1950's Sports | The Chavez Ravine Agreement

Agreement

By: City of Los Angeles and Los Angeles Dodgers

Date: June 3, 1959

Source: The Chavez Ravine Agreement. Reprinted in Sullivan, Neil. Dodgers Move West. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987, 220–227.

Introduction

In the period after World War II (1939–1945), Major League baseball attendance jumped to unprecedented levels. While only a few teams ever drew over a million fans before the war, fan interest in baseball exploded after soldiers came home; and teams consistently drew near or over one million fans in the late 1940s. However, in the early 1950s, the attendance at Major League games started to drop. Complicating matters was that a number of cities had two baseball teams, one in each league. Cities with two teams included Chicago, Boston, St. Louis, Philadelphia, and New York—home to three teams, the Dodgers, Giants and the Yankees. In Boston, St....