum to determine whether the transfer could be made.

Meanwhile, on April 18, 1958, the former Brooklyn Dodgers began life as the Los Angeles Dodgers, starting a new chapter in team history by defeating their fellow West Coast transplant, the San Francisco Giants, 6-5, before 78,672 fans at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.27 But hanging over the games and the early part of their inaugural season was the impending June 3 referendum. The campaign was a no-holds-barred affair featuring many of the city’s power brokers, while the opposition was led by a group that called itself the Citizens Committee to Save Chavez Ravine for the People.28 Led by Councilman John Holland, who had a record both as an opponent of public housing as well as bringing baseball to Los Angeles, and John Arnholt Smith, the owner of the Pacific Coast League’s San Diego Padres, the opposition forces also included small homeowners and small businesses unhappy with the way the city had handled the Dodgers move.29

For the most part the opposition reflected not so much a problem with baseball as a deep resentment at the “sweetheart deal [offered] a New York businessman at the expense of the LA taxpayer.”30 They did not understand why, based on other local stadiums, O’Malley needed so much land.31 The answer, of course was for parking, but that did not address the other complaint about why the city had also promised millions of dollars in land improvement that would benefit a single private business.32 These were arguments based, for the most part, in economics and public policy. Interestingly, its name notwithstanding, the people for whom they sought to save Chavez Ravine were not the remaining residents. Too, the committee that had in fact begun collecting signatures to force a referendum to challenge the proposed stadium deal even before the Dodgers officially announced their planned move, ignored the amount that O’Malley was in fact investing and the business risks he was taking.33

In contrast, the supporters of the stadium deal included the city’s top political figures as well as a collection of Hollywood figures excited at the arrival of another form of entertainment. With the powerful Los Angeles Times squarely behind the deal, supporters mounted a high-priced advertising campaign with the slogan “Vote B for Baseball.”34 National League President Warren Giles threatened to pull the franchise if the vote went against the ballclub, and while O’Malley, who had stayed on the sidelines in the campaign’s early going, contradicted Giles’ threat, it nevertheless hung over the campaign.35

The effort culminated on June 1 with a five-hour telethon on KTTV. Besides a supportive stream of celebrities that included Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, George Burns, Jack Benny, and former baseball radio announcer and actor Ronald Reagan, the program featured Walter O’Malley sitting at a desk, taking questions from callers, offering “witty, charming answers.”36 Sports Illustrated reported that O’Malley “gave viewers warmth and dignity, and using a blackboard and pointer, he gave them O’Malley style facts.”37 The magazine added that the often “imperious” Dodgers owner “created an image of a gentle, kindly, fatherly type, who wanted nothing in this world (at this moment) but 300 acres of city property to build happiness and parking spaces for all.”38 The well-orchestrated event culminated with a live feed of the Dodgers arriving at the airport after a road trip that included a final victory over the Chicago Cubs, greeted by thousands of fans who had heeded the show’s urging that they head to the airport and greet the team.39

Two days later, on June 3, 1958, in a heavy turnout, especially for an offyear election, the city’s voters made their decision. By the slim margin of 25,000 votes out of 677,000 cast, the effort to block the transfer was defeated.40 O’Malley, sitting in the owner’s box at the Coliseum, received news updates as he watched the Dodgers lose to the Cincinnati Reds, 8-3.41 By the end of the game, his electoral victory was clear.

However, there remained one final legal hurdle. Just days before the referendum, activist lawyers had filed suits contesting the legality of the city council’s action.42 A hearing was held in Los Angeles Superior Court just weeks after the vote and on July 14 Judge Arnold Praeger ruled that neither the city council nor the voters had the right to change the public-purpose clause of the deed to the Elysian Park Heights site.43 The ruling was appealed to the California Supreme Court.44

The 1958 season had not been what the Dodgers had wanted. They finished 12 games under .500, their first sub-500 season since 1944, and in seventh place. At the same time, all of the legal hassles aside, the team had clearly been well received with their attendance being almost double their final year in Brooklyn and their best since 1947, the year Jackie Robinson broke the color line in modern major-league baseball.45 Determined to turn things around in 1959, the club got good news on January 13 when the California Supreme Court unanimously ruled in favor of the Dodgers and the city, removing the final legal obstacle to the deal and clearing the way for building Dodger Stadium.46

Unhappily for the Dodgers, one final hurdle remained before construction could begin. It was a hurdle that, notwithstanding the long and convoluted process that had preceded the Dodgers’ acquisition of the land, would for years, if not forever, leave the team stamped as the ultimate bad guys in the destruction of the Mexican American community that had long made Chavez Ravine their home.

Despite the fact that the original notices had been mailed in 1950 and despite the fact that so much of what had made the area a community had been demolished or at least rendered inoperable, of the more than 300 families that had received the notices back in 1950, by 1957 only 20 remained, still living in their homes, in a virtual “ghost town,” even after all those years.47 And with the dust having finally settled and demolition followed by construction set to begin, the final vestiges of the Chavez Ravine community had to be evicted. And so, it was done.

By this point, with all legal avenues exhausted, city officials came in and longtime residents or their descendants were simply carried out, in some cases literally kicking and screaming. On May 9, 1959, a day former residents refer to as “Black Friday,” the last residents of Chavez Ravine were evicted.48 One of the longest-tenured residents, Aurora Vargas, a war widow, who had vowed, “They’ll have to carry me out,” in fact suffered that fate, being “physically removed from her home, manhandled by four officers and rammed into a squad car” while later being briefly jailed and fined for her efforts.49 With the date of eviction having long ago been announced, there was a heavy media presence ready to document the final act in the long-running drama.50 And when the forcible evictions lit up the television screens, they reawakened the bleak memories that had been buried for almost a decade, going back to when the first letters had arrived, while also leaving a legacy that would long color the relationship between the Dodgers and the local Mexican American population.51 It was a public-relations disaster for both the Dodgers and the city and the back story and all that had preceded these televised evictions meant nothing to a populace that saw the final nails being driven into the coffin of a once-vibrant community, one whose emotional pull had only grown as the community itself diminished.

After months of clearing and preparing the grounds, an effort that included knocking down the ridge that separated the Sulfur and Cemetery ravines before filling them in, burying Palo Verde Elementary School in the process, on September 17, 1959, ground was broken for Dodger Stadium.52

Like so much history, the Battle of Chavez Ravine, as well as its impact, remains open to debate and discussion. While the optics of the final event were by any measure horrible, some have noted that by that point the defiant refusal of the remaining families to leave was little more than a series of small symbolic actions, the final shots in a long-lost battle, and did not represent the admittedly diminished community, but it did make for good effect in an era increasingly attuned to the images that television could share.53

Of course, the evictions are well remembered and were a public-relations black eye for the team. Yet there can be no denying that for the most part, the response to the arrival of the Dodgers and the new stadium was overwhelmingly positive toward both the stadium and the team that had already claimed a World Series crown since its arrival in Los Angeles.54 But to paraphrase the aphorism about people voting with their feet, in assessing the impact of the Battle of Chavez Ravine, one cannot ignore the fact that despite efforts by the team that included Spanish-language radio broadcasts almost from the beginning of their time in LA, there was initially little support from the Mexican American community.55 It was not until the arrival of the Mexican-born pitching phenom Fernando Valenzuela – and the accompanying Fernandomania in 1981 –that the Dodgers began to see the type of Mexican American attendance one could have expected given the demographics of the region.56

In the end, there can be little doubt that the Battle of Chavez Ravine offers interesting and instructional lessons about the intersection of sports, business, ethnicity, and culture in an ever-changing and sports-obsessed United States.

BILL PRUDEN has been a teacher of American history and government for almost 40 years. A SABR member for over two decades, he has contributed to SABR’s BioProject and Games Project as well as some book projects. He has also written on a range of American history subjects, an interest undoubtedly fueled by the fact that as a 7-year-old he was at Yankee Stadium to witness Roger Maris’s historic 61st home run.

 

Notes

1 Cincinnati Reds vs. Los Angeles Dodgers, box score, April 10, 1962, Baseball-Reference.com, https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN196204100.shtml.

2 See Erik Sherman, Daybreak at Chavez Ravine: Fernandomania and the Remaking of the Los Angeles Dodgers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2023) for a full discussion of the issues the Dodgers had with the Mexican American community and the way the emergence of Fernando Valenzuela in 1981 changed the dynamic.

3 Eric Nusbaum, Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers and the Lives Caught in Between (New York: Public Affairs, 2020), 210-211.

4 Thomas S. Hines, “The Battle of Chavez Ravine,” Los Angeles Times, April 20, 1997.

5 Nusbaum, 135.

6 Nusbaum, 141.

7 Zinn Education Project, “Chávez Ravine: A Los Angeles Story,” https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/chavez-ravine#:~:text=Ch%C3%A1vez%20Ravine%3A%20A%20Los%20Angeles%20Story%20tells%20the%20story%20of,in%20an%20early%20self%2Dportrait.

8 Zinn Education Project.

9 Zinn Education Project; Nusbaum, 132.

10 “The Battle of Chavez Ravine,” Historias Unknown, July 16, 2022, https://www.historiasunknown.com/blog/the-battle-of-chavez-ravine/.

11 Nusbaum, 142-143.

12 Nusbaum, 143.

13 Nusbaum, 143.

14 Nusbaum, 142; “The Battle of Chavez Ravine,” Historias Unknown.

15 Zinn Education Project.

16 Nusbaum, 179-80.

17 Edward L. Barrett Jr., The Tenney Committee: Legislative Investigation of Subversive Activities in California (Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1951).

18 Nusbaum, 179, 219-220.

19 Hines; Elina Shatkin, “The Ugly, Violent Clearing of Chavez Ravine Before It Was Home to the Dodgers,” LA History, October 17, 2018; https://laist.com/news/la-history/dodger-stadium-chavez-ravine-battle.

20 Shatkin.

21 Nusbaum, 201-204, 208.

22 Paul Hirsch, “Walter O’Malley Was Right,” The National Pastime (Phoenix: SABR, 2011).

23 Nusbaum, 208-211.

24 Nusbaum, 221-222.

25 Nusbaum, 204.

26 Nusbaum, 212-213.

27 San Francisco Giants vs. Los Angeles Dodgers, box score, April18, 1958, Baseball-Reference.com, https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN195804180.shtml.

28 Nusbaum, 222.

29 Nusbaum, 222.

30 Nusbaum, 223.

31 Nusbaum, 223.

32 Nusbaum, 223.

33 Nusbaum, 223.

34 Nusbaum, 225.

35 Nusbaum, 226.

36 Nusbaum, 226.

37 Nusbaum, 226.

38 Nusbaum, 226-227.

39 Nusbaum, 227.

40 Nusbaum, 227.

41 Nusbaum, 227.

42 Nusbaum, 227.

43 Jerald Podair, “How the California Supreme Court Saved Dodger Stadium and Helped Create Modern Los Angeles,” California Supreme Court Historical Society Newsletter, Fall/Winter 2018: 3.

44 Nusbaum, 228.

45 Nusbaum, 240.

46 Nusbaum 240; Podair, 5.

47 Shatkin.

48 Taeler Kallmerten, “Dodger Stadium’s Decade Long Battle Over Chavez Ravine,” SustaintheMag, https://www.sustainthemag.com/culture/dodger-stadiums-decade-long-battle-over-chavez-ravine.

49 “Chavez Ravine: Displaced Communities under Dodger Stadium,” ReflectSpace; https://www.reflectspace.org/post/chavez-ravine-displaced-communities-under-dodger-stadium; “This Day in Los Angeles History: April 10, 1962, California Historical Society, April 10, 2023; https://californiahistoricalsociety.org/blog/this-day-in-los-angeles-history-april-10-1962-first-game-at-dodger-stadium/.

50 Nusbaum 258.

51 Nusbaum, 258-260; Janice Llamoca, “The Battle Over Chavez Ravine,” latinousa.org, January 22, 2019; https://www.latinousa.org/2017/11/03/battle-chavez-ravine/.

52 Shatkin.

53 Nusbaum, 256-259.

54 Sherman, 19.

55 Sherman, 19.

56 As noted above, Erik Sherman offers a comprehensive treatment of the way Fernandomania turned the tide in the early 1980s and added a whole new dimension to the Dodgers’ active fan base.