Making the big move to the HOF

Throughout his lifetime, Walter O'Malley was a trailblazer. And now, even after death, he continues to be a pioneer among his kind.

As owner of the Dodgers, he was instrumental in bringing baseball to the West Coast. And now, with his induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Sunday, he becomes the first Penn alumnus ever to be enshrined in Cooperstown.

O'Malley (Col. '26) will be honored posthumously at the Induction Ceremony this weekend in Cooperstown, N.Y., for his work as owner of the Dodgers from 1944 to 1979. His son Peter (Wh. '60), will be making an acceptance speech on behalf of the family.

O'Malley's most celebrated achievement may also be his most infamous. In 1957, he moved the Dodgers from the rundown Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, New York to Los Angeles, where he built, privately financed, and helped to design the revolutionary Dodgers Stadium, which opened in 1962.

"I think people now recognize my grandfather as a pioneer of the sport - they admired his vision to move west," Walter's grandson Kevin (Col. '96, Wh. '04) told the DP in January. "That vision helped expand the game nationally."

While he may stand as a revolutionary for his achievements now, at the time he was criticized for moving the Dodgers away from Brooklyn, where they had played since 1883.

"Over time, I believe that people understand the extraordinary decade-long efforts my dad made to remain in Brooklyn and build a stadium there to replace aging Ebbets Field," Peter said in a press release. "When that was not deemed feasible, only then did he consider his options, which included Los Angeles. He was most proud of building and privately financing Dodger Stadium, one of L.A.'s most popular landmarks."

And although his major league achievements are numerous, he always counted his successes at Penn to be among his greatest. Following two years at Culver Military Academy in Culver, Ind., O'Malley enrolled at Penn in 1924 and immediately established himself as a campus leader.

He served as class president twice and as president of the Theta Delta Chi fraternity his senior year. Upon graduation, he was honored with the "Spoon Man" award, given to the graduating class's most outstanding student.

The "Spoon Man" award will be on display at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown until June 2009. It will be in an exhibit alongside O'Malley's key for Dodger Stadium, the shovel he used for the stadium's groundbreaking ceremony, four Sandy Koufax-signed baseballs from his no-hitters personalized to the former owner and many other relics from O'Malley's career.

And that placement may be appropriate. Even with his wide array of post-academic success, some of his greatest memories were formed at Penn. Despite his handiwork in crafting Dodger Stadium as well as the team's spring training facility, Dodgertown, in Vero Beach, Fla., he always had a fondness for the legendary stadiums on campus.

"I remember him telling me about Penn football games at Franklin Field," said Peter, who served as owner of the Dodgers from Walter's death in 1979 until 1998, told the DP in January. "Back then there was a big tradition of football games."

And though the memories from Penn linger, O'Malley will always be remembered in the minds of others as one of the most influential owners of all time. He is only the 26th inductee in the category of "Pioneers/Executives," and his place in that group is well-deserved.

According to the press release, ABC Sports Century ranked O'Malley as the 8th Most Influential Person "Off the Field" in sports history in 1999 and The Sporting News ranked him as the 11th "Most Powerful Person in Sports" over the last century.

And those honors are in addition to the straightforward. Under his ownership, the Dodgers won 11 Pennants and four World Series. They also shattered numerous attendance records.

So perhaps his induction is long overdue. But even while his reach extends far into the world of sports, it will always be Penn which guided him towards that future. In fact, upon his election as class president, he made an interesting discovery about himself, one that would pave the way for his future position.

"An interesting thing, when I got to college, I was elected senior class president and chairman of the student council," O'Malley said in a 1966 interview with Vin Scully, according to the release. "And with those two positions went the privilege of serving on one of the most important sports committees on the council on athletics. Up until this time, the senior president had always elected to go on the football committee. But for some reason, and I really don't know why, I elected to go on the baseball committee."

"And I was the first senior president to ever do that. There must have been something lurking in my system somewhere at that time because I went the baseball route instead of football."

So while O'Malley may never have taken the field for the Quakers, he could always thank Penn for, in some way, guiding him towards a career in baseball, one that would ultimately lead to his enshrinement alongside the greatest baseball players and figures to ever be a part of the game.

- Staff writer Zach Klitzman contributed reporting to this article.

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