INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The O’Malley name has magic in Vero, so it was an event this afternoon when Peter O’Malley, formerly longtime Dodgers president and owner, held a press conference at Vero Beach Sports Village.
A soft-spoken gentleman of 74 wearing a light blue cashmere sweater, O’Malley explained his reasons for joining a partnership with his sister, Terry Seidler, Minor League Baseball and former Dodgers pitchers Chan Ho Park and Hideo Nomo to run the former Dodgertown facility.
He said his main interest was in preserving the historic training camp where Jackie Robinson, the man who integrated major league baseball, first played, and where generations of Dodger greats tuned up their skills and partied each spring.
“There isn’t a place on this campus where there is not a memory,” said Pat O’Connor, president of Minor League Baseball, who joined O’Malley in the press conference.
The Dodgers last spring training camp at the facility was in 2008. O’Connor said Minor league baseball suffered serious loses in the first two years after taking over the lease and converting it to a training center for high-school, college and league teams.
“We were in the middle of a bad economy and we made some mistakes,” O’Connor said.
O’Connor said that the second year was better, with more teams paying to use the facility, but there was still a loss and additional red ink was expected this year.
“When I heard about that, Pat and I started to talk,” O’Malley said. “I was concerned about what would happen here if Minor League Baseball shuttered the place and turned over the keys to the county. My sole purpose is making sure it survives for all the people around the world who have the fond memories and respect for this place that we do.”
O’Connor and O’Malley said with the new cloverleaf of four fields for youth baseball and softball coming online shortly adjacent to Holman Stadium and a new international soccer field being built the economic base of the facility will be broadened.
O’Malley also said he hopes Park and Nomo will be instrumental in bringing teams from Korea and Japan to the facility, adding another leg to the business.
“There is a Korean team here right now and they love the facility,” he said. “That is all I asked of Chan Ho and Nomo, that they spread the word and let teams over there know this place is open. They are superstars in their country.”
O’Malley said he envisions daily tours of the sports park highlighting its storied past and hopes to bring more fantasy camps and community events to the campus. “We want people to come out and walk around and enjoy it.”
“It is unique,” he said of the Sports Village. “My history here goes back to the 1940s and I want to make sure all the Dodger happenings here are not lost.”
O’Malley turned in a bid on Monday to regain control of the Los Angeles Dodgers, a franchise plagued with ownership and public relations problems in the past few years.
He said he thinks his prospects of buying the team with undisclosed partners are good.
If he is successful, he said the former spring training camp at 32nd St. and 43rd Ave. near the airport could be called Dodgertown again if that is what the Vero Beach community wants.