Peter O'Malley

Infobox Person


image_size = 150px
name = Peter O'Malley
caption = Peter O'Malley in July of 2008
birth_date = Birth date and age|1937|12|12|mf=y
birth_place = flagicon|United States Brooklyn, NY
occupation = Former President and CEO of the Los Angeles Dodgers
spouse =
parents = Walter Francis O'Malley
Katherine Elizabeth Hanson (1907-1979)
sibling = Theresa "Terry" O'Malley Seidler

:"This article is about Peter O'Malley the baseball executive, for the Australian golfer, see Peter O'Malley (golfer) Peter O'Malley (born in December 12, 1937 in Brooklyn, New York) [cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Son Born to Walter O'Malleys. |url= |quote= |publisher=New York Times |date=December 25, 1937, Saturday |accessdate=2007-08-21 ] is the former president (1970-1998) and owner (1979-1998) of the Los Angeles Dodgers of American Major League Baseball.

Biography

He is the son of long-time Dodger owner Walter Francis O'Malley and Katherine Elizabeth "Kay" Hanson (1907-1979). Peter has a sister, Theresa "Terry" O'Malley Seidler (1933- ), who was co-owner of the team.

He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, where he was president of his fraternity Phi Gamma Delta, and from the Wharton School of Business in 1960. In 1962, Peter was named the director of Dodgertown, the team's spring training headquarters located in Vero Beach, Florida. In 1965, he became general manager of the minor league Spokane Indians of the Pacific Coast League, where many future Dodger stars and coaches were on the roster.

He subsequently moved to the major league club as director of stadium operations and then executive vice president. Peter took over the presidency of the Dodgers from his father in 1970, and became owner when his father died in 1979. On March 19, 1998, Rupert Murdoch and News Corporation acquired the team for what was alternately reported as $311 million or $350 million. This was the highest price ever paid for a US sports franchise at the time. cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title=Baseball's Blue Sale |url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,985797,00.html |quote=Forty years after his father removed the family business to L.A. from Brooklyn, Peter O'Malley announced that he was selling the firm -- namely, the Dodgers. |publisher=Time (magazine) |date=Monday, January 20, 1997 |accessdate=2007-08-21 ]

Peter O'Malley relinquished the club presidency to become chairman and CEO; he resigned those posts at the end of the 1998 baseball season. Murdoch appointed NewsCorp subsidiary's Fox Television executives to oversee the Dodgers, with mixed results. The sale was reported as an estate and tax planning move for the O'Malley family, as Terry had ten children and Peter three. None had immediately emerged as a candidate to succeed Peter, and he acknowledged that the new economics of the game had dictated that the days of family baseball ownership, without support of a separate corporation, were largely over. NewsCorp sold the Dodgers in 2004 for $430 million to Frank McCourt, a Boston developer.

Hallmarks of Peter O'Malley's baseball career were his deep involvement in the U.S. Little League program, his contribution to baseball's introduction as an Olympic sport, and his years of promotion of baseball globally, particularly in Latin America, Japan, and China, where a donation he made provided for construction of the country's first baseball stadium in 1986. Named Dodger Stadium, it is in the coastal city of Tianjin. He believed that these initiatives would benefit both the Dodgers and the future of American baseball in general. He has been widely credited with running the Dodgers as a professional, highly respected and emulated organization, operated with consistent methods and values, encompassed by a style known as "The Dodger Way." Among his unique business practices were treating his staff to ice cream at 2:00 P.M. every day that the Dodgers were in first place, and to overseas trips in the off-season after particularly successful years.

References