That’s how it started. (Emil) Praeger had to determine where does this stadium go? How do I prepare this site? And what do we do? He (Praeger) was an engineer; he was actually a Navy Captain in World War II. Praeger-Kavanagh-Waterbury was an architectural-engineering firm. And one of the issues he (Praeger) had to come to grips was the traffic (in Los Angeles) because there was no Metro system, we did not have the Long Island Railroad, (Los Angeles) was not a great taxi town. How do I get people to the stadium? There was no subway system. So, that was going to be a further problem. How are you going to handle people when they come to the ballpark?

Walter O’Malley was full of ideas. Walter was thinking about the stadium all the time. He would make notes and jot things down and have me follow up with different ideas. But, not until Praeger could give him an idea of “how do I (Praeger) use this site.” The acreage was 300 acres, more or less, we had the acreage by the Police Academy for the recreation area and now how do I (Praeger) use this area? Do I (Praeger) chop all this? We had to move 8 million cubic yards of dirt. And it was a tremendous undertaking. And Praeger decided to build the stadium into the mountain, into the hills. And then it was the configuration. Compass wise, where does the ballpark have to sit so you don’t have the sun in the hitters’ eyes, so you have to turn it, and you have to figure out, how is this going to be? You have to make actual studies during the time of the year the ballgames were going to be played, from April to October, where is the sun in relation to the ballpark? And we want the sun to be in the outfielders’ eyes to be differentiated from the hitters’ eyes.

We all came up with ideas. That was more of an internal office complex, the ticket office, how big a vault? Do you walk into the vault, or is it just a little safe? He (O’Malley) would bounce that around to different people. As far as I was concerned, it was up to me to come up with ideas. And so I did. I had a whole slew of ideas. Different things we could do, couldn’t do, et cetera.

(Emil) Praeger would fight you (on ideas). I was in battles with Praeger. John Waterbury was the architect and Praeger was the engineer. And when the drawings would come out, I would take the drawings and make notes on line so and so at place X-17. One of the things we found out we could not get a gurney off the elevator into the first aid room. It was too narrow.

Walter had the ideas more than anybody else. Praeger had his concept as to what he wanted to do. And I’m the operations guy and I have to make it work and I’m going to be fighting them over a number of things. Praeger was not as great on details as you would have liked. There were a number of times when we are waiting and waiting and waiting to get information from Praeger. And John Waterbury, the partner, the architect, would be pushing things at Praeger. But, for Praeger, this was not the only job he had. He had a successful engineering-architecture firm in New York.

Walter had ideas. I came up with ideas. He never said, “Dick, it’s up to you to come up with ideas.” You just did it. This was our project. Other members of the organization were involved in the stadium, but they had other duties.

Walter generates the ideas. There is no pride of authorship. He does not care where good ideas are coming from. If we found a good idea in another ballpark, we would use it if it was beneficial for our development. You would try to take the ideas others had used, good or bad. For example, when you went up in the Polo Grounds in the upper reserved areas in the main grandstand, you better have a size 4 foot because their steps were so small and no handrail and you would have problems if you wanted to climb those steps. We made our steps larger. We put in an aisle in our reserved seating (in Dodger Stadium) with a handrail in the middle of the aisle as we learned what to do and not do.

I loved it. For me, it was fun. He (Walter O’Malley) just kept piling it on.”