Uh oh, sounds like Stoneham is serious about moving the Giants out west. From May 1957.
Perhaps Stoneham has definitely refused Minneapolis and positively turned down San Francisco. Perhaps he intends to keep his Giants forever in Manhattan, squeezed between Coogan's Bluff and the Harlem River. Perhaps the whole thing is nothing, all this talk of moving.
But don't bet on it.
Horace Stoneham doesn't talk as much as Walter O'Malley, and he has no compulsion for forcing events, like O'Malley. But when the situation demands drastic action, Stoneham throws the dice with the best of them. Consider the dramatic hiring of Leo Durocher, the startling trade that brought Alvin Dark and Eddie Stanky to the Giants, the calculated dealing off of the hero, Bobby Thomson.
Currently, Stoneham is fondling the dice again. He is aware of the situation. It is drastic.
Attendance at the Polo Grounds in 1954, the year the Giants won the pennant and the World Championship, was 1,155,067, a very pleasant but hardly spectacular figure.
...
Stoneham clearly recognizes these facts:
-The Brooklyn Dodgers are going to move out of Ebbets Field.
-The New York Giants ought to move out of their beloved Polo Grounds.
-The New York Yankees do not particularly want either the Dodgers or the Giants as tenants in Yankee Stadium, and neither the Dodgers nor the Giants particularly want to become tenants of the Yankees.
-The City of New York its ruling politicians acutely aware of criticism because of delays in road building and school construction is not going to build a stadium of any type for either the Dodgers or the Giants.
More here:
Bound by proud tradition but tempted by western gold, - 05.20.57 - SI Vault
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