If You’re Latinx, Loving the Dodgers Is Complicated

The Team’s Ballpark Has a Dark History. But There’s No Other Place I Feel More Like an Angeleno and Chicana

As a kid growing up in Echo Park in the 1970s, I would walk to Dodger Stadium with my brother or kids in the neighborhood. For three dollars, we could purchase an upper deck seat and for an additional three dollars, we could get a Coke and hot dog. We would arrive before the game and have the players sign our balls, which I still have today. We often ran into food service workers we knew: Some had been employed at my grandmother’s restaurant, the Nayarit, which she opened on …

What the Dodgers and Giants’ 1958 Move West Meant for America

When the Two Teams Left for California, They Shifted the Country’s Focus From New York and Helped Fragment the Nation’s Culture

Few phrases are as evocative of a mythical, imagined urban past as “Brooklyn Dodgers.”

Those two words, particularly in the borough that is now a punch line for hipster jokes, …

Democracy Strikes out at Dodger Stadium

The L.A. Ballpark Was a Diverse and Inclusive Public Space. Then Prices Took a Bad Hop.

When Los Angeles Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley opened Dodger Stadium on April 10, 1962, his ticket price structure was simple, straightforward, and inexpensive: $3.50 for box seats, $2.50 for reserved …

More Californians Should Retire Like Vin Scully

We’d All Be Better Off If Older Workers Said Long, Extended Goodbyes

If only more Californians could retire like Vin.

Vin Scully, that is. The Hall of Fame announcer for the Los Angeles Dodgers will call his last game this Sunday, October 2, …

L.A.’s Forgotten Avenue of the Athletes

Thirty-Two Grimy Bronze Plaques Are All That Remain of a Grand Vision to Create a Walk of Fame for Sports

Walking along Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles the other day I stumbled across an old acquaintance. On a small bronze plaque embedded into the sidewalk was the name Jimmy …

Stay Out of California, Chicago!

When It Comes to Respecting Golden State Institutions, the Windy City Keeps Blowing It

Dear Chicago,

Would you kindly remove your thick, stubby hands from my beautiful state?

C’mon—don’t try to look all Midwestern and innocent. You know exactly what I’m talking about. For years Chicago …