Walter O'Malley - Dodgers

Dodgers

McLaughlin had been New York City Police Commissioner in 1926, knew O'Malley's father, and had attended Philadelphia Athletics games with O'Malley when O'Malley was still at the University of Pennsylvania. McLaughlin hired O'Malley to administer mortgage foreclosures against failing businesses for the Trust Company. O'Malley earned McLaughlin's confidence by acting in numerous capacities including bodyguard, valet, chauffeur, adopted son, confidant and right-hand man. The trust company owned the estate of Charles Ebbets, who had died in 1925 and owned half of the Brooklyn Dodgers. It was 1933 when Walter again met George V. McLaughlin, president of the Brooklyn Trust Company. O'Malley was chosen to protect the company's financial interests in the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1933. O'Malley also served as designated driver for the hard drinking McLaughlin. It was through McLaughlin that Walter was brought into the financial arrangements for Ebbets Field in 1940. In 1942, when Larry MacPhail resigned as general manager to serve in the United States Army as a Lieutenant colonel, O'Malley was appointed the attorney for the Dodgers, and he obtained a minority ownership interest on November 1, 1944. He purchased twenty five percent as did Rickey and John L. Smith (President of Pfizer Chemical), while the heirs of Stephen McKeever retained the final quarter. In 1943, he replaced Wendell Willkie as chief legal counsel. Branch Rickey, who had built the St. Louis Cardinals into champions, replaced MacPhail, and O'Malley began to accumulate stock in the Dodgers.

Rickey was a conservative teetotaler, while O'Malley freely enjoyed vices such as alcoholic beverages and tobacco. As O'Malley became more involved in affairs, he became critical of Rickey, the highest-paid individual in baseball, counting salary, attendance bonuses, and player contract sales commissions. O'Malley and Rickey had very different backgrounds and philosophies. It was O'Malley who put pressure on Rickey to fire manager Leo Durocher, who O'Malley felt was a drain on attendance. In board of directors meetings, O'Malley also opposed Rickey's extravagances. When he was with his political friends, he made fun of Rickey at every chance. Daily News columnist Jimmy Powers would deride Rickey for selling off players and for general miserliness. When Rickey asked O'Malley, the team lawyer, if he should sue, O'Malley said no. Powers campaign became so public that after the 1946 season Rickey gave each player a new Studebaker, which gave O'Malley, a Dodgers shareholder, reason to speak ill of Rickey in the press. It got to the point where everything Rickey did was something O'Malley derided: O'Malley thought Rickey's construction of the state of the art Vero Beach spring training facility, known as Dodgertown, was extravagant; he thought Rickey's investment in the Brooklyn Dodgers of the All-America Football Conference was questionable; he fought Rickey on the team's beer sponsor; and he demanded that players return their 1947 World Series rings before receiving the new one's Rickey ordered. As team lawyer, O'Malley had a role in breaking the racial barrier as well. In particular, he had a significant role in Rickey's top-secret search for suitable ballplayers to break the color barrier and then later he had a role in assessing the on-going legal risks to the franchise.