This Day in Walter O’Malley History:
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Walter O’Malley writes a letter to Chester Allen, President of the Kings County Trust Company and a member of the Brooklyn Sports Center Authority to say, “A strange commentary on our present situation is the under-publicized fact that we have offered to invest $15,000,000 in a new stadium and to pay $500,000 rental. No baseball team or individual in the entire history of the game has ever invested that much money in baseball, nor has any club ever paid a rental equal to $500,000 a year. The press persists in creating the impression that we want the city to build us a stadium. All we actually want is the privilege of getting a suitable location. Oh well!”
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The Sporting News reports because of an industry-wide airline strike in the summer of 1966, Walter O’Malley loaned the use of the Dodgers’ private Electra plane to transport the Minnesota Twins from Boston to Utica, New York. The Twins were scheduled to play the St. Louis Cardinals for the Hall of Fame Game on July 25th and transportation to Cooperstown was difficult. The Twins flew on the Dodger plane to Utica, and then rode a bus to Cooperstown for the game. After the Twins played their game in Cooperstown, the Dodger plane then transported the Twins to New York to continue their regular season schedule. The Sporting News, August 6, 1966
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Walter O’Malley composes a letter of reference for Barney Stein, a longtime photographer for New York City newspapers upon Stein’s relocation to Florida. “Barney Stein for many years the official photographer for the Brooklyn Dodgers is a person of great character and integrity. He is an outstanding professional photographer and has won many awards for his work. His career covers 33 years with the New York Post as a sports photographer. We not only have had the pleasure of knowing Barney for most of his professional career but we have also been acquainted socially with his family. I know of no one in the professional sports photography field for whom I have a higher regard and warm admiration than for Barney Stein.”
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The new Commissioner of Baseball in Japan, Toshi Kaneko, receives a letter from Walter O’Malley regarding an invitation by O’Malley to owners of Japanese teams to discuss operation methods for their teams. “I congratulated Japanese Baseball,” wrote O’Malley, “on reducing the Commissionership from three to one and stated that I felt comfortable about a man as experienced in baseball as yourself in being the Commissioner. Of course, I do not know how the interview will appear in print but I did emphasize the fact that we could consider an invitation for the Japanese owners of baseball clubs to visit the Dodgers for several days during a home stand for an exchange of ideas and the opportunity to make inquiry about the stadium operations and baseball considerations. Should such a visit be practical, it, of course, would be important that you accompany the group.”
