Walter Francis O'Malley was born on October 9, 1903, in Bronx, New York, the son of Edwin J. O'Malley and Alma Feltner. He was the only child of a successful dry goods merchant and one-time commissioner of public markets. His father went bankrupt in 1929.
O'Malley received his secondary education at the Culver Military Academy in Indiana. A gifted student, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with an engineering degree in 1926. He was attending Fordham University Law School when his father went bankrupt in 1929, but by working three part-time jobs, O'Malley earned his law degree in 1930.
During the Great Depression, O'Malley built a lucrative legal practice by specializing in bankruptcies. That work and his investments made him a multimillionaire. He owned the New York Subways Advertising Company, was co-owner of a building supply company and a building block company, and invested in a railroad, a utility, and a brewery. He later served on the boards of several banks and corporations.
O'Malley's involvement with major league baseball began in 1941 when the Brooklyn Trust Company, a major creditor of the Brooklyn Dodgers baseball club, chose him to succeed Wendell Willkie as attorney for the club. As his fascination with baseball increased, O'Malley acquired one-quarter of the team's stock shares by 1944 and soon devoted his full energy to its fortunes. By 1950, having become the team's principal owner, O'Malley forced his rival, Branch Rickey, to sell his quarter-interest in the club for $1. 05 million and resign as club president. Over the next seven years, O'Malley presided over the National League's most victorious and prosperous franchise, a team that accounted for 44 percent of the league's gross profits and annually attracted over a million fans to the club's aging Ebbets Field.
In a large measure O'Malley's business acumen and personal involvement in the club's operations accounted for this success. A demanding owner, O'Malley assembled a corps of loyal subordinates, including vice-presidents Fresco Thompson and Emil J. ("Buzzy") Bavasi, who served for many years. So did Walter Alston, whom O'Malley chose to be the team's field manager in 1954. Although Alston never enjoyed the security of a multiyear contract, O'Malley annually renewed Alston's contract for the next twenty-two seasons, during which time the Dodgers won seven National League pennants and four World Series championships. While profiting from his Dodger operations, O'Malley also became a powerful figure in the major league baseball establishment.
By serving on key committees, including a twenty-eight-year stint with the owners' powerful Executive Council, he became the game's leading policymaker. More powerful than any baseball commissioner of his time, O'Malley contributed to the ouster of Commissioner A. B. ("Happy") Chandler in 1950 and to the appointment of three successor commissioners, each of whom deferred to O'Malley's advice on such important matters as the expansion of the major leagues, the establishment of divisional playoff series, the negotiating of national television contracts, and collective bargaining with the Major League Players Association.
As a baseball innovator O'Malley was the catalyst behind the expansion of the major leagues when he decided to move the Dodgers from their long-established Brooklyn location to Los Angeles. In the mid-1950's he fretted over the limited financial prospects of his Dodgers' Ebbets Field location. Inspired by the examples of three owners who had profited by relocating their teams, he sought to transfer his team to a larger stadium with more abundant parking facilities. To this end he pressured New York City officials to provide him with an acceptable site where he could build a modern park. He underscored his determination to move in 1953 when he sold Ebbets Field to a realtor, then took a five-year lease on the old park. In 1957, when this threatening decision failed to persuade city officials to provide a suitable location, O'Malley struck a tentative deal with a Los Angeles official for a promising site and acquired the territorial rights to the Los Angeles area by purchasing the minor league Los Angeles Angels franchise from the Chicago Cubs. The Los Angeles City Council ceded 300 acres of land for O'Malley's proposed stadium project and agreed to spend almost $4. 75 million for improvements. In return O'Malley deeded the Angels' stadium to the city and agreed to pay an annual property tax of $350, 000 when his privately financed park was completed. A complex settlement, the matter was not fully resolved until 1958, when a public referendum approved the deal by a narrow margin.
O'Malley's scheme to relocate the Dodgers to Los Angeles included the transfer of the New York Giants to San Francisco. In obtaining the National League's permission for these relocations, the owners' influence in league councils was decisive. O'Malley successfully defended the westward movements before a congressional subcommittee in 1957. The public announcement of the impending departures of the Dodgers and Giants evoked a storm of angry criticism. But O'Malley's West Coast movement transformed major league baseball from a regional to a truly national presence and hastened the expansion of the major leagues to twenty-eight teams, including six West Coast clubs, by 1993.
Once removed to Los Angeles in 1958, the Dodgers played their next four seasons at the Memorial Coliseum, a converted football field, while awaiting the construction of Dodger Stadium. Despite the Coliseum's inadequacies as a baseball park, the Dodgers drew 1. 8 million fans in 1958, and the following year a record total of 270, 000 fans jammed the Coliseum to watch the Dodgers win three World Series games. In 1962, O'Malley opened his new $20 million Dodger Stadium, a structure he designed and financed. That year the Dodgers set a major league attendance record by hosting 2. 7 million spectators. Over the next seventeen seasons, during which time the team won six National League championships and two World Series titles, annual attendance averaged better than 2 million and included a seasonal record of more than 3. 3 million.
For this enviable achievement, some critics credited merely the team's location in the nation's second most populous urban region, but O'Malley's promotional skills enhanced this advantage. O'Malley offered the lowest ticket prices, sold the most season tickets, set the highest standards for park maintenance, and profited more from concession sales than ticket sales. But his zeal for profits was sometimes excessive. Thus critics forced him to provide drinking fountains at the park and faulted him for negotiating a lucrative local television contract that allowed the fewest games to be televised of any club. And when the major leagues expanded to twenty teams by 1962, O'Malley permitted the new American League California Angels to enter his Los Angeles territory, but his penurious policies as that team's landlord soon persuaded the Angels to relocate in Anaheim.
When O'Malley turned over the presidency of the Dodgers to his son Peter in 1970, his franchise was valued at $50 million. Until his death from heart disease in Rochester, Minnesota, O'Malley continued to serve as the Dodgers' board chairman and remained an influential force in baseball.
Being the owner of the Dodgers, Walter O'Malley moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles and coordinated the move of the New York Giants to San Francisco. O'Malley designed and financed building of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Walter O'Malley received the first Busch Award in 1975. O'Malley was elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2008.
On Sept. 15, 1931, Walter O'Malley married Katherine Hanson; they had two children.
