Walter O'Malley
Walter Francis O'Malley (October 9, 1903 – August 9, 1979) was an American sports executive who owned the Brooklyn / Los Angeles Dodgers team in Major League Baseball from 1950 to 1979. In 1958, as owner of the Dodgers, he brought major league baseball to the West Coast, moving the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles despite the Dodgers being the second most profitable team in baseball from 1946 to 1956, and coordinating the move of the New York Giants to San Francisco at a time when there were no teams west of Kansas City, Missouri.[1][2] In 2008, O'Malley was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame for his contributions to and influence on the game of baseball.
Walter O'Malley
October 9, 1903
August 9, 1979 (aged 75)
Holy Cross Cemetery
Baseball executive
2, including Peter O'Malley
Edwin O'Malley (father)
Alma Feltner (mother)
Peter Seidler (grandson)
75%
Veterans Committee
O'Malley's father, Edwin Joseph O'Malley, was politically connected. Walter, a University of Pennsylvania salutatorian, went on to obtain a Bachelor of Laws (LL.B.), and he used the combination of his family connections, his personal contacts, and both his educational and vocational skills to rise to prominence. First, he became an entrepreneur involved in public works contracting, and then he became an executive with the Dodgers. He progressed from being a team lawyer to being both the Dodgers' owner and president, and he eventually made the business decision to relocate the Dodgers franchise. Although he moved the franchise, O'Malley is known as a businessman whose major philosophy was stability through loyalty to and from his employees.[3]
In 1970, O'Malley ceded the team presidency to his son, Peter. He would become the first chairman of the Dodgers, a title established for him, and remain so until his death in 1979. During the 1975 season, the Dodgers' inability to negotiate a contract with Andy Messersmith led to the Seitz decision, which limited the baseball reserve clause and paved the way for modern free agency.[4] He bequeathed the team to his children Peter O'Malley and Therese O'Malley Seidler upon his death in 1979.[5]
Pre-baseball career[edit]
After he completed his law degree in 1930 at Fordham Law, he worked as an assistant engineer for the New York City Subway.[13] After earning his law degree he needed to obtain a clerkship, but it was during the depression and no one could afford to hire him. He allowed a struggling lawyer to use space in his office and paid for his own clerkship.[15] After working for the Subway, he worked for Thomas F. Riley, who owned the Riley Drilling Company, and they formed the partnership of Riley and O'Malley. With the help of Edwin O'Malley's political connections, Walter's company received contracts from the New York Telephone Company and the New York City Board of Education to perform geological surveys.[13] Subsequently, Walter started the Walter F. O'Malley Engineering Company and published the Subcontractors Register with his uncle, Joseph O'Malley (1893–1985).[1]
Walter eventually concentrated on the field of law, starting with work on wills and deeds.[6] By 1933, he was senior partner in a 20-man Midtown Manhattan law firm.[15] He developed the business habits of smoking cigars and of answering questions only after taking two puffs.[6] During the Great Depression, O'Malley represented bankrupt companies and enriched himself, while building his thriving law practice.[12] He invested wisely in firms such as the Long Island Rail Road, Brooklyn Borough Gas Company, the New York Subways Advertising Company, a building materials firm, a beer firm and some hotels. His success begot both influence and attention. The Brooklyn Democratic Machine powers such as judge Henry Ughetta and Brooklyn Trust Company president George Vincent McLaughlin were among those who noticed the rising O'Malley.[12]
Personal life[edit]
On September 5, 1931, he married Katherine Elizabeth "Kay" Hanson (1907–79), whom he had dated since high school, at Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church in Manhattan.[94] Kay had been diagnosed with laryngeal cancer in 1927 before the engagement and had to have her larynx removed. She was unable to speak above a whisper the rest of her life.[1] Edwin O'Malley encouraged Walter to break off his engagement, and after Walter refused his parents did not attend the wedding.[7] The couple had two children: Therese O'Malley Seidler (born 1933) and Peter O'Malley (born 1937).[95]
In 1944, he remodelled his parents' summer house in Amityville, New York and relocated his family there from Brooklyn.[96] The house was next door to the house Kay had grown up and where her parents lived.[96]
O'Malley was a smoker who golfed occasionally, but more commonly gardened for recreation.[96] As a family man, he attended church regularly, attended Peter's football games at LaSalle Academy, and chaperoned his daughter's dances. On summer weekends, he took the family sailing on his boat, which was named Dodger.[97]
Later in life, the O'Malleys split their time between their homes in Hancock Park, Los Angeles and in Lake Arrowhead, California.[98]
Death and legacy[edit]
O'Malley was diagnosed with cancer, and he sought treatment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.[99] He died of congestive heart failure on August 9, 1979, at the Methodist Hospital in Rochester.[1][100] O'Malley had never returned to Brooklyn before his death. He was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.[9][100] His wife Kay had died a few weeks earlier.[101]
Although O'Malley had later retired and had relinquished control of the Dodgers before his death, he remains hated in Brooklyn for moving the Dodgers to the West Coast.[102] At one time, Brooklyn Dodgers fans hated O'Malley so much that he was routinely mentioned along with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin as the most villainous 20th-century men;[17] one version of a joke went, "If a Brooklyn man finds himself in a room with Hitler, Stalin, and O'Malley, but has only two bullets, what does he do? Shoot O'Malley twice."[69][103] Some still consider him among the worst three men of the 20th century.[104] Much of the animosity was not just for moving the team, but robbing Brooklyn of the sense of a cohesive cultural and social identity that a major sports franchise provides.[60][46] Despite the long-standing animosity of Brooklyn fans and their supporters in baseball, O'Malley was posthumously inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008 after having been elected by the Veterans Committee with the minimum number of votes necessary for induction.[3]
His legacy is that of changing the mindset of a league that had the St. Louis Cardinals as the National League's southernmost and westernmost team (the Philadelphia Athletics of the American League had moved further west to Kansas City just three years prior). Tommy Lasorda said upon hearing of his election to the Hall, "He's a pioneer. He made a tremendous change in the game, opening up the West Coast to Major League Baseball."[3] When asked how he wanted to be remembered, O'Malley said, "for planting a tree."[3] The tree provided the branches to open up the West Coast to baseball, but O'Malley's son remembers his father's 28 years on Major League Baseball's executive council as service that "was instrumental in the early stages of the game's international growth."[3] His contributions to baseball were widely recognized even before his Hall of Fame election: he was ranked 8th and 11th respectively by ABC Sports and The Sporting News in their lists of the most influential sports figures of the 20th century.[60]
On July 7, 2009, Walter O'Malley was inducted into the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame along with two other Dodger icons: slugger Steve Garvey and announcer Vin Scully.[105] "Over the years, we have learned more of his decade-long quest to build a new stadium in Brooklyn and about how those efforts were thwarted by city officials. Perhaps this induction will inspire fans who themselves started new lives outside the borough to reconsider their thoughts about Walter O'Malley", said John Mooney, curator of the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame. "He privately built one of baseball's more beautiful ballparks, Dodger Stadium, and set attendance records annually. While New York is the home of the Irish American Baseball Hall of Fame, it seeks to honor inductees whose impact was and is national."