This is the twenty-first in a series of examinations of baseball-related legends and whether they are true or false. Click here to view an archive of all the previous baseball legends.

In honor of the opening of the 2010 baseball season, each legend installment this week (and next) will be a baseball one, spotlighting legends from one of the eight playoff teams last year. Today the featured team is the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Let’s begin!

BASEBALL LEGEND: A bizarre mix of circumstances (including an injury at a poker game) allowed Dazzy Vance to resurrect his (at the time failed) career at the age of 31 for the Dodgers.

STATUS: True

Charles “Dazzy” Vance probably does not have the ODDEST career in Major League history, but it sure is up there.

Vance pitched for 16 seasons in the big leagues, and was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1955.

That’s not particularly odd, but what IS odd is WHEN his career started and HOW it started.

You see, Vance had his first productive year in the big leagues at the age of 31!

Vance had bummed around the professional leagues for years while in his 20s.

He made the majors in 1915 at the age of 24, pitching so terribly for the Pittsburgh Pirates that they quickly let him go to the new owners of the New York Yankees.

It was not that Vance was not a good pitcher – he definitely had some good stuff, he just had major problems with arm soreness. And it affected him greatly, as he was bad for the Yankees, as well, and was sent to a Yankee affiliated team somewhere in the minor leagues (the minor leagues were not the organized structure that they are today, so by “minor leagues,” I just mean a league that was not the American or the National).

They called him back up in 1918, and he proceeded to stink once again (2 games pitched, 15.43 Earned Run Average), and at the age of 27, it seemed like his career in the majors was over.

He settled in to working for the various minor leagues, eventually settling in the Southern Association, where he mostly played for the New Orleans Pelicans.

While there, in 1920, at the age of 29, he had a decent season, but nothing too impressive. Again, though, his arm problems were the key – his sore arm robbed him of any dynamism he might have.

And then his saving grace came around this time, in the unlikeliest of places. While playing poker, Vance banged his elbow on the table, and suddenly his “sore” arm was now very much not “sore,” but rather actively shooting pain into his arm. He was in agony.

His friends brought him to a surgeon, who performed surgery on the elbow (no one knows what exactly) and when it healed, suddenly not only was the SHARP pain gone, but so was the chronic soreness (no one knows exactly what the surgeon did, but it sure sounds like he removed either bone chips or bone spurs, doesn’t it?).

Suddenly, Vance was a new man.

The next season, 1921, at the age of 30, he had a strong year for the Pelicans.

However, as you might imagine, Major League teams were not exactly lining up to take a shot at a guy who failed in two separate stints in the big leagues and suddenly had a good year in the minors at 30.

Luckily for Vance, things were still looking up for him!

The Brooklyn Dodgers were looking for a catcher, and the Pelicans had a good one in Hank DeBerry.

When the Dodgers offered to purchase DeBerry from the Pelicans, the Pelicans responded that they could have DeBerry, but only if they also took Vance along with him, a package deal for $10,000 together.

The Dodgers would have been fine spending close to that for DeBerry alone, so they took the deal and Vance was allowed to try out for the Dodgers in the spring of 1922, at the age of 31.

And, surprise surprise, he was really, really good!

In his first year with the club, Vance won 18 games and led the league in strikeouts!

In his third year, 1924, Vance won the “Triple Crown” of pitching, leading the league in wins (28), Earned Run Average (2.16) and strikeouts (262) on the way to winning the Most Valuable Player award (he would come in 5th in the voting in 1925 and 11th in 1928).

He would go on to pitch until he was 44, making stops in Cincinnati and St. Louis (where he was part of the 1934 World Series-winning Cardinals that I discussed in this installment of Baseball Legends Revealed from last week) before retiring in 1935, about 17 years after everyone though that he was “washed up!”

Instead of being washed up, he ended up being perhaps the best Dodgers pitcher before Sandy Koufax!!

Glenn Stout’s great Dodgers resource, The Dodgers: 120 Years of Dodgers Baseball, was valuable for this entry! Thanks, Glenn!

BASEBALL LEGEND: The Dodgers wanted to build a new stadium on the same plot of land that is now being developed for the Nets, but after New York City said no, the Dodgers instead moved to Los Angeles.

STATUS: False

It’s really an interesting almost sort of social experiment, if you chose to look at it that way (which, naturally, I do).

Any time discussion of the proposed (now actualized) development of the so-called “Atlantic Yards” project, where the New Jersey Nets will build a new basketball stadium (using eminent domain to get the land) at the old Atlantic rail yards in Brooklyn (chosen because of its connection to so many different forms of public transportation – including a Long Island Railroad hub AND a major New York City Transit subway stop, so people from all over New York City could access the stadium using easily available public transportation) that will also have residential apartments and commercial space, a certain factoid gets bandied about.

People will toss out that the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, Walter O’Malley, would have kept the Dodgers in Brooklyn if he had been allowed to build on this same plot (also using eminent domain), but after Robert Moses (the chief planner of New York City) turned him down, O’Malley decided to move his team to Los Angeles, who was offering him free land and a “Do what you want” attitude regarding the development of the land (plus control of the mineral rights, even!).

Heck, on Robert Moses’ Wikipedia page, it says:

Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley wanted to build a new stadium to replace the outdated and dilapidated Ebbets Field. O’Malley determined the best site for the stadium was on the corner of Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn at the end of the Long Island Rail Road.

This is just not true, and yet whenever the discussion of the Atlantic Yards project (which is, indeed, located at Atlantic Avenue and Flatbush Avenue) comes up, SOMEone brings up the O’Malley story.

It is true that O’Malley wanted to move the Dodgers out of the outdated Ebbets Field.

And it is true that Moses would not give him access to the land in Brooklyn that he wanted, instead insisting that Flushing, Queens, would be the best place for a new baseball stadium (and that was, of course, where the next new baseball stadium in New York WAS built, Shea Stadium, where the expansion New York Mets began playing in 1964 after two years in the Polo Grounds)…

So when Moses stymied him on the land that he wanted to use, although there almost certainly were alternative land choices that did not involve going to Queens, O’Malley instead decided to take a sweetheart offer made to him by the city of Los Angeles, who were desperate to bring baseball to Southern California.

The Los Angeles ballpark, Dodgers Stadium, has been the Los Angeles Dodgers’ home since 1962, a few years after they moved to California in 1958…

This angered many Brooklyn residents, who felt that Moses “drove off” their beloved Brooklyn Dodgers.

So it is a great story to then say, “The very same place that New York wouldn’t give the Dodgers, forcing them to leave, they’re now giving to the Nets!”

However, that is not the case.

The Dodgers did NOT want Atlantic Yards.

They wanted a plot of land that current developer Bruce Ratner already developed and has since turned into the Atlantic Center Mall…

You see, the development that the Nets’ new arena is doing, where they will incorporate the Long Island Railroad station INTO the development, was not something that anyone would have considered fiscally conceivable in 1956.

So instead, O’ Malley wanted to build on a plot of land NEARBY Atlantic Yards, but not ON it.

If you look again at the earlier picture of Atlantic Yards…

you can see the Atlantic Center Mall in the background (to the right). So it is close by to the Atlantic Yards (heck, you could even argue that it is “adjacent” to the Atlantic Yards), but it is not the Atlantic Yards.

Here is a chart from the time to show you where the Dodgers wanted to go…

See?

That’s not the Atlantic Yards (it’s also not Atlantic and Flatbush).

At one point it appears that SOMEone suggested Atlantic and Flatbush, but that was never the Dodgers’ choice.

But don’t worry, if you read about the Atlantic Yards enough, you WILL see someone repeat this story again.

Norman Oder did an amazing piece of research on his site about the Atlantic Yards project – check it out here. He got the stadium planning chart from Henry D. Fetter’s awesome book, Taking on the Yankees: Winning and Losing in the Business of Baseball. Thanks to both Norman and Henry for the information! Thanks also to No Land Grab, a site opposed to the Atlantic Yards which tipped me to the information that Oder had collected!

BASEBALL LEGEND: Former Dodger star Wally Moon coined the term “flake” to describe an eccentric person.

STATUS: True

Wally Moon cemented his place in Los Angeles Dodger lore by adapting his swing in his first season playing for the team, 1959, which was the second year that the Dodgers played in Los Angeles. You see, Moon typically drove the ball to right field, but when the Dodgers first played in Los Angeles, they held their games in the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, a gigantic football stadium converted for baseball usage. Due to the strange dimensions of the stadium, right field and center field were far away while left field was only 250 feet from home plate. The Dodgers erected a 40-foot-high screen designed to keep balls in play, but even with this precaution, a stunning 182 homers were hit to left field in 1958, with just three hit to center and eight to right. So Moon adapted his swing to loft balls towards left field and the screen.

As a result, Moon led the league in triples and also his 19 home runs. His fly balls to left for soon referred to as “Moon shots.”

Moon was an All-Star and came in fourth in the MVP voting as the Dodgers went on to win the World Series for just the second time in franchise history (and first in Los Angeles). Moon was around to win two more World Series with the Dodgers before retiring.

However, Moon had a strong career before joining the Dodgers as a member of the St. Louis Cardinals. Moon actually won the Rookie of the Year with the Cardinals in 1954, beating out a strong crop of rookies that included a shortstop named Ernie Banks and an outfielder named Hank Aaron, who I think both went on to have decent careers in the majors.

As impressive as a ballplayer Moon was in St. Louis, it is actually an off the field “accomplishment” that I’d like to discuss here.

You see, it appears that Moon coined the term “flake.”

Seems hard to believe, doesn’t it? Or it certainly sounds extremely random, but it also appears to be true.

While in St. Louis, in 1956, Moon played with a fellow named Jackie Brandt who was certainly an eccentric guy (self-admitted).

In 1973, legendary baseball writer Maury Allen (in his 1973 book on Bo Bellinsky) credited Moon as describing Brandt as being so wild that his brains were falling out of head, or flaking out of his head, hence the nickname “flake.”

The term definitely became attached to Brandt in his next stop, San Francisco, as a member of the Giants.

And by the early 1960s, the term “flake” became an “insider nickname” among baseball players to describe their more eccentric teammates, and by the end of the 1960s, the term had been expanded to the adjective “flaky.”

And it has stuck ever since.

It is accepted now that the term almost certainly DID come from professional baseball in the late 1950s, although some etymologists credit the fact that “flake” was a slang term for cocaine during the 1920s as also being an influence on the baseball term, which could be true, although I don’t know if I personally buy that as a reason.

So it comes down to who in baseball first coined the term?

It does seem to be Brandt who the term originated around, and Moon WAS his teammate in 1956, so I don’t really have any reason to doubt Allen, so I’m willing to credit Moon as inventing the term “flake.”

Which, on top of Rookie of Year and three World Series titles, is a pretty impressive legacy for a guy to have.

Moon has a website you can check out – Wallymoon.com, which, interestingly enough, doesn’t mention the “flake” story, but the majority of his Cardinals days doesn’t get a lot of play there, just his rookie campaign.

Thanks to Maury Allen’s Bo: Pitching and Wooing for the story about Moon, and thanks to the Online Etymology Dictionary, as well!

Okay, that’s it for this week!

Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is bcronin@legendsrevealed.com

Tags: Atlantic Yards, Baseball Hall of Fame, Brooklyn Dodgers, Bruce Ratner, Dizzy Vance, Dodgers Stadium, Ernie Banks, Glenn Stout, Hank Aaron, Hank DeBerry, Henry D. Fetter, Jackie Brandt, Los Angeles Dodgers, Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, Maury Allen, MVP Award, New Orleans Pelicans, New York Yankees, Norman Oder, Pittsburgh Pirates, Robert Moses, Rookie of the Year Award, Southern Association, St. Louis Cardinals, Wally Moon, Walter O'Malley, World Series