While seeking to relocate his Brooklyn Dodgers, then owner Walter O’Malley was actually in preliminary talks with Minneapolis prior to the mayor of Los Angeles intervening with a sweetheart deal he couldn’t refuse.
O’Malley then petitioned New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham into heading west as well. When the vote was put to the Giants Board of Directors, all shareholders voted in favor of a move to San Francisco, except two – Mrs. Joan Whitney Payson and M. Donald Grant (whom later became one of the more reviled persons in the annals of New York baseball history).
The New York Giants subsequently purchased Mrs.