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December 6, 2011
Lost in America's ghost franchises
The pending sales of the Dodgers and the Jaguars, and the dislocation damage done
ESPN.com
by Jeff MacGregor
This thoughtful essay from ESPN's This Sporting Life touches just briefly on the Nets, but it's well worth reading in its entirety.
I visited a grave the other day. It's where the Brooklyn Dodgers are buried.
This is out in Crown Heights, at the intersections of Sullivan Place and Bedford Avenue, McKeever Place and Montgomery Street. It's also the intersection of "The Boys of Summer" and "The Death and Life of Great American Cities." Of Roger Kahn and Jane Jacobs. Of the 19th and 20th centuries. Of memory and money and history and fantasy.
This is where Ebbets Field was.
With the sale of the Los Angeles Dodgers now upon us -- and that of an unloved football franchise down in Jacksonville, Fla. -- we note this week the staying power of impermanence, the fickle nature of devotion, the business of business, and the unbridgeable distance between "change" and "progress."
...Does ownership of a pro sports franchise constitute a public trust? Or is it just another hustle? Or does that calculus change according to our cynicism and the needs and wants of the leagues and the owners?
I'm not sure it matters. It didn't seem to matter to Walter O'Malley the year I was born. He took the Dodgers west to find his fortune and broke Brooklyn's heart. A year from now, the borough takes the Nets from New Jersey, and their new home will be Atlantic Yards (see this or this) -- just across the park from the fossil footprint of Ebbets Field.
Posted by eric at December 6, 2011 12:43 PM