Dick Walsh (executive)

Richard Bishop Walsh, Jr. (October 30, 1925 – May 6, 2011) was an American sporting executive who, during a 50-plus year career, held high-level positions in Major League Baseball, professional soccer (he was the first commissioner of the North American Soccer League), and in convention center management. He was born in South Bend, Indiana, spent his early years in Evanston, Illinois, and moved to Los Angeles with his family as a boy.

Walsh's first career was in baseball. After attending Los Angeles High School, where he was an All-City third baseman in 1943, and military service during World War II, Walsh joined the Brooklyn Dodgers organization in 1948 as a member of the front office staff of the Fort Worth Cats, Brooklyn's farm club in the Double-ATexas League. He became the parent team's assistant minor league director, working under Fresco Thompson, in 1951.

When the Dodgers acquired the Los Angeles franchise of the Pacific Coast League in January 1957 — the precursor of the Brooklyn club's historic shift to the West Coast, which would follow at the close of the 1957 baseball season — Walsh, as an Angeleno, became president of the minor league team and a liaison between the Dodgers and the city of Los Angeles. Then, after the Brooklyn club moved West in 1958, Walsh became assistant general manager of the Dodgers. He focused on the team's efforts to build a ballpark in Chavez Ravine, and when Dodger Stadium opened as a state-of-the-art facility in 1962, Walsh was named director of stadium operations.

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