Mover and Shaker

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Mover and Shaker

Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers, and Baseball's Westward Expansion

Andy McCue

488 pages
3 tables, 1 figure, index

Hardcover

May 2014

978-0-8032-4508-2

$39.95 Add to Cart
Paperback

April 2015

978-0-8032-7842-4

$24.95 Add to Cart
eBook (PDF)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

May 2014

978-0-8032-5505-0

$24.95 Add to Cart
eBook (EPUB)
Ebook purchases delivered via Leaf e-Reader

May 2014

978-0-8032-5506-7

$24.95 Add to Cart

About the Book

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.
 
 

Author Bio

Andy McCue is the author of Baseball by the Books: The Complete History and Bibliography of Baseball Fiction and is a former president of the Society for American Baseball Research.


Praise

“Andy McCue has written the definitive biography of the fascinating and elusive Walter O’Malley, the man who changed the way a country thinks about its national pastime. Wise and engaging. A must-read for every historian of the game.”—Michael Shapiro, author of The Last Good Season


“A compelling, detailed and richly nuanced biography, Mover and Shaker shows O’Malley as a shrewd and daring businessman who became a major force behind key changes in the sport. . . . The real insight of Mr. McCue’s book is that O’Malley was a man who embraced risk and adapted well to new situations.”—Paul Dickson, Wall Street Journal

 

“One of the best and most important baseball books of the year, and one that’s been a long time comin.’”—Allen Barra, Dallas Morning News 

“Outstanding. . . . I really can’t recommend Mover & Shaker highly enough.”—Rob Neyer, FoxSports.com
 

“McCue covers this with an expert’s hand . . . in this highly readable account of perhaps the most influential baseball owner of the last century.”—Seamheads.com

 


"Mover and Shaker . . . must be counted a brilliant success."—Spitball

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction: Hitler, Stalin, Walter O’Malley
1. From County Mayo to Montague Street
2. From Gowanus to Montague Street
3. Under New Management
4. Learning the Business
5. Buying Out Rickey
6. Running the Team
7. A New Stadium—Economics
8. A New Stadium—Politics
9. The Laughingstock of the Country
10. Now I Learn It’s Been Controversial for Years
11. In Court
12. A Monument to the O’Malleys
13. Loose Ends
14. The Most Powerful Man in Baseball
15. A Totally Different Person 00
16. Peter
17. Marvin Miller and Andy Messersmith
18. Bottom of the Ninth
19. Postgame
Source Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Awards

2015 SABR Seymour Medal 
2015 SABR Ron Gabriel Award 
​2014 CASEY Award, 2nd place, from Spitball
 

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