Jon Hamm explores the Dodgers and a dark history in Los Angeles in ‘The Big Fix’

Jon Hamm appreciates a challenge, so it makes sense that he’d want to play the central character in a story based on one of Los Angeles’ darkest chapters in the sprawling city’s history.

Jon Hamm appreciates a challenge, so it makes sense that he’d want to play the central character in a story based on one of Los Angeles’ darkest chapters in the sprawling city’s history. Hamm returns to Audible Originals as gruff, no-nonsense Detective Jack Bergin in “The Big Fix: A Jack Bergin Mystery,” all episodes of which are out today, an audio drama that weaves the story behind the Chavez Ravine evictions as the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in the late 1950s into a fictional murder-mystery. “LA has a fascinating history,” Hamm told CNN in a recent interview. “There’s so much of it that people just don’t talk about because it’s a little problematic and because it’s been kind of bulldozed, literally and figuratively, in the name of progress.” Before Dodger Stadium was the home of the LA Dodgers – a baseball team that has won eight World Series championships – the land on which the stadium sits was known as the Chavez Ravine, home to generations of Mexican-Americans. Evictions for residents began in the early 1950s, when city officials used political tactics like eminent domain to acquire land or forcibly remove tenants so developers could build public housing projects. The public housing project eventually fell apart and by the late 1950s, only a small number of original Chavez Ravine residents still resided in the area. That is until Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley acquired the land and forcibly removed its remaining residents to build Dodger Stadium. It’s an overlooked part of Los Angeles history that Hamm said is important to remember.