The attendance figures, by themselves, are rather misleading. The Giants and Dodgers both won World Series during the mid-50s whereas the Cubs were abjectly awful during that period. Also, the attendance triumphs of both the Braves and Orioles helped to convince both Stoneham and O’Malley that moving their franchises would be a wise decision. Plus, they both were seduced by the glittering sunlit prize of California.

I’ve often wondered why the Giants chose San Francisco, before the Dodgers followed them to the coast. Maybe the population trends weren’t as evident as they now seem, with hindsight…was the stadium deal in SF (ultimately, a rip off) guaranteed when the club moved? What aspect of the NY market was so repulsive as to blind both O’Malley and Stoneham to the fact that if either of their teams had stayed in NY, that club would’ve become a financially dominant force? Like the success of the ’69 Mets, it doesn’t make sense.

So Josh, assuming that you’ll read this, is there another glittering sunlit city out there, where a moribund franchise could relocate and realize riches inconceivable in their current location? I’d say that there is one within the US (and, like the old NY/SF/LA debate, it depends upon which franchise is moving) as well as a few huge jewels out there that will require a bit entrepreneurial imagination to find.

I don’t agree with the claim that New York national league fans “deservedly lost their teams” (in comparison to the Cubs). I just took a quick look at attendance figures in the years leading up to the move of the Dodgers and the Giants to California, and it looks like in ’55, ’56, and ’57 the Cubs drew just slightly more fans than the Giants and drew decidedly fewer fans than the Dodgers.

Being too young to remember them myself, they were always held out to me as “The Best Baseball Team That My Father Had Ever Seen.”

The objective, reasoning part of my mind wants to argue that Mets had good pitching and an absurd amount of good luck. I want to sift through the historical record and find reasons why the Mets won the division that year…Don Young dropping that flyball, the black cat thrown into the on-deck circle, Durocher playing his starters every day, or those same starters having to suffer through so much sunshine.

But it just doesn’t make sense. Billy Williams was a better baseball player than Cleon James. Kessinger was better than Bud Harrelson. Hundley was better than Grote. Banks over Kranepool. Beckert over Boswell. Hands and Holtzman were both better than Koosman as well as the rest of the slop that sufficed for the back end of the Mets’ rotation. Talk about depth all you want but the Cubs were better at almost every position and that advantage told for 155 days – the late Mike Royko always used to lament that the Cubs were in first place for 155 consecutive days in 1969, until the 10th of September.

The Mets had the better bullpen and the better bench but shouldn’t the overwhelming superiority of the entire Cub team have won out in the real standings, rather than just run differential?

1969 was always held up to me as the ultimate example of Life Being Unfair. The Cubs, and all of us who’ve supported the them through all those 70-92 seasons, will never be rewarded for our devotion. Meanwhile, the fans that were too scared to venture into the “bad” neighborhoods around Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds and, thus, deservedly lost their teams, are blessed with a “miracle”? Yes, life’s not fair. The moon landing was just an interesting aside to that larger lesson.

It’s been a long time since I read it, but I think Halberstam’s “Summer of ’49″ probably had something to do with why I view Page as a cut above his bullpen predecessors.

As far as the Star vs Depth debate, the Indians tried to go a different way. The experiment of trying to win with almost no stars and zero depth was probably doomed to failure from the start. But somebody had to try it, right?

As for bullpen guys, Firpo Marberry had some renown as a reliever in the ’20s. Also, Johnny Murphy preceded Page as the head Yankees bullpen guy.

(oh, and sorry for the name change here… was playing with my account settings after registering)

I wonder how much of the Stengal-era Yankees success was due to the fact they were the first team to realize the value of a relief ace? I believe Page is generally thought of as the first one.

The ten years between the hope of the moon landing and the pathetic Chicken Little act of Skylab is stunning. NASA was collectively heroes to the world and ten years later everyone was wondering if molten globs of NASA failure and humiliation would scream from the sky and destroy cities. That’s quite a fall (double meaning intended!)