Bernie’s Grudge Against Capitalism Is Rooted In A Baseball Myth About Greed
Excerpt: For a person who has been largely reluctant to open up about the major influences on his life, what happened to the Dodgers is one thing about which he is always willing to talk. “I don’t want to tell you that was the sole reason that I’ve developed the politics that I’ve developed. But as a kid, I did see in that case about the greed of one particular company. And that impacted me.” Bernie’s account of what happened to the Dodgers reflects a view of that chapter of baseball and New York history that was almost universally held to be true by Brooklynites of his generation. Most would agree with writers Jack Newfield and Pete Hamill, who declared Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley deserved a place on a list of the “worst human beings of the 20th century” along with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin because he had “killed a generation’s innocence” by absconding with Brooklyn’s team to Los Angeles. But in recent decades, the myth of O’Malley’s greed has been largely exploded. An examination of this story stripped of the old narrative tells us more about how big government and unaccountable bureaucrats can destroy a city than the simple tale of a team owner’s desire for greater wealth that Sanders still believes.
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