DODGERS HISTORY REPEATS; ICONOCLASTIC OWNER? NAME WAS O'MALLEY.

Byline: MATT McHALE / Baseball

He was a baseball bully whose radical ideas scared owners into thinking he would turn the sport on its ear.

His backroom dealing was legendary, his bigger-than-life persona forever a hot topic on both coasts. Many called him the de facto commissioner of baseball. Others called him things less flattering.

Rupert Murdoch?

Not yet.

The original was Walter O'Malley and in the week his son sells the Dodgers to Murdoch, perhaps there are lessons to learn on how the new ownership will play out. If O'Malley's legacy tells us anything, it is that change is good, even if it seems uncomfortable at the time.

There will be many who cringe at all the new advertising at Dodger Stadium this year. For more than 30 years, Union Oil, which funded the construction, was the only ad. The luxury boxes along he club level will look strange.

The international makeup of the team will only grow stronger with Murdoch's global television reach. Even if it hurts clubhouse chemistry.

But you've been through this all before.

There remain angry Angelenos over the sweetheart deal O'Malley received to put the Dodgers in Chavez Ravine. The plan for funding a major-league team in Los Angeles passed by fewer than 25,000 votes. But when you are sitting in your seats on a balmy August night with the Dodgers deep into a pennant race, remember that this didn't happen by accident.

Forty years ago this season, the Dodgers played their first game in Los Angeles, drawing more than 93,000 fans in the Coliseum. O'Malley was viewed as a visionary, a Bronx lawyer who became the Lewis and Clark of baseball. His teams would go on to untold success in the National League and at the box office, but he broke a lot of hearts along the way.

The borough of Brooklyn has never recovered. Nobody minded much when O'Malley convinced Horace Stoneham's New York Giants to leave the Polo Grounds for San Francisco. The Dodgers, on the other hand, were Brooklyn. Gil Hodges lived up the street. Roy Campanella owned a neighborhood liquor store.

O'Malley already had a sinister image for wresting control of the team from baseball immortal Branch Rickey in 1950. But even with the takeover, O'Malley was losing his shirt in Brooklyn. Unlike Murdoch, whose companies grossed $11 billion last year, O'Malley had trouble giving raises to future Hall of Famers Duke Snider and Jackie Robinson.

Maybe the distance between players and fans today dilutes the memory. But O'Malley's move to Los Angeles remains the single greatest business decision in sports history.

City fathers in Brooklyn laughed at his plans to construct a Plexiglas-domed stadium. They were convinced his 32,000-seat Ebbets Field, which had just 700 parking spaces, was fine. But to O'Malley, an average attendance of 15,761 in 1956 when they won their last Brooklyn pennant demanded a new direction.

It might be more accurate to blame the City of New York for ignoring the needs of one of its greatest resources. In order to be competitive in a business that was only a fraction of today's size, the Dodgers had to think big. But it was O'Malley who took the Eiffel Tower out of Paris.

Moving to L.A. was just as sticky. There was a Mexican-American community in Chavez Ravine. The city moved the residents. Murdoch faces similar problems with the neighborhood if there is stadium expansion and maybe the arrival of an NFL team.

After moving into Dodger Stadium in 1962, the Dodgers quickly became the best draw in baseball. Moving here tripled the landscape. Teams were living with attendance around one million. The Dodgers were drawing 3 million regularly before O'Malley died in 1981.

O'Malley's success placed him at the top of baseball's hierarchy. He kept the fan in mind and the team in first place. World Series titles in 1963 and '65 looked great. So did sunny Dodger Stadium from the chilly East Coast on NBC's Game of the Week.

There are no parallels everywhere. During the Dodgers' early years in Los Angeles, their only television exposure was the nine games played annually in San Francisco. Murdoch, with cable ties to 22 of the 30 major-league teams, shows twice that many every night.

But in the end, the guys with big ideas see big results. O'Malley worried about competing with the Braves, who had moved from Boston to Milwaukee and smashed attendance records. The Dodgers of today might win this year, but without Murdoch's energy and resources they weren't going to keep up.

EXTRA INNINGS By Matt McHale

The frustration of age is beginning to set in with Reds shortstop Barry Larkin, 33, who had surgery Friday in Cincinnati to repair degenerative nerve damage in his neck that has limited the 1995 National League MVP to only two games this spring. His season ended last year with surgery to repair fraying in his Achilles' heel.

A disc in his neck was protruding, putting pressure on a nerve and causing spasms in the left side of his neck and left shoulder and arm. It reduces his range of motion and he can only lift his left arm to about shoulder height.

``I've been out there trying to catch ground balls and I just don't have the strength to react at shortstop,'' he said. ``I've been drilled a couple times by hard-hit balls. . . . Swinging the bat, I have no problem. But defensively, I can't make the short movements - like the line drive that's coming at my face and I can't get my glove up. That was the determining factor for me. I don't have the fluidity or reaction I need.''

The White Sox are Ruben Sierra's sixth team in the past four seasons. He signed a minor-league contract and appears to have a good chance to stick around. Sierra has dropped 20-25 pounds since last year and is looking more like his old self, batting .346 with three doubles and four RBI in 26 at-bats.

``He's hungry,'' Chicago GM Ron Schueler said. ``I don't know if somebody talked to him or he just woke up on his own and had an attitude adjustment.''

The Cubs haven't yet decided if they will play a tape of the late Harry Caray singing ``Take Me Out to the Ballgame'' during the seventh-inning stretch at Wrigley Field.

``There are compelling arguments for a lot of different scenarios,'' said John McDonough, the Cubs' vice president for marketing. ``Above and beyond the fact that this guy was a great ambassador for the game, a great broadcaster and had a very light-hearted side to his approach, that seventh-inning stretch is his legacy, and how you honor him and be reverent about him is kind of a tricky situation.''

``I didn't get three new initials in my name. It's not Larry `MVP' Walker. My name's Larry K. R. Walker. I prefer it to be that way. I don't want it to be like other players. I don't need to be Barry Bonds and have all this hype about stuff I did. I'm just Larry.''

1997 N.L. MVP Larry Walker

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Photo, Box

PHOTO no caption (Barry Larkin)

BOX: EXTRA INNINGS by Matt McHale (see text)