Walter O Malley

Walter O'Malley [the late Dodgers owner] had an unusual sense of humor. Each year, as dean of the USC School of Dentistry, I would approach O'Malley to contribute to the dental school building fund. And every year I would receive the same response: "I have two degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, John, and I'm on their board of trustees charged with raising money for Penn from Southern California." I'd always counter with, "That's true, Walter, but you earn your living in Los Angeles, not Philadelphia."

For close to half a century, the O'Malley name was synonymous with the Dodgers. As the Dodgers prepare to welcome new owners, Peter O'Malley and his family are considering whether to try to buy the San Diego Padres. "We are thinking about it," O'Malley told The Times on Tuesday. O'Malley sold the Dodgers in 1998, followed into ownership by News Corp. and Frank McCourt. When McCourt put the team up for sale last year, O'Malley unsuccessfully tried to buy it back. "Our family gave the Dodger pursuit everything we had," O'Malley said.

He is an older man now, weary after traveling from Dodger Stadium to a Best Western motel in upstate New York. But ask Billy DeLury to describe an important day in his life, and he brightly remembers why he made this trip. Ask him to describe a precious moment in his career, and he quickly explains why, today, for the first time in his 74 years, he will be sitting in a folding chair on a Cooperstown lawn for a Baseball Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Ask him to describe indelible, and he describes Walter O'Malley.

After failing in a bid to buy back the Dodgers, the team the O'Malley name was synonymous with for nearly half a century, Peter O'Malley and his family are contemplating a bid to buy the San Diego Padres. "We are thinking about it," O'Malley told The Times on Tuesday. O'Malley declined to discuss what his role would be should his family succeed in buying the Padres. But it appears unlikely that he would be a full-time chief executive, as he would have been had the Dodgers bid been successful.

THE TIME IS JANUARY, 1957, THE PLACE, WILSHIRE BOULEVARD, ON A WARM WINTER DAY with the sun shining through the windows of the Automobile Club of Southern California as the man pauses at the counter. This is a pleasant man with a full belly flopping over his out-of-fashion double-breasted suit. He is holding a cigar, which is stuck in a filterless white plastic holder, and an ash flops off onto his carelessly buttoned suit.

LOOKING back on it now, the Dodgers' move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in the late 1950s can be viewed in two vastly different lights: To get it done was the eighth wonder of the world. Once complete, it was the stage-setter for much that pro sports has become. To understand the story, we must first acquaint ourselves with the main mover and shaker, a man named Walter O'Malley, whose family was not that far removed in those days from County Mayo, Ireland.

If Dodgers owners Frank and Jamie McCourt were privately outraged at Arte Moreno's gall in renaming his Orange County team the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and shoving it in their face with billboards far beyond the Orange curtain, the thread of disenchantment stretches back to the beginning of major league baseball in Southern California. According to newspaper and book accounts supported by personal recollections and interviews, the late Walter O'Malley, who moved his storied team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958, never wanted an American League team in what he regarded as his new, private and lucrative territory or believed the AL had legal rights to it. Peter O'Malley, Walter's son, denies those accounts, but there is no denying that Los Angeles fans also failed to show much interest in the new Los Angeles team, which retained the familiar name of the Pacific Coast League Angels but knew from the start it would have to find a home of its own. Born out of baseball's first expansion, the Angels moved from the minor league facility that was Wrigley Field in 1961 to the new Dodger Stadium as tenants in 1962 and ultimately to their own Anaheim park in 1966.

Danny McDevitt, who left his imprint on baseball history by pitching the last game for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in 1957, died Saturday, two days after his 78th birthday. McDevitt, who lived in Social Circle, Ga., died at Newton Medical Center in nearby Covington, a hospital spokeswoman confirmed. The cause was not given. McDevitt was a rookie left-handed pitcher who had spent six seasons in the minor leagues for the New York Yankee and Dodger organizations before he was called up to the majors in June 1957.

I'm wondering how Tom Lasorda would like it if I used the vulgar language in front of his wife that he uses through the season in front of my family at the ballpark. I know it wouldn't happen if Walter O'Malley were still here. FRITZ TRITTEN Long Beach

Reporting from Visalia, Calif. -- The stadium is full, the players are limbering up on the unblemished grass and sausages are sizzling on the grill, sending an irresistible invitation into the springtime air. But Walter O'Malley's grandson hardly notices. On this Friday night, he has an 80-year-old tempest to contend with, and her name is Irene Burtlow. "Tom Seidler," Burtlow says, pointing a finger at his chest. "I have a bone to pick with you. I am not happy, not happy at all …" For decades at minor league baseball games in Visalia, members of the home team's booster club have passed a cap around the grandstand at Recreation Park, which fans fill with coins and dollar bills.

You can keep your fantasy baseball. I've seen a baseball fan's fantasy -- Peter O'Malley's office. The man whose family owned the Dodgers, of Brooklyn and of L.A., for nearly a half-century has, on one wall of his office, the bats from every championship Dodger team, bearing the names of every player on that team -- Koufax to Campanella. He has a framed 1947 letter to his father, Walter O'Malley, from Babe Ruth. The return address -- just "Babe Ruth, New York. " He has a model of Dodger Stadium, built before the real one by some studio craftsmen, a gift from director-producer Mervyn Leroy.

Just when you thought the soap opera that is the Los Angeles Dodgers couldn't get more ridiculous, reports came Thursday that embattled owner Frank McCourt had received a $1.2-billion offer for the club from L.A. businessman Bill Burke, with some unspecified share of that $1.2 billion to come from "certain state-owned investment institutions of the People's Republic of China," according to the letter from Burke's group to McCourt. The purported parties to the deal aren't talking about it. But if such a deal were to go through — and it would first have to pass muster with Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig as well the bankruptcy court — the Dodgers would become the very symbol of the decline of American capitalism.

Reporting from Visalia, Calif. -- The stadium is full, the players are limbering up on the unblemished grass and sausages are sizzling on the grill, sending an irresistible invitation into the springtime air. But Walter O'Malley's grandson hardly notices. On this Friday night, he has an 80-year-old tempest to contend with, and her name is Irene Burtlow. "Tom Seidler," Burtlow says, pointing a finger at his chest. "I have a bone to pick with you. I am not happy, not happy at all …" For decades at minor league baseball games in Visalia, members of the home team's booster club have passed a cap around the grandstand at Recreation Park, which fans fill with coins and dollar bills.

Major League Baseball's takeover of the Los Angeles Dodgers raises the question of who might be the team's next owners. It's the hope of many Angelenos that the O'Malley family, which owned the storied franchise for nearly half a century, will return to the front office in some capacity. But whoever the next owners turn out to be, they should adopt the O'Malley approach of promoting a family-friendly atmosphere at Dodger Stadium and emphasizing player development at home and abroad, with the ultimate goal of restoring the team's tradition of regular World Series appearances.

When Dodger Stadium opened 49 years ago, historian Kevin Starr observed, it was "state of the art," from its "column-free construction" and "unobstructed view of home plate from every seat" to its "escalators serving four levels" and "comfortable seats for fans. " There was just one problem, he noted: There were no drinking fountains. Well, actually there were two, one in each team's dugout. But, of course, the fans in the 56,000-seat ballpark were not allowed to get in line with the players when they needed a sip. One ticket-holder at the April 10, 1962, opener complained afterward to The Times that when she asked a Dodgers employee where she could get a drink of water, she was told she was welcome to use any of the taps in the ladies' rooms.

Danny McDevitt, who left his imprint on baseball history by pitching the last game for the Brooklyn Dodgers at Ebbets Field in 1957, died Saturday, two days after his 78th birthday. McDevitt, who lived in Social Circle, Ga., died at Newton Medical Center in nearby Covington, a hospital spokeswoman confirmed. The cause was not given. McDevitt was a rookie left-handed pitcher who had spent six seasons in the minor leagues for the New York Yankee and Dodger organizations before he was called up to the majors in June 1957.

For close to half a century, the O'Malley name was synonymous with the Dodgers. As the Dodgers prepare to welcome new owners, Peter O'Malley and his family are considering whether to try to buy the San Diego Padres. "We are thinking about it," O'Malley told The Times on Tuesday. O'Malley sold the Dodgers in 1998, followed into ownership by News Corp. and Frank McCourt. When McCourt put the team up for sale last year, O'Malley unsuccessfully tried to buy it back. "Our family gave the Dodger pursuit everything we had," O'Malley said.

Congratulations to Bob Oates on an excellent column regarding Al Davis and Walter O'Malley. It's pretty clear that Davis is the key to getting the Coliseum upgraded to a modern playing facility. If he leaves, as Oates explained, the arena will continue to deteriorate. Let's press forward in a last-ditch attempt to keep the Raiders here. The city will benefit in the long run, as will Southern California as a whole. BILL HETHERMAN Diamond Bar

The Giants have the most beautiful field in baseball in a great neighborhood, a great nucleus of likeable young players who actually play above their potential, and a World Series championship. The Dodgers have the traffic jam also known as Chavez Ravine, Matt Kemp and his whining agent, and the McCourts. As a lifelong Dodgers fan, I hope all of the idiots yelling "Giants Suck" at our home games take a moment to think about this before starting that chant again. Like the team on the field and their owners, they are an embarrassment to Los Angeles.

If Los Angeles City Councilwoman Janice Hahn has her way, Dodger Stadium is going to have to build a bigger owner's box. Hahn, whose late father, L.A. County Supervisor Kenneth Hahn, was instrumental in wooing the Dodgers to Los Angeles in 1958, said she would like to see Congress change the laws so that the fans could buy stock in the Dodgers and be the owners. "It's been a painful year for the Dodgers," Hahn said. "I think the performance on the field really reflected that the parents were fighting.