Quiet Family Man

In a city whose sports teams seem to be a magnet for unusual owners, Dodger owner Peter O’Malley has been a staid, gray island among his colorful peers.

O’Malley never had an acting and singing career like former Angel owner Gene Autry, the “Singing Cowboy” of movie, radio and TV fame. O’Malley didn’t make a quick fortune and buy the best player in the game, as former King owner Bruce McNall did in acquiring Wayne Gretzky--with ill-gotten money, as it turned out.

O’Malley never had the us-against-the-world attitude of Raider owner Al Davis or the mercurial nature and fashion-plate appearance of Ram owner Georgia Frontiere, who uprooted the club and moved it to St. Louis after inheriting it from her husband.

Don’t bother looking for tapes of O’Malley chatting with an actor in his seat behind the home team dugout at Dodger Stadium, as Clipper owner Donald Sterling often does courtside at the Sports Arena. And don’t sift through old newspapers for pictures of a champagne-soaked O’Malley hugging the winning pitcher in the clubhouse after a Dodger World Series championship, as Jerry Buss so often celebrated with his Lakers.

Such pictures, if they exist, are rare. O’Malley almost never visited the Dodger clubhouse. That was his players’ office. His office was upstairs, where he conducted business in his conservative, immaculately tailored suits.

“He came into the clubhouse very rarely, maybe to celebrate a World Series win or a playoff win,” former Dodger manager Tom Lasorda said. “That was the extent of it. But he always had time to talk to the players, especially in spring training. He was always at games.”

O’Malley didn’t use his ownership as a platform to espouse his political views, and he never used the media to chastise his managers. If that makes him dull, so be it.

“I care very much what people think. How they describe me is up to them,” he said Wednesday night, on the eve of selling to Rupert Murdoch’s Fox Group the club his family has owned for two generations.

“I like to think I was very much hands-on, but hopefully I did not get in my manager’s face,” said O’Malley, who became the club president in 1970 and took control of the team after the death of his father, Walter, in 1979. “I can’t compare myself to anyone over the last 29 years. I’m just pleased with the way we’ve gotten the job done the last 29 years.”

His approach certainly didn’t come from the bombastic, George Steinbrenner school of ownership. Merely comparing O’Malley’s sedate style to the New York Yankee owner’s headline-grabbing exploits drew guffaws from Lasorda.

“I’d describe [O’Malley] as a great owner, one of the finest anyone could ever work or play for,” Lasorda said. “He has built an organization with a family atmosphere and attitude.

“His door is always open to anyone who wants to see him. And if it isn’t open, that’s only because he’s in an important meeting. Everyone loves him.”

Notice Lasorda’s use of the present tense--not the past. That’s O’Malley’s attitude too. In a conversation the night before Thursday’s approval by major league owners, O’Malley sounded firmly rooted in the present, putting business before emotion and waiting for the right time to sort through his memories.

“I’m not going to talk about a legacy or any of that stuff,” he said. “Right now, I’m looking forward. I’m not looking back. . . .

“I’m happy I’ve been asked to stay on. I believe I can help and I’m looking forward to serving as board chairman and helping Fox. I really am convinced Fox will be not only a great owner of the Dodgers, but will make great contributions to baseball and will take advantage of what [huge corporations such as] Fox and Disney and Time Warner can bring to the party. It will all be very positive, and I’m sure they will succeed.

“For the last 50 years, for my dad and I, that’s a lifetime for a ballclub to be run by two people, a father and son. I wanted to be convinced anyone I brought forward would continue that tradition.”

He’s not sentimental--at least publicly. And in examining O’Malley’s stewardship, it’s clear he isn’t a lot of things.

For one, he isn’t an extrovert along the lines of his father, Walter, the bankruptcy lawyer who assumed ownership of the Brooklyn Dodgers almost by accident in 1950, when Peter was 12. Peter O’Malley is more reserved than his father, who had a touch of blarney and impishness in him. Then again, baseball has become more a business and less the old boys’ club it was in Walter’s day.

“We all have different styles, different eras, different approaches,” Peter said in explaining the difference between himself and the father he also considered a friend.

Peter was educated at Penn and its Wharton School of Finance, but he learned much of what he needed to know at the knee of his father, who combined with Branch Rickey to transform the downtrodden and debt-laden Dodgers from laughingstock into a first-class operation.

Lasorda remembers the young O’Malley hanging out at Dodgertown during spring training, observing everything. Peter continued his baseball education with an apprenticeship that began with running Dodgertown, where his job included supervising the care of the fields and the daily menus. He later operated the Dodgers’ farm team in Spokane, Wash., before joining his father at Dodger Stadium in 1967.

“He had the same philosophy as his father did,” Lasorda said. “His father was a very, very strong individual and a power in the game of baseball. . . . His father was always there to see you and help you in any way you needed, and so is Peter. When I went into the hospital with my heart [attack], he called me every day. When I went into the hospital to get my new knees, he called me every day. He always has time to see everyone.

“He’s a great family man and he has great faith. That man has made everyone proud to be associated with the Dodgers.”

The obvious link between father and son is their strong business acumen.

It was Walter O’Malley who saw the post-World War II migration from old, crowded cities to fresh suburban pastures. When the city of New York denied him the land he wanted for a domed stadium in Brooklyn and he rejected the city’s proposal that he move to the park where Shea Stadium now stands, he sought a new pasture of his own in Los Angeles. Luring Horace Stoneham’s Giants out West with him, he left for Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

There being no unexplored frontiers in North America, Peter set his sights on international vistas. Director of the L.A. World Affairs Council, he underwrote the cost of exhibition baseball games at the 1984 Olympics, built the first baseball-only stadium in China in 1986 and donated Dodger Stadium for use in the 1991 Olympic Sports Festival. Dodgertown has hosted players and coaches from Japan, South Korea, the Soviet Union and Africa. Under Peter O’Malley, the Dodgers pioneered the signings of players from Japan and South Korea.

Another area in which Peter is very much his father’s son is his attention to detail. Employees are trusted and customers are welcomed like family.

“He was always there for the fans, because he wanted to make sure the fans were happy and were well taken care of,” Lasorda said. “Anybody who ever wrote him a letter always got a letter back. Always.”

Walter was probably more a politician than Peter is. Walter was long considered the power behind whoever sat on the baseball commissioner’s throne--Bowie Kuhn was said to be strongly influenced by him--but Peter never sought that kind of power.

The things Peter O’Malley is not create an interesting picture of what he is--and how he has turned the Dodgers into an institution whose name carries the connotation of class and whose stadium is the jewel of the major leagues.

Under the O’Malleys, the Dodgers have won 13 National League pennants and six World Series titles. Through diligent scouting in Latin America and throughout the world, they have produced a steady stream of players from a farm system that has long been the model for the rest of baseball.

“I think I’m turning an organization over to Fox that is strong,” O’Malley said. “We have a lot of good, young players in the pipeline, and I’m pleased with the way the franchise is today, the state of it.”

His tenure makes a strong case for choosing staid over sensational, for stability over constant change and a revolving door of general managers and managers. How much more consistent can you be than to have Walter Alston manage for 23 years and his successor, Lasorda, for almost the next 20? How much more consistent can a team be in developing players than the Dodgers, who had streaks of four and five consecutive National League rookies of the year?

“This is going to be a sad day,” Lasorda said of the sale. “The other day, when they made the announcement Peter is going to be chairman of the board and stay, it brought tears for me because it made me realize there’s going to be some time, real soon, when he’s not going to be there. Speaking on behalf of myself, I’m going to miss him terribly.”

One link to the O’Malley family might remain. Kevin O’Malley, Peter’s 22-year-old son, is administrative assistant to the Class-A Vero Beach Dodgers. A Penn graduate like his father and grandfather, he also helps sell tickets and devise promotions, the same sort of non-heroic tasks Peter did at Vero Beach more than 30 years ago. Kevin’s siblings, Katherine and Brian, have worked for the Dodgers during summer vacations and were joined by some of the 10 children of Peter’s sister, Terry Seidler.

“I’d be proud and happy as can be if [Kevin] decided to stay with the organization,” O’Malley said. “How long he will stay is up to him.”

O’Malley’s tenure has played out in a fashion his father undoubtedly would have liked. The Dodgers have been innovative, competitive and profitable. Attending a Dodger game is one of the few common experiences in this dramatically diverse city, yet O’Malley won’t talk yet of his legacy.

“I don’t want to do a retrospective on this occasion,” he said. “There will be a time to reminisce, later. Let me just say I gave it my best and I’m pleased and proud of what we accomplished.

“This is a healthy and vibrant franchise in all respects, and I think Fox will do a great job and take it to the next level.”