Magic
Johnson and Co. made a really good purchase recently. Yes, the Dodgers cost a lot of money, but
what he’s really investing in is the greater Los Angeles area. This is the area that has throughout the
years made giants out of runaways. What
I mean by that is it has taken into its arms those entities which have come
from the east seeking greener pastures.
And it doesn’t get much greener than Los Angeles, it turns out.
L.A. is
the nickname for a city whose original full name[i] was
twenty-five times bigger than that. But
it’s all marketing. And a better market
is what early motion picture producers saw when they started bolting for the
area in the early 20th century.
You see, there was this guy named Edison who invented the motion picture
camera, and he wanted everyone to pay him royalties when they used it for
profit. And if he couldn’t do it the
legal way, he had some “helpers” who would make sure it got done. So these pioneering filmmakers went as far
away from Edison and his goons as they could get while still getting noticed in
the US of A. But the added benefit of
being in California was that the state was pretty lenient on patent law and
generally ignored Edison’s suits.
But the Dodgers might be the most
assimilated entity that has come out to California, especially considering
their roots. They were so despised when
they left Brooklyn that there’s a story told in the borough about three
business men who went to lunch to decide who the three worst men in the world
were. They all wrote three names down on
their napkins, and when they went to look at each others, they had all written
the same thing: Hitler, Stalin, Walter
O’Malley. It didn’t seem to bother
Los Angeles much. With a strong core of
players who had all played in Brooklyn, they went on to win a World Series in
their second year out there. The team
was so successful, they lured an expansion franchise to the area in three years
and the west coast soon became a bastion of Major League Baseball.
I’d be
remiss as a Minneapolitan if I didn’t mention the second most successful pro basketball
franchise of all time. My biggest
problem with their franchise is not the rampant success they’ve had, in
contrast to the terrible track record of the team the NBA later saddled us with,
but I feel as though their insistence on keeping the name ‘Lakers’ is
essentially a slap in the face. There
are absolutely no lakes in the greater Los Angeles area, nor is it a name that
you could argue applies to just about any city in America, or even just to the
West Coast, as ‘Raiders’ and ‘Clippers’ might.
And while the Dodgers only moved out West a couple years prior to the
city stealing what-would-have-been-my team, it feels like Dodger Blue has made the
nickname the city’s own, due to both the nickname’s ambiguosity, and the
immediate success they found out there.
Yes, the fans in Brooklyn were very
upset, possibly even about L.A.’s refusal to change the team name or colors,
but the fans in SoCal as a whole embraced the team. Ironically, L.A. might have been able to
stake a claim on the reference to street-car Dodgers were it not for the
burgeoning automotive conglomerate which elbowed out the trolley system to make
it the car traffic hell-hole it’s now known as. So it’s almost justifiable to keep the name in
that sense. Maybe you even argue that
the name refers to all the automotive traffic fans of the team or just denizens
of the area are required to Dodge on a daily basis. Heading out west with the rival Giants
probably kept a little of the old Big Apple spirit alive, and they managed to
meet the Yankees often enough in the Series to keep the fans cognizant of who
else they should hate.[ii]
I went on the Lakers’ internet site
the other day and was dismayed to discover that they do list all the old
Minneapolis incarnation’s NBA championships as their own. And it kind of makes sense, as that team was
also called the Lakers. But what I never
understood was how the Twins would never list the Washington Senators’ meager
championship resume as their own. It’s true that they have a different
nickname, but they were the same franchise, and nobody knows[iii] what
colors they wore anyway because everything was in black-and-white. It’s not like the District is going to claim
them, because nobody missed the team when they were gone anyway, partly due to
the expansion team they received the same year the Twin Cities got their
franchise. I understand that the team
didn’t want to be like that city that stole their first major franchise, and
while I’m always in favor of the area-specific name, calling them the Minnesota
Senators makes a lot more sense than does L.A. Lakers.
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