Michael D’Antonio is a Red Sox fan and a baseball enthusiast. That much becomes clear when talking to him. He has an innate appreciation for the history of the game and the way it has shaped the American landscape.
D’Antonio will be at UCLA this weekend for the Festival of Books promoting and signing copies of his new book “Forever Blue.”
The book follows the sagas of longtime Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley and the team’s ground-breaking move west in the late 1950s. According to D’Antonio, it is a story that many are familiar with but that few truly understand.
“It tells a story of baseball growth west of the Mississippi River,” D’Antonio said. “A lot of people don’t really know that it wasn’t a national game until Walter O’Malley brought baseball to Los Angeles. They were trying to get a team any way they could.”
“Any way they could” didn’t work for several years. In fact, D’Antonio says that L.A. officials had begun attempts to secure a team before World War II broke out but scrapped the plans in favor of the more important war effort. Following the war, the West Coast’s pining for a baseball team began again.
D’Antonio spoke of the book as a cultural and historical study rather than merely as a book about a sports team.
“There’s a lot of untold history about the sport and about the development of Los Angeles.” D’Antonio said. “It’s fascinating to see how the Dodgers helped to knit Los Angeles together. It has a major league franchise that won a World Series and helped unite Los Angeles in a way that has never been united before.”
D’Antonio said that in the process of his research he made more than a few trips to Los Angeles, including some stops in Westwood.
“I found the records of the mayor of Los Angeles at the UCLA libraries, so I did some work there as well. I talked to Professor Avila who helped me as well,” he said.
Professor Eric Avila is a professor of history and Chicano studies.
D’Antonio had the opportunity through writing the book to explore the character of one of UCLA’s most famous alumni, Jackie Robinson.
While at UCLA, Robinson was a four-sport letterman in football, baseball, basketball, and track and field.
He went on to break Major League Baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Signed under Branch Rickey, Robinson often had a cool and tense relationship with O’Malley, who took over for Rickey in 1950 as owner of the team.
“Jackie Robinson was a very fiery personality. He was very much attached to Branch Rickey, who paved the way for Robinson to come into baseball,” D’Antonio said. “O’Malley and Robinson struggled to have a working relationship, in part because Jackie was a very proud person who had trouble switching to the O’Malley management. Later on, the two worked to patch up their relationship, and Robinson had come to peace with the family and team.”
D’Antonio believes the book offers something for baseball fans, sports fans and L.A. residents who would like to learn a little more about the West Coast’s most populated city. He had the chance to talk to several historic figures of the American pastime, including Tommy Lasorda, Duke Snider and Vin Scully, who has broadcast games for the Dodgers since they were in Brooklyn, N.Y.
“There is a lot for a New Yorker to learn about the development of Los Angeles,” D’Antonio, who is from Long Island, N.Y., said jokingly. “There is a culture of hope and optimism and second chances. It’s a cliche, but it’s a cliche because it’s true. O’Malley left behind a lot of frustration and a lot of difficulties and found in California a welcoming place where he made his dream come true.”
D’Antonio said there remain some fans back in Brooklyn who are resentful of the team’s controversial move west following the 1957 season. D’Antonio said one interviewee, a “titan of Wall Street,” said he wouldn’t even read the book. However, D’Antonio argued against the popular misconception that Los Angeles stole the Dodgers from New York.
“New York let the Dodgers go. L.A. didn’t steal the Dodgers,” D’Antonio said. “When you look back and see what New York could have had, it would have been terrific.
The move was a historic moment for Los Angeles and for Major League Baseball, which has since flourished up and down the West Coast.
“The Dodgers, Red Sox, Yankees and Cubs constitute the great franchises. Getting the Dodgers was an amazing and wonderful turn of luck for the City of Los Angeles. Them winning the World Series while playing at the Coliseum was something you couldn’t make up. It was a wonderful thing for the American West to have the pleasure of the national pastime.”