No Shock: O’Malley Does It With Class

No “For Sale” sign was waiting outside 1000 Elysian Park Ave. when employees drove up Monday morning for work. There was no Century 21 sign, no real estate agent’s shingle, no “CALL PETER (213) 224-1500” warning of what was up. There was only an e-mail message from Bob Graziano, the baseball team’s vice president of finance, notifying everyone to come to the Stadium Club for an 11 a.m. staff meeting.

Traversing the ballpark’s Club Level ramp to the far right-field corner, no Dodger employee seemed on pins and needles. Such gatherings are not uncommon. Oh, sure, everyone was aware that Mr. O’Malley was going to be conducting the meeting himself, but nothing was in the wind except the Chavez Ravine palms. The place wasn’t abuzz, as when Tom Lasorda called it quits, or when Darryl Strawberry came and went.

Peter O’Malley stepped to a podium, flanked by two jumbo-screen TVs. He wore a charcoal suit, crisply pressed. None of those George Steinbrenner turtlenecks for Peter, not that Ted Turner ball cap turned inside out, no Marge Schott mutt on a leash. That was never the Dodger president’s style. And neither was leaving his employees the last to know, when something big affecting their baseball team was about to be announced.

He gave them the news, that the corporation known as Los Angeles Dodgers Inc. was officially for sale, lock, stock and Dodger Dogs. Persons interested in purchasing an authentic National League baseball club--bats, balls, diamond, DiamondVision, 300 acres, everything but the Union 76 gas pumps--could do so, if they were the right bidders. All they needed do was dial O, for O’Malley.

“The ballclub has not been for sale for 50 years, and I could not begin that process without first telling our longtime employees, players, fans and sponsors,” O’Malley would emphasize later, when he went public with one of the biggest prospective auctions since the estate of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Not a yard sale. A ballyard sale.

But with dignity, for Peter O’Malley, 59, would do business no other way.

“It will not be a circus. It will be very professional,” he made clear.

Most of his employees were, to mix in a football aphorism, thrown for a loss. Public speculation as to a Dodger sale had been not minimal, but nil. Much of the talk had been of teams Peter O’Malley might buy, not sell. His interest in professional football was hardly a secret, although his word had been given to L.A.’s politicians that he would not interfere with their proposals to restore the Coliseum, not erect in the Ravine.

The surprise was considerable, to most.

“He did?” Donald T. Sterling, owner of the NBA’s Clippers, reacted at hearing O’Malley had put the Dodgers up for sale.

For years, speculators have figured the Clippers as a team that would change hands, but it was hockey’s Kings who did, then baseball’s Angels, while football’s Raiders and Rams moved away. Even during baseball’s leanest, meanest times, few suspected publicly that O’Malley could be tempted to wash his hands of it for good, not with baseball in his blood, the way it was.

“He’s one of the good guys,” Sterling said admiringly. “Peter O’Malley is an owner of the highest integrity. He said what he meant, and meant what he said.”

This is a gentleman--often the word does not apply, but in this case it’s apt--whose family had owned and run the organization for 47 years, from Ebbets Field to Chavez Ravine. Back in Brooklyn, they were “Dem Bums.” Opening new territory in the West, they were known by less coarse names, the True Blue Crew and such. Once they were known for Jackie Robinson’s fire and Duke Snider’s ice. Later they were known for Walter Alston’s calm and Lasorda’s storm.

Lost in the shadows, typically, was Peter O’Malley, years younger than Lasorda but older in manner, favoring conservatism over enthusiasm. His public profile was a ghost’s, contrasted with that of Steinbrenner, Turner, Schott, fellow and sister owners who found the spotlight and occasionally even sought it. Ask the average Dodger fan to identify Harry M. Bardt, an investment banker who died in November at 97, or Terry and Roland Seidler, sister and brother-in-law, respectively, of O’Malley, and very few would recognize them as the Los Angeles Dodgers’ board of directors. Theirs is a low-profile, nearly no-profile, hierarchy.

Peter O’Malley has stepped to the forefront, now and then.

He wouldn’t tolerate it when a Dodger player was an accomplice, unwitting or otherwise, in an incident involving an explosive device, tossed by a visiting team’s player near a group of fans in the stadium parking lot. He didn’t care for it when Dodger fans were the ones who misbehaved, tossing souvenir baseballs onto the field until a game with St. Louis was lost by forfeit. On those occasions, Mr. O’Malley spoke his mind.

Otherwise, he seemed content to represent the Dodgers on international business, to try to break out new territory there, as his father had in the Western United States. He takes pride in directing something called the L.A. World Affairs Council, and in being the first president of a city firm to be invited to join the Korean-American Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles, without actually being Korean.

Journeys to far-off Asia, South America, the Caribbean, these were the road trips of Peter O’Malley’s baseball life.

His home base? Wherever the Dodgers were.

That began “when my dad became president, when I think I was 14 years old,” he said Monday.

“I was born into this game, and I’ve loved every minute of it.”

To most, his decision to sell was unforeseeable.

To his right-hand man, Fred Claire, the team’s executive vice president, it was, “Mmmm, I can’t say a total surprise. This certainly was a possibility, I felt. A surprise, yes, but not a shock.”

Someone else owning the Dodgers will seem as strange as Steve Garvey playing first base for the Padres, or Fernando Valenzuela pitching for the Phillies, or Ron Cey batting for the Cubs, or Orel Hershiser pitching for the Indians. But baseball is a revolving, evolving world, in which anything, we are often told, can happen. If nobody imagined Peter O’Malley not owning the Los Angeles Dodgers, well, nobody imagined Walter O’Malley moving them from Brooklyn, either.

“My dad and I had a great relationship,” O’Malley flashed back. “It was almost friend to friend, as well as father and son. I think today he would hear what I said, and tell me, ‘Peter, it’s your call.’ He would say, ‘Think it through,’ which I think I’ve done. ‘Think it through, and then I’ll support you 100%.’ ”

The Dodgers have made many deals in their day. They have wheeled and dealt, bought and sold, borrowed and traded. Never before, however, have the Los Angeles Dodgers offered themselves in a deal, 100% of them, for an owner to be named later.