Word: malleys
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...California gold fields. Nothing betrays the brash architect of baseball's biggest revolution since a Brooklyn pitcher named "Candy" Cummings fired the first curve and separated the men from the bushers. A Bronx-born Giant fan who seldom bothered to go to a ballpark, Walter O'Malley went to work for the Dodgers as an attorney. "Why, I don't think he even knows what Duke Snider makes," snorts the Dodgers' Vice President and General Manager Emil ("Buzzy") Bavasi. "He leaves all that to me." But tomorrow he may well be the boss of the league...
...Walter has done so far is reorganize the national pastime. He has separated two of the most colorful clubs in the majors from two of the gaudiest congregations of fans anywhere in the land. As a result, wherever people recognize the name, no one is neutral about O'Malley. But last week, as O'Malley counted the house, he could conclude that he was ahead of the game: complaints about his actions might still be pouring in, but so was the California cash...
...Malley agrees with the diagnosis. But rebuilding the team, he argues, was impossible so long as his base of operations was the stained and gloomy pile of masonry hard by Prospect Park. "Look at it this way," says he. "Brooklyn draws a million people. Milwaukee draws two and a quarter million. Results: 1) they can pay their players more; 2) they can absorb more farm club losses; 3) they can have more front-office talent; 4) they can buy more bonus players. The momentum is Milwaukee's. Obviously, we have deteriorated into a noncontending ball club. I decided that...
Dodger Fan. The very thought of the cribbed, cabined and confined spaces of Ebbets Field has long filled O'Malley with horror. As far back as 1947, when he was still only a minority stockholder, he ordered an engineering firm to design a new stadium with a revolutionary dome that would end the losing phenomenon of the rained-out game. "It was treated facetiously by the press," recalls O'Malley ruefully. "But why should we treat baseball fans like cattle? I came to the conclusion years ago that we in baseball were losing our audience and weren...
...that point O'Malley had no thought of building his new pleasure dome anywhere but in Brooklyn. He would be satisfied, he said, with the land around the Long Island Rail Road station at the west end of Brooklyn. That ancient terminal, he figured, would soon have to be rebuilt anyway; it would do no harm to tear down the adjacent slums, and the nearby Fort Greene meat market was long overdue for relocation. All O'Malley asked was land, condemned and handed over to him cheap. So in March of 1955 Democrat O'Malley rounded...