Walter O'Malley Marquee

Walter O'Malley owned the Dodgers when the club left Brooklyn for Los Angeles after the 1957 season. Born in October 1903 and dead in August 1979, he appeared on fourteen Hall of Fame ballots from 1980 through 2008 and was elected by the executives committee on the last.

He was a lawyer who came in as the club's counsel and had bought control by 1950. He wanted a new park in Brooklyn, was refused the site he asked for, and took the club west, persuading the Giants to go too so that the National League would have two clubs on the coast.

Brooklyn has not forgiven it and the argument has never really stopped: he is either the man who opened the western half of the country to the major leagues or the man who took a team away from the people who loved it, and the case for each is made with the same facts. The Los Angeles club has stayed in his family since.