Pat O’Malley, an ebullient former Baltimore Sun sports reporter and columnist who made a career out of annoying coaches while amusing readers and fans with his wry sense of humor and on-target reporting, died Oct. 20 from congestive heart failure at his Severna Park home.
He was 80.
“He had a wisecrack for every occasion and wasn’t afraid of anybody — not a coach, a principal or a parent or a Sun editor,” Candus “Candy” Thomson, who had been Mr. O’Malley’s editor in the newspaper’s Arundel bureau, wrote in an email.
“He knew everybody in Anne Arundel and had a smooth way of getting out of speeding tickets. I never saw anyone work harder at avoiding one. But he had lots of practice,” she wrote.
“Pat could be tough and he loved his platform and having fun, but had a great heart,” said Bill Wagner, a longtime Capital Gazette sports reporter, competitor and friend. “He loved to poke fun at coaches and athletic directors, but at the same time, he did the nitty-gritty reporting.”
Patrick Joseph O’Malley, son of former state Del. Joseph “Doc” O’Malley, and Lillian Manning O’Malley, a homemaker, was born the oldest of five children in Baltimore, and raised in a Jeffrey Street rowhouse in the city’s Brooklyn neighborhood.
“He began his coaching career playing ball with his three younger brothers in an alley behind their home,” said his wife of 51 years, Judith “Judy” Wheeler O’Malley, a retired commercial banker.
Mr. O’Malley attended St. Rose of Lima Catholic School and was a 1964 graduate of Mount Saint Joseph High School in Irvington, where he played baseball and earned the moniker of “Flash” for his speed, his wife said.
As a teenager, Mr. O’Malley, who was known for his creative moves on the dance floor, and was called the “Mashed Potato King,” appeared on WJZ-TV’s legendary “Buddy Deane Show” during the early 1960s.
He attended the University of Baltimore, where he planned to study law, but dropped out to pursue careers in coaching and journalism.
In 1969, Mr. O’Malley joined the staff of the News American, where he was a metropolitan sportswriter, before joining The Sun in 1978.
Mr. O’Malley managed to balance careers in newspapers, radio, cable TV and coaching.
He covered the Orioles for WJRO and Navy for WNAV. He also was host of a national football talk show on USA Network for three years in the mid-1980s.
In the late 1980s, he hosted another cable news show, “Maryland Sports Magazine,” and opened broadcasts with his trademark upbeat greeting: “Hello again, everybody, it’s Pat O’Malley!”
He also had been a ringside boxing announcer for years and was a fixture at Michael’s Eighth Avenue in Glen Burnie, dressed in a tuxedo, as if he were calling a professional match at New York’s Madison Square Garden.
“Pat never worked a day because he absolutely loved his career,” Ms. O’Malley said. “There was a time when he worked three jobs in a day: radio early morning, writing for the paper, going to Towson to tape a show and then another radio show in the early evening.”
During the 1960s and 1970s, he coached baseball for the Brooklyn Optimist Boys Club, Mike’s Auto Mart, and from 1973 to 1977, was baseball coach at Loyola Blakefield, and later at what is now Loyola University of Maryland.
From 1990 to 1997, he coached Gunther’s Little Orioles, who won the 1995 Continental Amateur Baseball Association 18-and-under title.
He was also an associate scout for the St. Louis Cardinals (1969-1975), California Angels (1975-1977) and the Orioles (1978-1998).
But his home base continued to be in Anne Arundel, where he covered county sports for Arundel Living, which later became the Arundel Sun.
‘My first day as Arundel bureau chief, Pat showed up late to the staff meeting,” Ms. Thomson wrote. “He sticks out his hand and says, ‘Pat O’Malley, sports columnist. I’ve never worked for a girl before.’ The staff cracked up, and I said, ‘And you still don’t.’ He laughed.”
Mr. O’Malley filled his copy with a literary gimmick he called “dingers” that infuriated intended targets while giving readers a good laugh. Since the word was on his vanity license plate, it only furthered his celebrity.
“It was a word he used too liberally in his copy when covering baseball. We finally limited him to four dingers a week,” Ms. Thomson wrote.
Mr. O’Malley donned wizard’s garb for the picture that ran with his weekly “Prophet Pat” column, showing him gazing into a crystal ball, as he predicted the scores of high school football games.
“I read Pat when I was at St. Mary’s High School and he was the reason I wanted to become a local sportswriter. I thought, what’s better than this,” Mr. Wagner said. “We had a friendly rivalry.”
In 2001, Mr. O’Malley was inducted into the Anne Arundel County Sports Hall of Fame.
His last byline for The Sun was in 2008, but he continued to work, covering high school basketball for the Varsity Sports Network, Mr. Wagner said.
“Work was his hobby and he loved following the Orioles, Ravens, and politics,” his wife said.
Mr. O’Malley was a communicant of St. John the Evangelist Roman Catholic Church, 689 Ritchie Highway, Severna Park, where a Mass of Christian Burial will be offered at 11 a.m. Wednesday
In addition to his wife, he is survived by two sons, Sean Patrick O’Malley, of Lutherville, and Michael Patrick O’Malley, of Hilton Head, South Carolina; a stepdaughter, Kerry Gray of Woodbridge, Virginia; two brothers, Timothy O’Malley, of Baltimore, and Joseph O’Malley of Medford, New Jersey; and three grandchildren.
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