Dodgerland - by Michael Fallon (Paperback)

About the Book

An account of two memorable seasons of the late 1970s Los Angeles Dodgers and a transformative, multilayered tale of Los Angeles in a time of promise unrealized and great potential squandered.

Book Synopsis

The 1977-78 Los Angeles Dodgers came close. Their tough lineup of young and ambitious players squared off with the New York Yankees in consecutive World Series. The Dodgers' run was a long time in the making after years of struggle and featured many homegrown players who went on to noteworthy or Hall of Fame careers, including Don Sutton, Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, and Steve Yeager. Dodgerland is the story of those memorable teams as Chavez Ravine began to change, baseball was about to enter a new era, and American culture experienced a shift to the "me" era.

Part journalism, part social history, and part straight sportswriting, Dodgerland is told through the lives of four men named Tom, each representing different aspects of this LA story. Tom Lasorda, the vocal manager of the Dodgers, gives an up-close view of the team's struggles and triumphs; Tom Fallon, a suburban small-business owner, witnesses the Dodgers' season and the changes to California's landscape--physical, social, political, and economic; Tom Wolfe, a chronicler of California's ever-changing culture, views the events of 1977-78 from his Manhattan writer's loft; and Tom Bradley, Los Angeles's mayor and the region's most dominant political figure of the time, gives a glimpse of the wider political, demographic, and economic forces that affected the state at the time.

The boys in blue drew baseball's focus in those two seasons, but the intertwining narratives tell a larger story about California, late 1970s America, and great promise unrealized.

Review Quotes

"Dodgerland is a fascinating study of American culture in Los Angeles in the 1970s. Among the characters marching across the pages are Tom Wolfe, Hugh Hefner, Charles Manson, Jim Bouton, Mayor Tom Bradley, Frank Zappa, and, of course, the men who bled Dodger blue, including imperfect heroes such as Steve Garvey, Don Sutton, Reggie Smith, and Glenn Burke. All came for the American Dream. Not all of them made it."--Peter Golenbock, author of The Bronx Zoo and Bums: An Oral History of the Brooklyn Dodgers
-- (9/14/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"Dodgerland is a fine baseball book. Fallon is a talented writer, who is able to effortlessly weave together a number of major storylines in order to make the enormous tapestry that this story is ultimately part of."--Baseball Historian-- (8/28/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"An intriguing, often audacious tale that weaves in such iconic characters as John Wayne and Bob Marley, Tom Wolfe and Tommy Lasorda. In the eye of this cultural hurricane, for a moment or two, stood the 1977-78 Los Angeles Dodgers. Here is their story--deftly told."--Tim Wendel, author of Castro's Curveball and Summer of '68
-- (9/14/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"Fallon gets the tone of the events just right--the boisterous energy and the deflation, the nervous highs and the depressive lows of Dodgerland and L.A."--Ron Slate, On the Seawall-- (5/10/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Michael Fallon combines baseball, culture, politics, and social issues into a neat package in Dodgerland."--Bob D'Angelo, Sports Bookie-- (6/10/2016 12:00:00 AM)

"Michael Fallon has given us the California counterpart to The Bronx Is Burning, a sweeping yet intimate portrayal of the seventies' denouement on the West Coast. Here's the American Dream in Dodger blue, a black mayor, a pioneering journalist, and a hardworking hardware store owner."--John Rosengren, award-winning author of The Fight of Their Lives: How Juan Marichal and John Roseboro Turned Baseball's Ugliest Brawl into a Story of Forgiveness and Redemption-- (9/14/2015 12:00:00 AM)

"Not a conventional championship-season kind of treatment but a thoughtful, comprehensive, and even deeply personal account of a boisterous era whose echoes remain loud, even painful."--Kirkus

"This book is recommended not only for baseball fans but also for readers who are interested in social history or who want to learn more about the culture of Los Angeles during that time."--Guy Who Reviews Sports Books-- (5/18/2016 12:00:00 AM)

About the Author

Michael Fallon is a writer on arts and culture and a nonprofit manager based in Minnesota. He is the author of Creating the Future: Art and Los Angeles in the 1970s.