60 years. How long has that been?
From the 1957 Brooklyn Dodgers, the following 9 players are still alive: Don Newcombe, Carl Erskine, Roger Craig, Ed Roebuck, Jim Gentile, Randy Jackson (not the Jackson 5 singer or the American Idol host), Fred Kipp, and Brooklyn natives Sandy Koufax and Joe Pignatano. Of these, Craig and Koufax would have significant roles on the 1st L.A. Pennant of 1959; but by their 1963 title, only Koufax would still be there.
From that year's New York Giants, 11: Willie Mays, Red Schoendienst (not usually thought of as a Giant, but he was there in '57), Johnny Antonelli, Mike McCormick, Ozzie Virgil Sr., Eddie Bressoud, Foster Castleman, Ray Crone, Al Worthington, Pete Burnside and Joe Margoneri.
From the '57 Yankees, 8: Whitey Ford, Don Larsen, Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek, Bobby Shantz, Art Ditmar, Ralph Terry and Bobby Del Greco.
From the football version of the New York Giants, the 6 survivors of the 1957 team are: Sam Huff, Dick "Little Mo" Modzelewski, Harland Svare, John Martinkovic, Bob Clatterbuck and 98-year-old former placekicker Ben Agajanian -- who, along with the devastating linebacker Hardy Brown, was 1 of only 2 men to play in the All-America Football Conference, the National Football League and the American Football League.
From the 1957-58 New York Knicks, 5: Manhattan native and Iona graduate Richie Guerin, Willie Naulls, Mel Hutchins, Guy Sparrow (no relation to later Knick and Paterson, New Jersey native Rory Sparrow), and Brooklyn native Brendan McCann.
From the 1957-58 New York Rangers, 9: Harry Howell, Dean Prentice, Gerry Foley, Jean-Guy Gendron, Andy Hebenton, Ivan Irwin, Danny Lewicki, Larry Popein, and Red Sullivan.
There were, as yet, no New York Jets, or Islanders, or New Jersey Devils, or Nets in any part of the Tri-State Area. Indeed, from the original 1982-83 Devils, Brent Ashton, Aaron Broten, Murray Brumwell, Dave Cameron, Joe Cirella, Larry Floyd, Paul Gagne, Jeff Larmer, Jan Ludvig, Shawn MacKenzie, Merlin Malinowski, Glenn Merkosky, Mike Moher, Randy Pierce, Joel Quenneville, Steve Tambellini and Pat Verbeek hadn't even been born yet.
There was a Major League Baseball team in Kansas City, but it wasn't the Royals, it was the Athletics. Prior to that, there were no major league teams west of St. Louis -- the Dodgers and Giants were about to change that. There were still none south of St. Louis, Cincinnati and Washington. There was a baseball team in Washington, but it was in the American League and it wasn't the Nationals, it was the Senators. There was a team in Milwaukee, and it was in the National League, but it wasn't the Brewers, it was the Braves.
Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, San Diego, Seattle, Dallas, Houston, Denver, Phoenix, Seattle, Toronto, Atlanta, Miami and Tampa were all still minor-league cities. So was Montreal, for whom big-league ball has since come and gone.
Every Major League Baseball park had lights, except Wrigley Field in Chicago. But none of them had artificial turf, or a roof, retractable or otherwise. There was still an MLB team that had never played a black player, the Boston Red Sox.
Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago are the only 2 ballparks in use in 1957 that are still in use in 2017 -- or were in 2000, for that matter. The Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, about to become the temporary home of the Dodgers while Dodger Stadium was built, was in used then, and Lambeau Field in Green Bay literally opened on the day of the last Giants game at the Polo Grounds. (One of the world's most famous soccer stadiums, the Camp Nou in Barcelona, opened the day of the Dodgers' last home game.) No NBA or NHL arena in use then is still used by the team that called it home in 1957-58, although a few are still standing.
And while the Cubs were already advertising their home ground as "Beautiful Wrigley Field," hardly anybody thought of Fenway as wonderful -- mainly because every team, except for Baltimore and Milwaukee, was playing in a stadium built before World War II. Having a ballpark that opened in 1913, as Ebbets Field had, was no big deal at that time: The Red Sox, Giants, Phillies, Senators, Tigers, Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates were all then playing in ballparks built that year or earlier.
Ty Cobb, Tris Speaker, Nap Lajoie, and, of the 1890s Baltimore Orioles, William Jones "Boileryard" Clarke were still alive. So was at least 1 player from every team that had ever won the World Series, except for the 1905 New York Giants, whose last survivor, Bill Dahlen, had died in 1950. Hugh Duffy, Cy Young, Connie Mack and Honus Wagner had all been dead for less than 4 years.
The defining baseball stars of my childhood? Carl Yastrzemski had just arrived at the University of Notre Dame. Pete Rose and Willie Stargell were in high school. Tom Seaver, Rod Carew and Steve Carlton were in junior high. Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Johnny Bench, Nolan Ryan, Carlton Fisk and Mike Schmidt were in grade school. George Brett was in kindergarten.
Terry Collins, now manager of the Mets, was 8 years old. None of the other current head coaches and managers of the New York Tri-State Area teams had yet been born: Alain Vigneault of the Rangers was born in 1961, Jeff Hornacek of the Knicks and Todd Bowles of the Jets in 1963, Joe Girardi of the Yankees in 1964, Kenny Atkinson of the Nets in 1967, Doug Weight of the Islanders in 1971, John Hynes of the Devils in 1975, and Ben McAdoo of the Giants in 1977.
There was an NFL team in Baltimore, but it wasn't the Ravens. It was the Colts, and they had yet to win a title. Few people outside Maryland had yet heard of their 2nd-year quarterback, Johnny Unitas. The NFL had already expanded to the West Coast, but not yet to the South, including Texas. Iconic teams such as the Dallas Cowboys, Oakland Raiders, Miami Dolphins, Denver Broncos and New England Patriots did not yet exist. There were 2 teams in Chicago -- the Cardinals not yet having moved to St. Louis, let alone Arizona -- and, as I pointed out earlier, 1 in New York, the Giants.
The defending champions of the NFL were the Giants. The team that would win the NFL Championship in 1957 was the Detroit Lions -- who, since then, not only haven't won another title, but only once in those 60 years have they even gotten to the round of 4 (losing the 1991 NFC Championship Game 51-10 to the Washington Redskins).
In the NBA, the Boston Celtics had just won their 1st Championship. In the NHL, it was the Montreal Canadiens, and their star Maurice Richard was mere days away from becoming the 1st NHL player with 500 goals -- today, there are 45 players who have done that, 29 of them having exceeded the Rocket's former record of 544.
Wilt Chamberlain was starting his junior year at the University of Kansas, having gotten them to the National Championship game the previous spring, losing in triple overtime to North Carolina. Joe Namath had just started high school. Walt Frazier was in junior high school. Bobby Orr was in grade school. So was Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and he was still Lew Alcindor. Lawrence Taylor, Magic Johnson, Larry Bird, Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Mario Lemieux, Patrick Roy, Steve Yzerman, Scott Stevens and Martin Brodeur weren't born yet.
The Heavyweight Champion of the World was Floyd Patterson. Two months earlier, he had defended his title at the Polo Grounds, knocking out Tommy Jackson. Muhammad Ali was 14 -- and he was still Cassius Clay. Mike Tyson, like Patterson a Brooklynite trained by Cus D'Amato, wasn't born yet.
The Olympic Games had never yet been broadcast on American television. They have since been held in America 5 times, Canada and Japan 3 times; twice each in Italy, Austria and France; and once each in Mexico, Germany, Russia, Bosnia, Korea, Spain, Norway, Australia, Greece, China and Britain.
Real Madrid of Spain had recently won the European Cup, beating Fiorentina of Florence, Italy, 2-0. The World Cup has since been held in Mexico and Germany twice, and once each in America, England, Sweden, Chile, Argentina, Spain, Italy, France, Japan, Korea and South Africa.
Manchester United, led by manager Matt Busby's "Busby Babes," won the Football League title, but were denied "The Double" in the FA Cup Final, when Birmingham-based Aston Villa beat them 2-1 when United goalkeeper Ray Wood was injured, and replaced by centreback Jackie Blanchflower, brother of Tottenham captain Danny. There were no substitutions allowed in those days, so United played from the 6th minute on with 10 men, until Wood, broken cheekbone and all, returned to the goal for the last 7 minutes (which was allowed under the rules of the time).
Villa haven't won the Cup since, and have only been to 1 Final (losing to Arsenal in 2015). United would make it to the next season's Final, but only after the greatest tragedy any British soccer team has ever suffered to its organization. (Not to be confused with a disaster in the stands.)
There were only 48 States: Alaska and Hawaii were both within 2 years of Statehood. There were then 22 Amendments to the Constitution of the United States. The Civil Rights Act of 1957 had just been passed, but segregation and enforced prayer in public schools were still legal. There was no Voting Rights Act, no Medicare, no Medicaid, no Fair Housing Act, no Environmental Protection Agency, no Title IX, and no legalized abortion. Gay rights? Seriously? Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, Tab Hunter and Richard Chamberlain were jammed into the closet.
Two of the current Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court -- so often derided as "Nine Old Men" -- weren't born yet Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch. The idea of a woman, or a black person, or a Hispanic person, being on the Court was ridiculous. Now, there's been 4, 2 and 1 of them, respectively -- 3, 1 and 1 currently.
The President of the United States was Dwight D. Eisenhower, and on the night of the last game at Ebbets Field, "Ike" cut short a vacation in Newport, Rhode Island (then considered a rich man's resort) to come back to Washington and announce on TV and radio that he had ordered the 101st Airborne to Little Rock, Arkansas, and federalized the Arkansas National Guard, to integrate that city's Central High School, to enforce the federal law that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. It was Ike's finest hour -- since 1945, anyway.
Richard Nixon was Ike's Vice President. Herbert Hoover, Harry Truman and Eleanor Roosevelt were still alive. Grace Coolidge had died a few weeks earlier. John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were in the U.S. Senate, and Gerald Ford was in the U.S. House of Representatives. Jimmy Carter was running a peanut farm, George H.W. Bush an oil company, and the one and only film that co-starred Ronald Reagan and his wife, then still billed as Nancy Davis, had recently premiered: Hellcats of the Navy. Neither Carter, nor Reagan, nor Bush had ever yet run for office.
Bush's son was 11. So was Bill Clinton. So was Donald Trump, and probably called Ike's sending of the 101st Airborne to integrate the school "a failure of leadership,""an insult to our troops," and "sad." Barack Obama wasn't born yet.
The Governor of the State of New York was Averell Harriman. The Governor of New Jersey was Robert Meyner, and was about to be re-elected, defeating publishing baron Malcolm Forbes (father of later Presidential candidate Malcolm S. Forbes Jr., a.k.a. Steve Forbes). The Mayor of the City of New York was Robert F. Wagner Jr., who somehow got re-elected a few weeks later, despite losing 2 Major League Baseball teams. That's what happens when the Democrats are run by Tammany Hall, and the Republicans are so weak, they nominate a guy you've never heard of, Robert Christenberry, whose claim to fame was that he was the manager (not the owner) of the Hotel Astor.
Under the law of the time, the man next in line to be Mayor was the President of the City Council. His name was Abe Stark, and he rose to prominence by having a sign advertising his clothing store at the base of the Ebbets Field scoreboard: "HIT SIGN WIN SUIT." Thanks to the fielding of the aforementioned Carl Furillo, and before that of Dixie Walker, Stark only had to award one free suit to an opposing player: Mel Ott of the Giants. Someone suggested that, due to Furillo having saved Stark from having to give out free suits, he should give Furillo one. He did.
Crime in New York had yet to get out of control, as it did from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s, before Bill Clinton's Crime Bill and Rudolph Giuliani's Mayoralty combined to bring it to heel. The Brooklyn Navy Yard was decommissioned in 1966, and that killed New York as an industrial center. That, and the loss of the middle and lower middle class to Long Island and New Jersey thanks to World War II veterans getting breaks on housing, are what ruined "the old Brooklyn." The loss of the Dodgers was symbolic of this, but, in a practical sense, had nothing to do with it.
There was some dispute as to whether, 92 years after the surrender at Appomattox Court House, there were still any surviving veterans of the American Civil War. Albert Woolson, the last Union veteran, had died in 1956. But so many Confederate records were lost, no one was sure how many of there veterans were left. John B. Salling and Walter W. Williams claimed to be surviving veterans, and when Williams died on December 19, 1959, 9 months after Salling, he was hailed as the last Civil War veteran. Who the last Confederate veteran was many never be known for sure.
There were surviving veterans of America's Indian Wars, the Anglo-Egyptian War of 1882, the Anglo-Afghan War of 1878-80, and the Mahdist War of 1882-99. Laura Bullion, a member of Butch Cassidy's Wild Bunch, was still alive. So was John Henry Turpin, the last survivor of the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898. So was Raymond Kaighn, who had played in the 1st basketball game in 1891.
Lester Pearson, the Secretary of State of Canada, was just awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, for his efforts to end the previous year's Suez Canal crisis. In 1963, he would become his country's Prime Minister. The current Prime Minister was John Diefenbaker; of Britain, Harold Macmillan. Queen Elizabeth II was the monarch of both nations. That hasn't changed, but she was only 31 years old at the time.
The Pope was Pius XII. The current Pope, Francis, was 21-year-old college student Jorge Mario Bergoglio, and survived a life-threatening pneumonia. There have since been 12 Presidents of the United States, 12 Prime Ministers of Britain and 7 Popes.
Major novels of 1957 included Letter from Peking by Pearl S. Buck, The Wapshot Chronicle by John Cheever, The Guns of Navarone by Alistair MacLean, The Sandcastle by Iris Murdoch, Dr. Seuss' classics The Cat in the Hat and How the Grinch Stole Christmas, Ian Fleming's James Bond story From Russia with Love, and On the Road by Jack Kerouac, the defining novel of The Beat Generation. It had been published on September 5, 1957, just 19 days before the Ebbets Field finale.
Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg, Kerouac's close friend and fellow Beat, had gone on trial for obscenity. I can see how it would be considered obscene. But, by far, the most obscene book of 1957 was Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand. Who was an atheist, in case you didn't know. In fact, she despised Christianity, because of Jesus' message of helping the poor and the sick. Didn't stop her from accepting Social Security when she got old, though. "Who is John Galt"? An economic terrorist.
Only the preceding year had C.S. Lewis finished his Chronicles of Narnia series, and J.R.R. Tolkein his Lord of the Rings series. Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and John Steinbeck were still alive and writing novels. J.D. Salinger hadn't yet dropped out of the public eye, while Thomas Pynchon hadn't yet entered it or dropped out of it.
The fiction careers of Norman Mailer, James Baldwin, Kurt Vonnegut and Truman Capote were well underway. Joseph Heller had seen chapters of Catch-22 serialized, but the entire novel wouldn't be published until 1961. John Updike and Ken Kesey had not yet been published. Maya Angelou had just entered pop culture -- as a singer, having recorded her 1st album, a collection of calypso songs.
Anne Rice was in high school. Stephen King and Tom Clancy were 10 years old. George R.R. Martin was 9. John Grisham was 2. J.K. Rowling wasn't born yet.
No one had yet heard of Holly Golightly, Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, Atticus Finch, John Yossarian, Jean Brodie, Alex Portnoy, John Rambo, Spenser: For Hire, George Smiley, Rocky Balboa, T.S. Garp, Arthur Dent, Jason Bourne, Hannibal Lecter, Celie Harris, Kinsey Millhone, Jack Ryan, Forrest Gump, John McClane, Alex Cross, Bridget Jones, Robert Langdon, Bella Swan, Lisbeth Salander or Katniss Everdeen.
The superhero genre had gotten a boost, with a new version of speedster The Flash. But Stan Lee had yet to begin his Marvel Comics revolution, so, as yet, there was no Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, X-Men or Daredevil.
1957 was a big year for movies. It began with the death of Humphrey Bogart and ended with that of French film pioneer Charles Pathé. But it also featured the births of Mario Van Peebles, John Turturro, Spike Lee, Paul Reiser, Daniel Day-Lewis, Judge Reinhold, Frances McDormand, Kelly McGillis, Cameron Crowe, Melanie Griffith, Denis Leary, Stephen Fry, Daniel Stern, Rachel Ward, Ethan Coen, Dolph Lundrgen, Michael Clarke Duncan, and Steve Buscemi.
Gregory Peck and Lauren Bacall starred in Designing Woman, her 1st film after losing Bogie, which had nothing to do with the later TV series of a similar title. Alec Guinness and William Holden starred in The Bridge on the River Kwai, with its whistled "Colonel Bogey March" -- "DA dum... da da da DA DA DA, da da... "; Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in An Affair to Remember; Jerry Lewis in his 1st film without Dean Martin, The Delicate Delinquent; Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Desk Set; Rock Hudson in a film version of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms; Dorothy McGuire and Fess Parker in Old Yeller; Doris Day and John Raitt (Bonnie's father, who'd been in the original Broadway version) in The Pajama Game; Grant, Frank Sinatra, and, in her big break as far as the U.S. was concerned, Sophia Loren in The Pride and the Passion; and Andy Griffith getting his big break in A Face in the Crowd, in which he plays the kind of character that Andy Taylor would have told Opie to stay away from -- and Ben Matlock never would have defended.
Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, a stylized version of the 1881 Arizona shootout, with no pretense to accuracy, featured Burt Lancaster as Wyatt Earp, Kirk Douglas as Doc Holliday, DeForest Kelley as Morgan Earp, Jack Elam as Tom McLowery, and a young Dennis Hopper as Billy Clanton. Kelley had previously been part of a TV staging of the shootout -- and would again, as part of an unwanted simulation on Star Trek. In both cases, on the Clanton side.
Can you imagine Tony Randall and Jayne Mansfield together? In 1957, they were, in Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? Baseball star Jimmy Piersall's book Fear Strikes Out was adapted into a film that launched Anthony Perkins to stardom -- but playing someone mentally disturbed may have typecast him.
James Cagney played Lon Chaney Sr. in The Man of a Thousand Faces. Jimmy Stewart played Charles Lindbergh in The Spirit of St. Louis. Joanne Woodward, soon to be Mrs. Paul Newman, was in The Three Faces of Eve, although the subject of the book and film, Chris Sizemore, relapsed and would have 23 different personalities until she was finally cured. Akira Kurosawa transplanted Shakespeare's Macbeth to Japan, calling it Throne of Blood, with Japan's most popular postwar actor, Toshiro Mifune, in the role of the Scottish warlord-turned-royal usurper.
Sinatra starred in The Joker Is Wild, as Joe E. Lewis, a singer whose voice is ruined when a Mob enforcer punches him in the throat, but finds a second career as a comedian. Elvis Presley starred in Loving You and Jailhouse Rock.
And Zero Hour! starred Dana Andrews, Sterling Hayden, Linda Darnell, and football legend Elroy "Crazylegs" Hirsch. This is the film, intended to be serious, upon which the disaster spoof Airplane! was based. ("Airplane? What is it?" It's a motorized conveyance for traveling quickly through the air, but that's not important now.) Jerry Zucker essentially said Airplane! was "Zero Hour! with jokes."
TV shows debuting for the 1957-58 season included Perry Mason, Maverick, Leave It to Beaver, Zorro, Have Gun, Will Travel, and, in what must have been shocking for the Ike Age, the 1st version of a show revived 1985-92 and again 1999-currently: Divorce Court. And NBC introduced its peacock logo, designed to show that the program you were watching was in color. Fat lot of good that did, as it would be over a decade before a majority of American homes had color TV sets.
Gene Roddenberry had already begun writing for television. George Lucas was 13 years old. Barry Nelson, on U.S. television in 1954, was still the only man to have played a live-action James Bond. George Reeves was starring in the TV series The Adventures of Superman. Robert Lowery was the most recent live-action Batman, and that was in the 1949 serial Batman and Robin.
William Shatner, Sean Connery and Roger Moore were already acting. Adam West had just appeared in his 1st film, a Boris Karloff horror film titled Voodoo Island. September 24 was a day before September 25, the birthday of Juliet Prowse, who was about to turn 21; Michael Douglas, 13; Mark Hamill, 6; Christopher Reeve, 5; and Heather Locklear, Will Smith, and Douglas' future wife Catherine Zeta-Jones, who weren't born yet.
Robert Kardashian was 13 years old. Bruce Jenner was about to turn 8. The woman each would end up marrying, then named Kristen Mary Houghton, was a toddler, about to turn 2.
The Number 1 song in America was "That'll Be the Day" by The Crickets, whose lead singer was Buddy Holly. It had to be listed as by "The Crickets," rather than under Holly's own stage name (his real name was Charles Hardin Holley), due to a legal dispute.
The aforementioned Elvis Presley had dominated the year: By the time it was over, he would have 4 singles -- "Too Much,""All Shook Up,""(Let Me Be Your) Teddy Bear" and "Jailhouse Rock" -- that would hold the Number 1 spot for 33 of the calendar year's 52 weeks. And then he got drafted.
John Lennon and Paul McCartney had just met in Liverpool. Paul had already met George Harrison and Ringo Starr, but John hadn't. Bob Dylan was in high school. Freddie Mercury was 12. David Bowie and Elton John were 10. Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen were 8. Michael Jackson, Prince and Madonna were born the next year.
On September 24, 1957, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed that day at 462.87. Inflation has been such that what $1.00 would buy then, $8.68 would buy now. A U.S. postage stamp cost 3 cents, and a Subway ride in New York was 15 cents. The average price of a gallon of gas was 28 cents, a cup of coffee 32 cents, a McDonald's meal (cheeseburger, fries, shake) 49 cents, a movie ticket 61 cents, a new car $2,100, and a new house $12,220.
Would you like to return to those prices? Let me remind you that the average annual salary was $3,641.72 -- which, given an 8-hour day, a 40-hour week and a 50-week year plus 2 weeks' vacation, works out to $72.83 a week, and $1.82 an hour. And that's if you were a straight white male Anglo-Saxon Protestant. If you deviated from any of that, it would be less. Doesn't sound so great now, does it? At least then, there were labor unions with real strength, and the top tax rate was 91 percent, so the richest were paying their fair share.
Computers? Get outta here! They could take up the entire side of a building. And nobody expected them to get any smaller anytime soon. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates and Tim Berners-Lee were 2 years old. The tallest building in the world was the Empire State Building.
The original World Trade Center has risen and fallen. So has the Berlin Wall. Osama bin Laden had been born 6 months earlier. Hardly anyone outside their own countries had yet heard of Fidel Castro, Nelson Mandela, Ho Chi Minh or Yassir Arafat. Lech Walesa was a teenager. Vladimir Putin was about to turn 5. Cuba was a beach resort, and most Americans couldn't find Vietnam on a map (and were probably still calling it Indochina).
In the early Autumn of 1957, in addition to the events previously mentioned, the Space Age began when the Soviet Union launched the world's 1st artificial satellite, Sputnik 1, sending the free world into a panic over the possibility that the Commies could now bomb us from space. (It would never happen, but we didn't know that at the time.) A little later, the Soviets launched Sputnik 2, containing the 1st living space traveler, a female part-husky/part-terrier dog named Laika. The capsule was too hot, and she died from heatstroke. She was doomed anyway, as they expected her oxygen to run out after 6 days, which is what they reported as happening.
Toyota began exporting cars to America. In an unrelated story, the Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel. It was a flop. The Mackinac Bridge in Michigan and the 1st tube of the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel in Virginia opened. The 3rd and last tube of the Lincoln Tunnel, the South Tube (the one used by most vehicles entering New York City from New Jersey), had opened 4 months earlier.
West Side Story debuted on Broadway. Just off Broadway, at the Park Sheraton Hotel (now the Park Central), where The Jackie Gleason Show (including his Honeymooners sketches) was filmed, America's biggest Mob boss, Albert Anastasia, was rubbed out.
King Haakon VII of Norway, and Christian Dior, and Louis B. Mayer died. Gloria Estefan, and Fran Drescher, and comedian and Mr. 3000 star Bernard "Bernie Mac" McCullough were born.
September 24, 1957. The Brooklyn Dodgers said goodbye. Five days later, the New York Giants baseball team did the same.
The world has changed so much. We have gained a lot. We have lost a lot. Of all the things we lost, few, at least in the New York Tri-State Area, have been as lamented as the Brooklyn Dodgers. The baseball New York Giants, less so.
But if they hadn't moved -- if Walter O'Malley had gotten his "pleasure dome" at Atlantic Yards, where the Barclays Center now stands, and if Horace Stoneham had gotten the Flushing Meadow project that became Shea Stadium, and now Citi Field, and those teams were still in New York -- there never would have been a Mets, with all their highs, and all their lows.
I'll let you decide whether that would have been a good thing.