Mike Vaccaro

Mike Vaccaro

Sports

This alternate Mets reality could have changed everything

LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers haven’t been a perfect franchise through the decades. There were the Frank McCourt years, when the Dodgers’ then-owner tried to turn Dodger Stadium into a five-story ATM. There has been a 31-year championship drought, which is hard to fathom given the team’s level of resources and level of success.

But — citing one example — you don’t get a lot of Dodgers stories that involve star outfielders and wild boars.

It does make you wonder what would have happened if New York City and Walter O’Malley could have come to an agreement sometime in around 1955 or so, one that would satisfy both parties and keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn. The city — spurred by Robert Moses — pushed the Corona site that ultimately became Shea Stadium, and among the problems O’Malley (rightly) pointed out was that if the Dodgers played in Queens, they’d no longer be the “Brooklyn Dodgers.”

O’Malley pushed the site near Atlantic Avenue that ultimately became Barclays Center, and he thought he might want to slap a dome on top of it, which would have put him almost a decade ahead of the Houston folks (not to mention 65 years — and counting — ahead of anyone who’s ever built a ballpark in New York City).

Of course, it’s entirely possible O’Malley would’ve moved west anyway, knowing the gold mine that awaited him out there. But here’s one of the great sporting what-ifs of all time:

What if the Dodgers had stayed in Brooklyn?

One Mets fan shows his displeasure for ex-manager Mickey Callaway.Charles Wenzelberg/New York Post

This is not to disrespect fans of the New York Giants, who also had their hearts ripped out by the shift west following the 1957 season. But the Dodgers had clearly and firmly established themselves as New York’s dominant National League team by then. In 1957, with stories abounding in the newspapers every day that they were leaving, the Dodgers drew more than 1 million fans, which was still the prime benchmark for baseball prosperity.

Giants fans had turned the Polo Grounds into a ghost yard, drawing fewer than 665,000 their last two years despite sending Willie Mays out to center field every day. While O’Malley wanted the Giants as a travel partner, what he wanted most of all was the best deal for the Dodgers; if the city had given him his dome, he really might have stayed.

What then?

Well, in the immediate, the Giants might’ve been given a few extra years to make New York work but baseball was ready to open new markets by then. When expansion arrived in 1962, the Giants could have been given the go-ahead to move to San Francisco (or Los Angeles, if they preferred) while the NL added a team in Houston and another in whichever California city the Giants left open).

So it’s fair to speculate that most Mets fans — if not every one of them — would have been Dodgers fans. Now, that means they would’ve been spared the indignity of 1962, but also would’ve missed out on the glory of 1969. Would that have been neutralized by the fact the still-Brooklyn Dodgers (if things panned out as they did) added titles in 1959, ’63 and ’65, that they wound up winning five titles in all (to the Mets two) since 1958, that such stars as Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale would’ve been lifelong Brooklyn pitchers?

And it also begs this question:

How different would it be in New York if the Mets and their various miracles and myriad oddities had never come to exist? A Brooklyn Dodgers team (no doubt playing these days in a gleaming, and domed, new palace right next to Barclays) whose history is exactly the same as the L.A. version — meaning, among other things, two more Subway Series losses (1977 and ’78) and two more Subway Series wins (1963, ’81)?

I’m not sure I’ve ever met a star-crossed Dodgers fan.

Have you?

Vac’s Whacks

I think you’ve got to hand it to Jacoby Ellsbury. He’s been on the injured list even longer than Yoenis Cespedes yet apparently managed to avoid being attacked by an angry pig.


As a guy who married into LSU, I’m happy the Tigers defeated Oklahoma. As a guy who remembers that OU AD Joe Castiglione personally and absolutely hosed St. Bonaventure out of a bid for the 2016 NCAA Tournament, I was hoping they’d lose by 100. (Nope. There is no statute of limitations on bitterness like that. Sorry.)


Sometimes (OK, more than sometimes) movie trailers are the very worst at overpromising and under-delivering. I am taking it on faith that will not be the case with “1917.”


When you talk to people for a living, there will always be a select few who are so engaged and smart and on-point that you wish you could interview them every day. David Stern was that subject for me. Godspeed to a brilliant man.

Whack Back at Vac

Cameron O’Neill: Thanks for your tribute to Don Larsen. It’s good to know that he understood just how meaningful that game was going to be, not only for himself but for fans like me who bask in those great memories.
Vac: I honestly think most athletes realize that. Larsen just had 63 years to savor it, and savor it he did.


Jared Gurfein: In your look ahead to the 2020s you forgot to mention the New York Islanders! C’mon — best hope for a championship really soon in this new decade is my hometown Isles (I’m from L.I. but live in Manhattan).
Vac: That was such a horrible whiff on my part I’m surprised I didn’t get fined by Lou Lamoriello.


@2170: I like the idea of a Mets fan racing a wild boar during the seventh-inning stretch of games at Citi Field.
@MikeVacc: My idea was to steal from the Arkansas Razorbacks and call the hogs (“Whooooo! Pig! Sooie!!”) every seventh inning. But this is better.


Robert Katz: As a guy who grew up watching Alan King, Jack Carter, Jack E. Leonard and Myron Cohen, I prefer my comedians to be funny. Someone should tell Dave Gettleman the Catskills are mostly vacation homes nowadays and Grossinger’s is closed. Put together a team that can do better than 4-12 and don’t try to be Larry David.
Vac: I’d say that covers it all, no?