The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum turned 85 on Wednesday, and a birthday gift as weighty because it was beneficiant was dispatched to Cooperstown, N.Y., by the household of legendary Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley.
Seventy back-breaking packing containers of paperwork and pictures comprise the Walter O’Malley Archives, offering a street map of the Dodgers franchise from Brooklyn, N.Y., to Los Angeles by manner of annual spring coaching in Vero Beach, Fla.
The cigar-chomping, unfailingly upbeat O’Malley owned the Dodgers from 1944 till he died in 1979 and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2008. The archive was assembled and curated by Peter O’Malley and Terry O’Malley Seidler, Walter O’Malley’s son and daughter who took over management of the franchise after their father’s loss of life.
“There are a lot of things in those boxes, a lot of paper,” Peter O’Malley informed The Times. “I know what is there. In my opinion, it’s an extraordinary collection. It’s about the franchise on his watch as well as insights into him.”
Walter O’Malley, who owned the Dodgers from 1944 till he died in 1979, is proven along with his spouse, Kay.
(National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)
Doing all that paper justice will take time, and that’s simply what the Hall of Fame can present. Known primarily for its splendid shows of memorabilia that inform the tales of baseball greats and the historical past of the sport, the Hall of Fame also includes a research library containing greater than 3 million paperwork, 250,000 images and 16,000 hours of recorded media.
Peter O’Malley, 86, stated he has lengthy admired the Hall of Fame, and, whereas downsizing a house workplace final yr, concluded that his father’s meticulously saved and curated archives ought to reside in Cooperstown.
“We asked ourselves, ‘OK, what are we going to do with all of this?’” Peter stated. “I’m a big fan of the Hall of Fame. It’s an extraordinary treasure, and we made the decision that it all belongs there.”
Peter obtained an enthusiastic response from Hall of Fame President Josh Rawitch, whose profession started within the Dodgers’ media relations division. The thought of acquiring a Hall of Fame govt’s information in mint situation was thrilling.
“When you get to see the papers up close and personal, you see what [Walter O’Malley] was like as a person and what the world was like in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s,” Rawitch stated.
Of explicit word is O’Malley’s hand-written and typed correspondence in a pre-digital age — his efforts to preserve the franchise in Brooklyn amid an ultimately scuttled plan to construct a domed stadium there; the politics of his his audacious notion to move the team to L.A. and build Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine; breaking the color barrier with the signing of not only Jackie Robinson however Roy Campanella, Don Newcombe, Maury Wills and different Black gamers; the creation of Dodgertown in Vero Beach, the primary totally built-in spring coaching facility within the South; and creating relationships with Japanese baseball executives by repeatedly making visits, together with twice hauling all the Dodgers workforce throughout the Pacific for goodwill exhibitions.
Also tucked within the packing containers are O’Malley’s appointment books from 1934 to 1979.
“It’s a common thread and absolutely amazing,” Peter stated. “In 1934, he buys a date book, and every year thereafter he buys an identical one except for the year on the cover. Everything he did, every meeting, every phone call, was documented.”
Not all the pieces is as dry as appointment books. Long earlier than texts and e-mail, private letters had been the popular mode of speaking with mates and enterprise associates. Missives to and from O’Malley with a broad vary of baseball and present enterprise elites — Babe Ruth, Casey Stengel, Frank Sinatra, Johnny Carson and Milton Berle to title however a number of — are principally temporary and infrequently pithy, resembling textual content messages with out emojis however with simply as many misspelled phrases.
“We didn’t know anybody in California when we moved here,” Peter stated. “The sense of humor in the letters he exchanged with politicians, actors, writers and baseball folks helped him make friends.”
The Dodgers have their very own archival assortment of objects from O’Malley’s possession and far of it’s on show all through Dodger Stadium however totally on the membership degree behind the press field. Although there’s some crossover, the O’Malley gift to the Hall of Fame is primarily private correspondence, whereas the Dodgers maintained possession of enterprise correspondence.
All of it ought to make clear the towering presence of O’Malley, who was beloved by Dodgers gamers, workers and followers for his compassionate management and a spotlight to element. He was, nonetheless, reviled in Brooklyn, blamed for transferring “Dem Bums” to L.A.
Walter O’Malley has a plaque on the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.
(National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum)
In explaining why one of probably the most influential homeowners in baseball historical past was not elected to the Hall of Fame until nearly 30 years after his death, Peter pointed to lingering resentment over the Dodgers departure from Brooklyn. Documents within the archives, he believes, inform a special story.
“I don’t think anyone worked harder to keep his franchise in the original city than he did,” Peter stated.
O’Malley and the Dodgers had been welcomed in L.A., though how Chavez Ravine turned the location for Dodger Stadium is a stain on the city’s history. The space was populated principally by lower-income Mexican Americans who had been barred by discriminatory practices from residing elsewhere within the metropolis. In 1950, eight years earlier than the Dodgers relocated from Brooklyn, L.A. housing officials decided to turn the area into a huge public housing project and compelled current residents to relocate by shopping for their houses for below-market money provides or by taking properties via eminent area proceedings.
By the time the Dodgers moved to L.A. forward of the 1958 season, the general public housing plan had been scuttled and Chavez Ravine sat empty. O’Malley noticed it as an interesting location to construct a baseball stadium, labored a sweetheart cope with the town and sweated out a referendum on the June 3, 1958, poll that narrowly handed. Dodger Stadium opened in 1962.
Peter O’Malley believes his father’s archives assist decipher the sequence of occasions that resulted within the stadium being constructed on floor unjustly taken by the town years earlier than the Dodgers moved to L.A.
“Chavez Ravine, the facts are the facts, and we have the facts,” he stated. “Particularly today, that’s appropriate. The [other MLB] owners gave him approval to move. The files show he was thinking about Wrigley Field or the Coliseum or the Rose Bowl, and the public housing issue occurred long before he’d ever heard of Chavez Ravine.”
Scholars, historians and plain previous baseball buffs could have ample alternative to look at each doc in these 70 packing containers. The Hall of Fame invitations every body to go to and keep some time.
“We are honored to accept this remarkable donation and are grateful in so many ways to the O’Malley/Seidler family for their longtime support of the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum,” Hall of Fame board Chair Jane Forbes Clark stated.
“During Walter O’Malley’s stewardship of the Dodgers, the franchise was at the center of many of baseball’s most historic moments on and off the field. … [The archives will give] researchers and historians a firsthand look at events that changed the face of the game.”