Kevin O’Malley, who spent decades connected to professional baseball through ownership stakes and minor league operations, has died at age 50. He passed away Tuesday from complications of sepsis while in hospice care in Santa Barbara, according to his father, Peter O’Malley.
O’Malley was the son of former Los Angeles Dodgers president Peter O’Malley and the grandson of Walter O’Malley, the Hall of Fame executive who owned the Dodgers from 1944 to 1979 and led the franchise’s move to the West Coast.
Peter O’Malley served as Dodgers president from 1970 through 1998, continuing the family’s deep ties to the organization.
Kevin O’Malley’s own path in the sport began in the Dodgers organization itself. In the late 1990s, he worked at the club’s affiliate operations in Great Falls, Montana, and at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, Florida.
He later moved into ownership, co-founding Top of the Third Inc., which ran the Stockton Mudville Nine and Visalia Rawhide, two minor league teams based in Central California.
A Family Legacy Beyond the Dodgers
In 2012, O’Malley became a part-owner of the San Diego Padres, joining the Seidler and O’Malley families in the ownership group. That group recently agreed to sell the franchise for a record price.
Though he never held a public-facing executive title with the Dodgers like his father or grandfather, associates say his influence on the sport reached well beyond the major league level through his work developing minor league baseball in California.
His father reflected on that lifelong devotion to the game. “Baseball was important to him,” Peter O’Malley said. “Family came first, but baseball was a close second.”
O’Malley grew up in Los Angeles and played baseball at Harvard-Westlake School before continuing his athletic and academic career at the University of Pennsylvania. He went on to earn an MBA from the Wharton School at Penn in 2004. Outside of baseball, he built a career in finance, founding the growth equity firm Carmelina Capital Partners in 2010, where he served as managing partner.
Illness Struck During a Business Trip
According to his father, O’Malley fell ill while on a business trip to New York last fall. He returned home to Los Angeles for treatment, but his condition steadily worsened in the months that followed, eventually leading to his death this week.
Following news of his passing, the Dodgers organization issued a public statement extending condolences to the family.
“The Dodgers send their sincere condolences to the family of Kevin O’Malley, who passed away Tuesday at age 50,” the team wrote. “Our thoughts and sympathies go out to his wife Allison, his children Grace, Brendan, Brooke and Margaret, his father Peter and all of his loved ones.”
O’Malley is survived by his wife, Allison, and their four children, Grace, Brendan, Brooke, and Margaret. He also leaves behind his sister Katherine, brother Brian, and several nieces and nephews. He was preceded in death by his mother, Annette.
His passing marks the loss of another link in one of baseball’s most storied family lineages, a legacy that stretched from the Dodgers’ championship years in Brooklyn and Los Angeles to the ownership offices of the Padres nearly seven decades later.
