The Land Beneath This Stadium Once Was Theirs. They Want It Back.

NYT SPORT: The Land Beneath This Stadium Once Was Theirs. They Want It Back.
By Jesus Jiménez
Section: Sports
Source: New York Times

Dodger Stadium is the home to the seven-time world champion Los Angeles Dodgers. But in the 1950s, the land around it belonged to families who are now seeking reparations for what they lost.

LOS ANGELES — Standing less than a mile from Dodger Stadium on a recent Saturday afternoon, Vincent Montalvo could hear the roar of the crowd inside the ballpark. It was Jackie Robinson Day, and more than 50,000 fans were nestling into their seats for a matchup against the Chicago Cubs. But Montalvo had no plans to attend. It has been more than 30 years since he has stepped inside Dodger Stadium. His father took him to the ballpark when he was a child in the 1980s during “Fernandomania,” the craze surrounding the star Mexican pitcher Fernando Valenzuela. But the seemingly harmless act of attending that game deepened a wound that has festered in the Montalvo family and the city’s Latino community. Reckoning with that hurt has been a challenge for the Dodgers as the team has tried to maintain a balance between acknowledging it and broadening the team’s widely Latino fan base. Long before the Dodgers won their first World Series at Dodger Stadium in 1963 and Sandy Koufax tossed the team’s first perfect game in 1965, the land the ballpark was built on was home to hundreds of families living in communities called Palo Verde, La Loma and Bishop.

Published Date: May 7, 2023 at 03:00AM

Read More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/sports/baseball/baseball-dodgers-reparations.html