Stealing Home: Los Angeles, the Dodgers, and the Lives Caught in Between

The story of the creation of the Los Angeles Dodgers--and the corruption, racism, and misguided idealism that made it possible.

Dodger Stadium is an American icon. The oldest ballpark west of the Mississippi--and the third oldest overall--it is a shrine to baseball and an essential feature of the Los Angeles cityscape.

Yet the story of how it was built has a dark side. To clear space for the stadium, the city tore down low-income, Hispanic-friendly housing, resulting in a dramatic confrontation between the County Sheriff and the one family-the Arechigas- who refused to yield their home.

In Stealing Home, Eric Nusbaum-a fluent Spanish-speaker, Dodgers fan, and lifelong Angeleno-tells the stories of the people whose homes were destroyed, their conflict with the bureaucrats and money men of Los Angeles-notably Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley, and a well-intentioned activist named Frank Wilkinson- and shows how their lives were overrun by the wheel of history.

Stealing Home is a vibrant work of baseball and urban history, a story about how our ideals can betray us, and the people who pay the price when they do.

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