There are the obvious legacies associated with Walter O’Malley, the businessman, lawyer, baseball executive and family man. But throughout O’Malley’s life, the innovating spirit that envisioned the construction of Dodger Stadium conjured other grand ideas about his country’s “national pastime” from Southern California to all parts of the globe. If the sports world was O’Malley’s oyster, baseball served as his pearl.
The Dodgers joined the National League in 1890 and the 60 years preceding O’Malley’s arrival as team president featured occasional international interludes. The first Cuban big league pitching star, Adolfo Luque, made a brief stop with Brooklyn in the 1930 and 1931 seasons. The Dodgers operated a Triple-A affiliate in Montreal and they held spring training in Cuba (1947) and the Dominican Republic (1948) before settling in their current Dodgertown headquarters in Vero Beach, FL.
The Dodgers, already a popular franchise in America when O’Malley became its leader thanks to on-field success and memorable personalities, would become recognized throughout the world as one of the major league’s most stable and progressive franchises.