Everyone has meet some major sports figure or two throughout their lifetime…Mine was years ago and he still makes an impact on me and my memories about baseball past…

I grew up in the San Fernando Valley in LA and as soon as one of my buddies could drive, we were headed to a Dodger game at Chavez Ravine…

This day there were four of us and we got to the park super early in order to save money parking by putting our car in the city park next to the stadium…

We walked forward to the entrance of the Dodger parking lot as a group of four…As we passed the parking attendant booth the guy yelled out at us, “Don’t step on the counter, otherwise you have to pay”…

Well, those were fighting words for one of our pack…Mike Presta, a formitable Italian with no neck then leaped in the air and landed smack dab in the center of the counter strip…

The parking attendant freaked and grabbed him by the lapel…

“That’s five bucks!” he stammered…

“No way,” said Presta…

Well, a simple threat of calling the cops finally had Mike dishing out a fiver and settling up with the parking guy…

Onward we went to our regular routine…Off to the bleachers for three innings or so and then we scampered up behind the stadium and went to the top elevator entrace…

We waited there until the high price seat fans started to leave early…You know LA, no one stays past the fifth inning…

We would see Mayor Yorty and folks like him and they would give us their ticket stubs and down the elevator we went to seats in the second and third row behind home plate…

We did this all the time…

Tonight Presta said let’s go upstairs after the game, so soon we were on the press landing and going in Vinny’s booth and checking out all his notes from his famous stats guy, Arnold Roth…

No one was around then…All you heard was the intermittent popping of paper cups echoing throughout the stands…

As we started to walk to the stairs we saw a huge man coming towards us…

He had an overcoat draped over his shoulders and was smoking a giant cigar…The white smoke billowed above his head…

Oh Gawd! It was Walter – friggin’ – O’Malley himself…

The head cheese, the owner, the Big Kahuna of the Los Angeles Dodgers…

He never stopped walking so we all scooted up to him and took big steps to just keep pace with his gait…

“What are you boys doing here?” he asked…

Presta shouted out, “Looking just for you”…

Oh no, what was up with Presta…He was going to get us all thrown in jail…

O’Malley continued on at his rapid pace and Mike got in front of him and said, “YOU owe me five bucks!’…

All our hearts sunk…We were dead…

O’Malley looked him straight in the eye and asked why…

Mike hurriedly explained the parking incident…

O’Malley came up to the elevator and pushed the button…

The elevator door open and he went right in and turned around…

The elevator doors slammed shut and then opened back up with O’Malley holding open the door…

“Hey kid, come here,” he said. He then reached out and gave Mike a crisp five dollar bill…

“Don’t do it again…” he shouted as the door closed…

And that my friends is how I meet Mr. Walter O’Malley, one of the sweetest old guys I’ve ever come across in the sports world…

You could see why his Dodgers were so successful…He truly loved people…Even Presta!