O’Malley Stuns Sports World, L.A.; Puts Dodgers Up for Sale

In a move that rocked the baseball world and signaled the end of one of the great family-owned dynasties in American enterprise, Peter O’Malley announced Monday that he plans to sell the city’s most celebrated and successful sports franchise, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

“It’s like a death in the family,” said former City Councilwoman Roz Wyman, who worked with the O’Malley family to help bring the Dodgers to Los Angeles for the 1958 season, beginning an era that changed not only the face of the city but also the scope of professional sports in the United States.

During the 47-year reign of the O’Malleys, the Dodgers became the first Major League Baseball franchise to move to the West Coast, abandoning Brooklyn and heralding a succession of later franchise moves that helped to turn professional sports into a multibillion-dollar, bicoastal industry. The Dodgers brought cachet and class to a burgeoning metropolis of freeways and bean fields that was widely regarded in the late 1950s as a cultural wasteland.

“It finally occurred to me that this is the time [to sell],” O’Malley said Monday during a press conference at Dodger Stadium, the baseball edifice that his father, Walter, built with the city’s help in 1962. “If you look at all sports, it’s a high-risk business. Professional sports today is as high risk as the oil business. You need a broader base than an individual family to carry you through the storm.”

The Dodgers are the last Major League Baseball team wholly owned by a single family. The other 25 are held by partnerships or large corporations, a trend that has accelerated in recent decades because of the vast sums of money involved in signing free-agent players.

After alluding to those changing dynamics, O’Malley, 59, said he discussed the team with his family over the holidays and reached a decision late last week. The team would present a heavy tax burden to his family if he were to die, O’Malley said.

“The thought [of selling] has been in my mind for a while, but with a lot more frequency lately,” O’Malley said.

A genial, unemotional O’Malley insisted there were no other, hidden reasons for selling the franchise, which analysts believe could fetch more than $300 million, including the stadium and other property.

O’Malley had been involved for a time in negotiations with Los Angeles officials to explore the possibility of building a new football stadium on Dodgers’ property. But O’Malley said he agreed to shelve those plans after city leaders decided to concentrate on using the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum to lure a new National Football League team.

O’Malley said he has no pending offers for the Dodgers, has not set a price, and has yet to begin negotiations with any would-be buyers. He predicted that it might take six months to find a new owner, and he vowed to try to make the deal unfold with as little turmoil as possible.

The announcement raised immediate concerns among some officials that the team might leave Los Angeles, but O’Malley promised he would find a buyer that would keep the team in town.

“I’m proud of what we accomplished,” O’Malley said. “I want somebody now to not only recognize that, but enhance that and take it to a higher level.”

Speculation about potential bidders for the storied franchise centered on entertainment giants such as Sony Corp., Viacom or Seagram Corp., which owns Universal Studios. Such firms could combine the baseball team with other attractions in an expanded stadium or multiuse sports complex that could be put to use 180 to 200 dates a year, nearly double that of a baseball-only stadium, analysts said.

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The property for sale includes the National League franchise, the stadium and surrounding 300 acres and a spring-training complex in Vero Beach, Fla., and other facilities in the Dominican Republic. The package might be worth at least $300 million and as much as $500 million, according to baseball analysts.

The record for the highest price for the sale of a baseball franchise is $173 million--set when the Baltimore Orioles changed hands in 1993. When Walter O’Malley bought the Dodgers in 1950, he paid $1.4 million.

Michael Megna, a Wisconsin-based professional sports appraiser, said the luster of the Dodgers’ franchise--which has won six World Series championships and 18 National League pennants both in Brooklyn and Los Angeles--could invite any number of unexpected participants in the bidding.

“You may see players who never indicated any interest before,” he said.

O’Malley’s frustration with baseball’s chronic labor unrest and the spiraling costs of staying competitive were no secret to those around him. While trying to keep his player payroll at about $37 million, he watched one rival club--the Florida Marlins--shell out $117 million this winter to sign players to long-term contracts.

Even so, O’Malley’s decision to leave the game saddened and troubled many in the Dodgers’ organization.

“Let’s face it,” said center fielder Brett Butler, “the L.A. Dodgers are not the L.A. Dodgers without the O’Malley name attached to it. . . . You’ve got to wonder where baseball is going.”

Under the O’Malleys, the Dodgers were a model of stability in a sometimes-ruthless industry. While many other franchises seemed to change managers almost every year, the Dodgers have employed only three skippers since 1954.

Tom Lasorda, who spent nearly 20 years as manager before becoming a vice president last year, said: “There’s a lot of people in this organization that are really broken-hearted, and I’m one of them. . . . It’s tough for me to even look ahead. It’s going to be different now--a lot different.”

Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully, another Dodgers institution who joined the team in 1950, expressed sadness not only for the organization but for the city, as well.

“I know how much [the O’Malleys] truly cared about the relationship between the team and community, and the obligations they felt they had,” Scully said. “I also feel sorry for baseball, because the O’Malleys were not in the cable business or department stores or real estate; their whole business world was baseball.

“To lose someone who is so committed is bad for the game. . . . There’s a very empty feeling in my house tonight and there will be for a long time to come.”

City officials said they were equally surprised by O’Malley’s announcement.

“I’m in shock. The Dodgers without the O’Malley family is like an eagle without wings,” Councilman Nate Holden said. “Let’s hope he’ll change his mind. I think the city should do everything it can to persuade him to change his mind.”

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Councilman Joel Wachs, who has been battling a city subsidy for a new sports arena complex downtown, said the Dodgers and the O’Malleys represented the best in professional sports.

“This is a bad blow for the city and a bad blow for professional sports,” Wachs said. “It’s really sad that someone like O’Malley, who has run a model operation, participated in the community [and] kept ticket prices low . . . is going to be forced out by the economics of professional sports.”

Mayor Richard Riordan’s press office issued a statement paying tribute to the O’Malley family. It said in part:

“I respect Peter’s decision and have great faith that he will find a new owner who shares his commitment to and love for Los Angeles.”

The Dodgers--originally named for wary pedestrians who were forced to dodge the clattering trolley cars of Brooklyn--became one of the mythic teams in American sports.

Playing in tiny Ebbets Field, the Dodgers were the fabled team of Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s long-established “color barrier” in 1947 by becoming the first African American to play in the major leagues.

Robinson’s presence put an added spotlight on a club that also exhibited uncommon excellence. Throughout the 1950s, the Brooklyn Dodgers challenged the best in baseball, but only once--in 1955--did they manage to defeat their inter-borough rivals, the New York Yankees. Three other times in the 1950s, the Brooklyn Dodgers reached the World Series, only to lose to the Yankees.

“You may glory in a team triumphant, but you fall in love with a team in defeat,” wrote Roger Kahn, whose memoir of those times, “The Boys of Summer,” is regarded as a literary classic. “Losing after great striving is the story of man, who was born to sorrow, whose sweetest songs tell of saddest thought, and who, if he is a hero, does nothing in life as becomingly as leaving it.”

Of those heroic Brooklyn Dodgers, Kahn concluded: “Their skills lifted everyman’s spirit and their defeat joined them with everyman’s existence, a national team, with a country in thrall, irresistible and unable to beat the Yankees.”

The man behind that team, Walter Francis O’Malley, who was 75 when he died in 1979, emerged in Kahn’s account as a jowly, complex, far-sighted and manipulative man who changed baseball forever when he brought the Dodgers to the West Coast.

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Walter O’Malley’s grand vision for the game included a strong stand against racism and a rigid adherence to capitalistic principles. He paid scrupulous attention to image and cleverly worked the media to assure the most favorable coverage of his Dodgers, Kahn wrote.

“He discussed stocks with one writer, baseball broadcasting with another and politics with a third,” Kahn recounted. “He possessed the high skill of talking [about] one man’s interest and making that interest appear to be his own. Many baseball writers took him for a warm friend, without recognizing that, as with an underboiled potato, O’Malley’s warmth was mostly external.”

The Dodgers’ move west left Brooklyn bereft. Four decades later, fans there are still bitter.

“For a lot of people, it was never the same,” said Richard Picardi, co-owner of the Brooklyn Dodger Sports Bar and Restaurant, which still exists in Brooklyn’s Bay Ridge section. “It [the team] was so enmeshed with the identity of the borough. . . . Brooklynites identified with being the underdog and they never deserted the Dodgers after all these years. The team was the heart of the borough.”

“I have to admit I am happy,” Picardi said about Monday’s announcement that the O’Malley family is selling the team. “It is some kind of vindication after all these years. My father thought it was such a betrayal. They were a money-making team. They were well supported. A lot of Brooklynites felt it was a real betrayal.”

Brooklyn Dodger fans never became Yankees fans, Picardi added. “If anything, they became Mets fans.” And, of course, some of them still dream of the Dodgers returning. “We would like to have our team back,” Picardi said.

That question was put to New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on Monday, but he acknowledged that the era is forever gone.

“As far as the National League goes, the Mets are the best team for New York City,” Giuliani said through his press secretary.

O’Malley’s decision to move the Dodgers was credited by some for revitalizing baseball. The Giants also moved west, from New York to San Francisco. Attendance surged. The Dodgers drew 78,000 fans for their debut in 1958 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, the largest crowd ever to see a regular-season game.

Trading on the favor he gained from bringing the Dodgers west, O’Malley set out to build his own stadium, one better-suited for baseball than the oblong Coliseum.

O’Malley arranged to trade a nine-acre minor-league park, Wrigley Field, for 315 acres of Chavez Ravine, then a small Latino community north of downtown. Citizens approved the deal by a narrow margin of 25,785 votes, and homes were razed to make way for $20-million Dodger Stadium, a multihued, multitiered facility that is still regarded as one of the most picturesque ballparks in the majors.

The 56,000-seat stadium--and the Dodgers--became symbols of emerging national prominence for a city that had “no pretense to culture or manners,” as Pulitzer Prize-winning Times columnist Jim Murray once wrote.

After arriving in Los Angeles, the Dodgers set records for fan attendance, becoming the first franchise to draw more than 3 million spectators in a season. The Dodgers have attracted more than 100 million spectators in their 39 seasons here, more than any other club during that span.

“To have something that substantial come to a place that is growing and gaining an identity was very, very important,” said USC professor Todd Boyd, who edited the book, “Out of Bounds: Sports, Media and the Politics of Identity.”

“When the Dodgers moved west, it brought a bit of history and tradition and nostalgia to . . . Southern California,” he said. “The Dodgers gave Los Angeles a much-needed shot of substance that people had criticized L.A. as lacking.”

Contributing to this story were Times staff writers Michael Hiltzik, James Flanigan, Mike DiGiovanna and David Ferrell in Los Angeles and John J. Goldman in New York.