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Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O'Malley, Baseball's Most Controversial Owner,and the Dodgers of Brooklyn and Los Angeles |  | Author: Michael D'Antonio
Publisher: Riverhead Hardcover
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
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Seller: bordeebook
Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 239008
Format: Bargain Price
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 368
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3
Dewey Decimal Number: 796.35764092
ASIN: B002IKLNZ6
Publication Date: March 19, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
If ever there was a figure who changed the game of baseball, it was Walter OMalley. Criticized in New York and beloved in Los Angeles, OMalley is one of the most controversial owners in the history of American sports. He remade the major leagues and altered the course of history in both Brooklyn and Los Angeles when he moved the Dodgers to California. But while many New York critics attacked him, OMalley looked to the future, declining to argue his case. As a result, fans across the nation have been unable to stop arguing about himuntil now.
Using never-before-seen documents and candid interviews with OMalleys players, associates, and relatives, Pulitzer Prizewinning writer Michael DAntonio finally reveals this complex sportsman and industry pioneer. Born into Tammany Hall connections, OMalley used political contacts to grow wealthy during the Great Depression, and then maneuvered to take control of the formerly downtrodden Dodgers. After his defeat in a war of wills with the famed power broker, Robert Moses, OMalley uprooted the boroughs team and transplanted them to Los Angeles. Once in Los Angeles, OMalley overcame opponents of his stadium and helped define the city. Other owners came to regard him as their guidealmost an unofficial commissionerand he worked behind the scenes to usher in the age of the players union and free agency.
Filled with new revelations about OMalleys battle with Moses, his pioneering business strategies, and his relationship with Jackie Robinson, Forever Blue is a uniquely intimate portrait of a man who changed Americas pastime forever. His fascinating story is fundamental to the history of sports, business, and the American West.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 23
 Forever Blue April 8, 2010
Salvatore M. Esposito
Well researched account of the Dodgers move from Brooklyn, this should set the record straight on the battle Walter O'Malley had with the city of New York, more specifically Robert Moses. Good read for the true baseball fan.
The Rise and Fall of the Brooklyn Dodgers from a Brooklyn Dodger fan. April 3, 2010
B.J.Bogitsh (Nashville, TN United States)
I find the information very informative. I think the reader should be a longtime Brooklyn Dodger fan and have lived in the New York City area where the drama occurred (i.e., Brooklyn in the 40's, 50's and 60's) to fully appreciate the manipulations and the emotions that O'Malley had to overcome. Very well written!!
An archetypal baseball businessman January 6, 2010
Robert Slocum (STAMFORD, CT USA)
I was an eight year-old Dodger fan when the team moved to LA, and until reading this book my opinion of Walter O'Malley was always close to that of Pete Hamill and Jack Newfield in the famous anecdote related by another reviewer (but not in the book). Here's a recap from [...]:
"In a famous incident, writers Pete Hamill and Jack Newfield wrote their own list of the three worst villains of the 20th century on a piece of paper to settle a discussion they were having over lunch. They each wrote the same three names in the same order: Hitler, Stalin, Walter O'Malley."
This book makes a very persuasive contrary case: that O'Malley went pretty much to the ends of the earth to keep the Dodgers in Brooklyn. (Stoneham did nothing re the Giants BTW.) Robert Moses was doubtless the bad guy.
I've read an awful lot about this period in baseball history, and the impressive thing about this book is that it covers so much new terrain. It's really a story about what it was like to run a baseball franchise at the interface in time when media and money were just starting to make a big difference. O'Malley was the one owner for whom his team was a full-time occupation, and his peers considered him the best, hands down. This is a great accounting of the business decisions that he and others made in this period. Many of them are really stories of personalities--Branch Rickey, Jackie Robinson, Leo Durocher. There's only enough about the game on the field to keep things oriented.
Enough with the review. Here's a stunning sentence for you! O'Malley was trained as an attorney, and the timeline is the early 1930s when he got started in his legal career:
"During the precrash boom, investment companies had devised a way to make risky mortgages into notes--guaranteed mortgage certificates--that were sold with the promise of high interest payments."
D'Antonio's FOREVER BLUE take us behind the headlines to the story of the people December 14, 2009
C. A. Webb (Jackson, MS)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I have always felt that the true test for a writer is to take us beyond what we think we know about a subject, and reveal something that makes it more than a story and something more real. Michael D'Antonio has achieved this feat with FOREVER BLUE. Whatever you thought you knew about the players involved, the book takes you into dimensions that make the story more about people and how actions can set in motion a course that would have ripple effects for years to come. Bravo!
 The Real Turning Point In Dodger History December 7, 2009
H. Eisenberg (NE New Jersey, USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Most reviewers seem to be of the opinion that the move from Brooklyn to L.A. in 1957 was the turning point in the history of the Dodger franchise. Author Michael D'Antonio spends a great deal of time on that issue and quite correctly points out that O'Malley wanted to stay in Brooklyn provided he could build a new ballpark, whereas New York City and State construction czar Robert Moses couldn't care less whether the ballclub stayed or left and therefore would not cooperate.
However, the true turning point in the history of the Dodgers occurred seven years earlier, in 1950, when, upon the death of third partner John Smith, Walter O'Malley grabbed control of the ballclub by getting Smith's widow to give him proxy control of her shares. Branch Rickey, who built the post-World-War-II Brooklyn ballclub, was the consummate baseball executive. He'd been a player at all levels including the majors. (He was a catcher for the Yankees years before they became successful.) He later became am executive in St. Louis, first with the Browns, then the Cardinals, where he built the legendary "Gashouse Gang" that was successful in the 1930s and pioneered baseball's farm system.
In 1942 Rickey was invited to come to Brooklyn after general manager Larry MacPhail went into the military. Banker George McLaughlin set up and financed the partnership between Rickey and O'Malley with the wealthy Smith coming on board a bit later as a more-or-less silent partner. At first O'Malley used Rickey, giving he a free hand to manage and build up the organization, since O'Malley knew next to nothing about running a ballclub. Not only did Rickey build a winning team but he broke baseball's color barrier and took a lot of heat for it. But everything changed after John Smith died in 1950. By then O'Malley had been with the Dodgers for 7-8 years and was starting to feel his oats. As a cagey lawyer, which is what he was by profession, O'Malley knew what to do and how to do it in order to push Rickey out. D'Antonio claims Rickey wanted to sell out and leave the Dodgers anyway. But a number of Rickey biographies have been written along with many histories of the Dodgers and none of them say that. D'Antonio admits that Rickey consulted with minority shareholder Jim Mulvey in a desperate attempt to remain with the Dodgers.
The problem was that when McLaughlin set up the 3-way partnership (Rickey, O'Malley, Smith), a part of the agreement was that all the partnership shares had to be voted as a block, thereby giving Mulvey, who held the remaining 25% percent no say-so at all in what the organization did. Once O'Malley got to Smith's widow, he in effect got total control making Rickey as powerless as Mulvey in having any say. According to the terms of the partnership, both O'Malley and Rickey had first call on buying up the widow's stock. Rickey didn't have the money to buy her stock but neither did O'Malley. O"Malley was able to promise to do it and eventually did because he got financing from his friend McLaughlin.
Had Rickey remained in charge, the Dodgers would still be in Brooklyn. Granted Moses was a jerk (whose highway projects harmed many neighborhoods in Broooklyn and the Bronx). But the Brooklyn Dodgers were the most profitable major league ballclub of all in the 1950s--even more so than the Yankees. Not because they had the highest attendance (they didn't) but because they had the best radio and TV deal in the biggest media market. (The Giants and the Yankees shared TV Channel 11 while the Dodgers had Channel 9 all to themselves.) But O'Malley, the consummate businessman, wanted to make more money still and was getting tired of being jacked around by the arrogant Moses. Los Angeles was willing to give O'Malley everything he wanted and he then used his lawyer's reasoning skills to convince Giants owner Horace Stoneham (who was not doing well in New York) to go to San Francisco because the National League owners felt it wasn't worthwhile to have to travel to the West Coast to play just one team.
Ironically, when it was all over, George McLaughlin, who'd made it all possible, deeply regretted what he had done and refused to ever speak to Walter O'Malley again. (Something author D'Antonio should have known and mentioned.)
One other point: When he worked for the Dodgers, Red Barber was baseball's premier announcer. He saw himself as a reporter (not a cheerleader) whose job was to report what was happening on the field. Even though he was from the Deep South, he had no problem reporting on Jackie Robinson and treated him like any other player. He was also Vin Scully's mentor and taught him his style of reporting. But Red Barber couldn't abide working for O'Malley, whom he called the most deceitful man he ever knew. And so he went from being the Dodgers' No. 1 announcer to being the third-string game caller for the Yankees.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 23
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