O’Malley? Hey, He Can Dream

The door, once bolted and cobwebbed, has suddenly been opened.

It’s only a crack, and it’s only for a minute, but the breeze is tantalizing and the view is endless.

Peter O’Malley, multiple sources confirm, is prepared to run the Dodgers again.

It would be as chairman of a group headed by developer and philanthropist Eli Broad, who has made a last-ditch offer to buy the team from Fox.

This dream-team scenario is possible only if Frank McCourt’s nightmare bid falls through before the Jan. 31 deadline.

Cross your blue foam fingers, Dodger nation.

It could happen.

Right now, the Boston developer’s bid is looking like Bill Buckner and sounding like Bucky Dent.

Right now, Broad and O’Malley are poised to score like Kirk Gibson from second base on this passed ball.

None of the principals will comment, but since Broad’s surprise offer was reported Saturday, folks have been giddy with confirmations.

Broad would be the principal owner, O’Malley would be an investor.

Broad would resume his role of civic angel while watching the team from his luxury box.

O’Malley would resume his role as a beloved sports executive while working from his Dodger Stadium office.

The old-fashioned Dodger culture, much of which was lost after O’Malley sold the team six years ago, would be resurrected.

Under the O’Malley family, the team won five World Series championships in Los Angeles while maintaining decent ticket prices and the cleanest stadium in baseball.

The regime was about free ice cream for the staff every day that the team was in first place. It was team officials staying overnight with injured players in hospitals. It was team legends working with kids in the minor leagues.

Spring training emphasized fundamentals, the front office demanded accountability, and once a Dodger, always a Dodger.

The return of the winning atmosphere could be joined by the return of the NFL. The league loves O’Malley and has always been fascinated with his idea of building a football stadium in the Dodger Stadium parking lot.

Ironically, it was problems involving the NFL that caused O’Malley to sell the Dodgers in the first place.

In the mid-1990s, he spent $1 million researching the possibility that he could buy a team and build a stadium in the stadium parking lot that would help diversify his holdings and offset his increasing baseball losses.

The NFL immediately backed him and announced that they could move a team here by 1998.

But then-Mayor Richard Riordan, worried about upsetting local politicians who favored the Coliseum, asked O’Malley to step aside while the aging building was still an option.

“You can’t fight city hall,” O’Malley said later, describing why he suddenly ended his pursuit.

Four months later, he announced that he was selling the Dodgers.

Since the sale was finalized in the spring of 1998, they have yet to make the playoffs while enduring a series of Fox-related blunders.

Why would O’Malley, at age 66, want to return?

Sources say, simply, he misses it.

During the last six years, from a downtown office, he has quietly acted as the curator of a living Dodger museum, caring for the needs of former players, archiving the club’s history, recently launching a website chronicling the life of his father, Walter.

He wouldn’t be the chief investor this time, so past financial burdens would be eased.

Baseball has a better labor agreement than when he left, another erased irritant.

And why would Broad, at age 70 and not a huge baseball fan, want to do this?

As the inspiration behind Disney Hall and the Museum of Contemporary Art, he enjoys his role as civic grandfather, and few civic jewels are more treasured than the Dodgers.

He was earlier involved in the sale but dropped out after News Corp. refused to give up television rights.

Sources say he reemerged because it was obvious that McCourt’s bid was struggling.

“Somebody in baseball must have already told Eli that this guy’s deal is in trouble, or he never would have gotten involved,” one local businessman said.

Trouble, indeed.

McCourt’s deal is highly leveraged and so shaky, baseball officials refused to approve him at last week’s owners’ meetings and will conduct further investigation this week.

Judging from his allegedly flimsy finances, it will help if two of the folks on this week’s fact-finding mission are named Penn and Teller.

Broad and McCourt are each offering $430 million, but Broad has the cash, McCourt doesn’t.

Broad has the liquidity to operate a championship team, McCourt apparently doesn’t.

Broad has O’Malley, McCourt doesn’t.

McCourt’s fingerprints are already on a messy, unproductive winter.

He could not afford much-needed Vladimir Guerrero, a player who had no problem reaching a deal with that team down the freeway.

At his urgings, the Dodgers have been unable to sign any top hitters, and suddenly look more like the San Diego Padres than the Padres.

One owner this week said the chances of McCourt’s gaining approval are “only 50-50, at best.”

If McCourt doesn’t meet the guidelines, here’s hoping the owners turn those odds in this city’s favor and do what is best for baseball, not what is easiest for their television sugar daddies of Fox.

Instead of giving an approval, those owners need to make a trade.

Frank McCourt for Eli Broad and Peter O’Malley.

The deal of the century.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.