News
O'Malley's life chronicled in new book
Looks at former Dodgers owner from Brooklyn to LA
By Ben Platt / MLB.com
05/10/09 7:21 AM ET
Walter O'Malley was, without a doubt, one of the most influential and controversial owners in baseball history. Beloved in Los Angeles for bringing the Dodgers out west in 1958, and reviled in Brooklyn, which lost its beloved bums, O'Malley publicly took the adulation and ridicule in stride and proceeded to create one of the most respected and profitable franchises in all of sports. Author Michael D'Antonio chronicles O'Malley's life and career in his book, "Forever Blue." "I was very aware that Walter O'Malley was a key figure in American history, not just baseball history," said D'Antonio, who won a Pulitzer Prize for reporting and has written over a dozen books, including the biography of Milton Hershey of the Hershey Chocolate empire."His name reverberated on both coasts, and he seemed a bit of a mystery -- even to a fan from Boston, where I'm from originally. It was almost hard to believe that this book hadn't been done before."
In addition to his own independent research and interviews, D'Antonio, with the cooperation of the O'Malley family, had access to the O'Malley archive, which includes 30,000 documents and artifacts. One of the things the author found in his research was how relevant O'Malley still is 30 years after his death. "If you program Google to return Walter O'Malley's name every time it comes up in the news, it comes up almost every day," said D'Antonio. "What guy, who owned a baseball team and died in the 1970's, is still mentioned almost every day in the press? That tells you how important a figure he was." The book covers O'Malley's life and affiliation with the Dodgers, where he started as the team's lawyer before becoming part owner and then taking full control of the team in 1950. He presided over the "Boys of Summer" years in Brooklyn that saw such Hall of Famers as Jackie Robinson, Pee Wee Reese and Roy Campanella. During this entire period, O'Malley knew that Ebbets Field, the team's legendary ball park, was becoming obsolete and would have to be replaced.The most interesting part of the book relates to O'Malley's 10-year battle with New York city planner Robert Moses, who blocked every move O'Malley made to build a new stadium in Brooklyn, thus making the historic move to Los Angeles possible.
"Everyone acknowledges that he tried to keep the team in Brooklyn," said Peter O'Malley, Walter's son, who ran the Dodgers from 1970 until his family sold the organization to News Corp. in 1998. I'm not painting any good guys or bad guys. Mr. Moses had his agenda and he did what he thought was right. They were two very bright, strong people -- they clashed, they differed and were unable to resolve their differences as to location and other issues on the stadium." "I think by now it's undeniable, this man would have preferred to stay in Brooklyn," said D'Antonio. "He would have preferred to give Brooklyn what is now Dodger Stadium, but with a dome, sparing the city billions of dollars that it's now investing in the new stadiums in New York, and yet he was barred. How many times are you supposed to make a run at improving your situation in one location before you say, 'I'm going to try something else?'" The second part of the book covers the Dodgers' move west and the creation of Dodger Stadium, which was O'Malley's proudest achievement. In his research, D'Antonio came across a letter to Peter and his wife Kay that showed that financing his vision was a very hard thing for O'Malley to do. "It outlined a key moment of financial crisis," said D'Antonio. "He was able to keep the project going, that being the construction of the stadium with special funding from Union Oil, but it's clear in that letter that he was really worried about pulling the whole thing off. I was very impressed with his candor and also that he would be so frank with Peter, who was a very young man at the time. I think it really was a family affair. Especially when they got to Los Angeles." For Peter O'Malley, who made it clear that "Forever Blue" is neither an authorized or unauthorized biography of his father, the book's author did the one major thing he had requested in covering his dad's life. "I told him 'Michael, there is no subject that is off limits,'" recalls Peter. "'You can write about anything you want, just get it straight -- get it right.' He saw everything in our archives and did an extraordinary amount of research. I've read the book and he did an excellent job. He got it right."Ben Platt is a national correspondent for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
