This Day in Walter O’Malley History:
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The Brooklyn Dodgers and the city of Vero Beach sign a 21-year contract for use of the Dodgertown spring training site. The contract also had an option to be renewed for 21 more years after the original contract expires. A clause in the contract also permitted the Dodgers to trade their spring training base with another major league team for one season, but that clause was never exercised.” The Washington Post, January 29, 1952
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The Dodgers enlist the antics of famed Emmett Kelly, the sad-faced clown, as Walter O’Malley announces that Kelly would become a member of the Brooklyn organization and perform in Spring Training, at Ebbets Field and at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey for home games during the 1957 season. Kelly also became a member of the “faculty” at the fourth annual Dodgertown Camp for Boys in Vero Beach, Florida in July and August.
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In the offseason, prior to the Dodgers’ first game in Los Angeles, catcher Roy Campanella is involved in a single-car automobile accident, as his car slides off an icy road and crashes into a light pole, leaving the three-time National League MVP paralyzed from the neck down. Walter O’Malley immediately visits him at Glen Cove Community Hospital in Long Island, New York. O’Malley assisted the Campanella family in Roy’s long rehabilitation process and later offered him a position in the Dodger organization.
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The Harvard Business School Club holds a dinner meeting in Los Angeles at the Statler Hotel and Walter O’Malley is the featured speaker.
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Walter O’Malley receives the “Man of the Year” Award from the Beverly Hills B’nai B’rith for 1961 at the Biltmore Bowl in Los Angeles. Actor Edward G. Robinson, one of many star-studded guests, hailed O’Malley as having “unified” Los Angeles. Dodger star players Don Drysdale, Sandy Koufax and Willie Davis paid tribute to their boss with a parody rendition of the song “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend.” As famed producer-director Mervyn LeRoy, the evening’s toastmaster, started his introduction of the man of the hour, LeRoy fainted at the podium. The proceedings ended immediately for the 1,300 attendees and O’Malley was concerned about the health of his friend, who later recovered.
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It’s time to hit the links as Walter O’Malley joins PGA tour winner Rod Funseth as part of a fivesome in the 1976 Hawaiian Open Pro-Am at the Waialae Country Club in Honolulu. Funseth won the Phoenix Open in 1965 and the Los Angeles Open in 1973. In 1978, he captured the Greater Hartford Open and finished in a three-way tie for second place in the Masters.
