The O'Malley-China connection
By STEPHEN WADE
Associated Press
BEIJING -- Peter O’Malley first came to China in 1980. Since then, the former Los Angeles Dodgers
owner has built a stadium in the country — the first used only for baseball — and he’s suggesting another milestone could be reached very soon.
“Japan, Korea and Taiwan all have filled the major leagues with players,” O’Malley said Friday. “China is going to come along, and when China does they are going to blow by everybody else — they’re going to knock them over. My guess is there are several players here who are ready to be signed after the Beijing Olympics — I’ll predict that.”
The Dodgers have deep roots in world baseball, with training camps in Cuba and the Dominican Republic, and pitchers such as Fernando Valenzuela (Mexico) and Hideo Nomo (Japan) making their mark.
The 69-year-old O’Malley built the China baseball stadium — named Dodger Stadium — in the coastal city of Tianjin in 1986. Lights have been added recently.
“That has helped so much the growth of baseball in China,” said Cai Jizhou, a retired former
vice president of the Chinese Baseball Federation — and a longtime friend of O’Malley’s. Cai said the facility is one of about 10 baseball stadiums in China.
Combing abroad for sports talent is common now in the United States, but it wasn’t in 1956 when O’Malley joined the defending World Series champion Brooklyn Dodgers on a 30-day goodwill tour of Japan.
“We played the Tokyo Giants with Jackie Robinson, Gil Hodges, Pee Wee Reese — the great team of the ‘50s,” O’Malley said. “I was a young man, and I was thrilled and amazed to see baseball in another country. Later as the owner, I wanted the Dodger team in Los Angeles to reflect the makeup of the city, and L.A. has people from all over.”
O’Malley, who sold the Dodgers in 1998, made the trip to Beijing to attend the International Baseball Federation congress that elected Harvey Schiller IBAF president. Baseball is being dropped from the Olympics after the 2008 Beijing Games, and Schiller’s top priority is to restore it for 2016, when it could be held in Los Angeles, one of the top candidates to hold the Olympics that year.
“China in my opinion has the brightest future of any country in baseball,” O’Malley said. “But we’ve got to get it back in the Olympics, and it’s going to be tough. We must get recognized by the IOC again, because that’s important to the
development of baseball in China and around the world.”