One of the most influential and controversial team owners in
professional sports history, Walter O’Malley (1903–79) is best
remembered—and still reviled by many—for moving the Dodgers from
Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Yet much of the O’Malley story leading up
to the Dodgers’ move is unknown or created from myth, and there is
substantially more to the man. When he entered the public eye, the
self-constructed family background and early life he presented was
gilded. Later his personal story was distorted by some New York
sportswriters, who hated him for moving the Dodgers.
In Mover and Shaker Andy McCue presents for the first time
an objective, complete, and nuanced account of O’Malley’s life. He
also departs from the overly sentimentalized accounts of O’Malley
as either villain or angel and reveals him first and foremost as a
rational, hardheaded businessman, who was a major force in baseball
for three decades and whose management and marketing practices
radically changed the shape of the game.