Is Peter O’Malley getting out while the getting is good? Is he fed up with high player salaries, which will continue to soar? Or is he trying to get his estate in order for his heirs?
This could be an even better question: Is he weary of being a lamppost at league meetings? It has been a well-kept secret his fellow owners have frozen him out of the inner circle since the dismissal of Commissioner Bowie Kuhn 12 years ago.
They seldom have sought his counsel, and, on the rare occasions when he did speak, there were few listeners. To the manor born, proud of his baseball heritage, he has an aloof and silent manner. He withdrew rather than court favor with the new power brokers.
As he said Monday, when he put his Los Angeles Dodgers on sale, “Sometimes I agreed and sometimes I disagreed, but I was always comfortable with my position.”
He has been extremely loyal to his employees, on the field and in the counting rooms. In the 47 years of his family’s stewardship, only one manager was fired.
In a harsh appraisal, Peter Ueberroth, who was Kuhn’s successor and never liked O’Malley’s style, insisted, “All Peter cares about it are his seats at the opera.”
But there was a downside. As the late and wise John R. Tunis once said, the most disadvantaged are the sons of highly successful fathers. Try as he did, the son never approached the status of his father, Walter, who was baseball’s most dominating personality in the last half century. He also made the most money.
Some years ago, Clark Griffith Jr., then a young executive with the Minnesota Twins, described Walter O’Malley’s awesome presence at league meetings. “Walter had that wonderful baritone,” Griffith recalled. “He was mesmerizing.”
The senior O’Malley captivated his fellow owners and was a shrewd operator. With the considerable help of Chicago’s Philip K. Wrigley, the last great American sportsman, O’Malley changed the baseball map, uprooting the Dodgers from Brooklyn and transplanting them in Los Angeles.
The popular belief is O’Malley abandoned Brooklyn because, from the beginning, he realized California was the better territory. But there was more to it.
Neil J. Sullivan, in his 1987 book “The Dodgers Move West,” concluded, “The move was justified. . . . O’Malley had exhausted all possibilities for a new ballpark in Brooklyn. . . . O’Malley made the correct decision. The Dodgers would have ceased to exist had they remained in Ebbets Field.”
Once aware the New York politicians were dancing, he began looking West. Los Angeles was easily the most attractive territory. Almost immediately, Wrigley came to the rescue.
Wrigley’s Cubs owned the Los Angeles franchise in the Pacific Coast League. To hasten the move, Wrigley gave O’Malley the Los Angeles territory in exchange for Ft. Worth, where the Dodgers had a team in the Texas League.
O’Malley then snookered Los Angeles city officials, who awarded him title to 300 acres in Chavez Ravine, 10 minutes from downtown. And what did the City of Angels receive in the exchange? Wrigley’s L.A. Wrigley Field, a comparative pittance.
O’Malley had gained control of the Dodgers eight years earlier for what is believed to be an investment of not much more than $500,000. Like any smart businessman, he didn’t dig into his pocket. The construction cost of Dodger Stadium, $15 million, was funded by Union Oil for exclusive ballpark advertising rights.
It has been a baseball gold rush without compare. In seven of their first eight seasons they had a home gate in excess of 2 million. There have been seven seasons since when the home attendance exceeded 3 million, staggering numbers without precedent. More than likely, the purchase price of all the Dodgers’ properties will be about $300 million.
In 1985, Stanford economist Roger Noll was hired by the players’ union for an accounting of ownership value. Reported Noll: “The Dodgers are probably the most successful sports franchise that has ever been fielded. They are baseball’s answer to the Denver mint.”
O’Malley should take the money and run.
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