Mover and Shaker

One of the most influential and controversial team owners in professional sports history, Walter OMalley (190379) is best rememberedand still reviled by manyfor moving the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Yet much of the OMalley 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 OMalleys life. He also departs from the overly sentimentalized accounts of OMalley 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.