When a Napa friend and dyed-in-the-wool San Francisco Giants fan gave me the news on a street corner not far from the Napa Valley Register building, his message hit me like a ton of bricks and opened old wounds.

His “good news” was, “Did you hear that our messiah, the late Walter O’Malley, was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame?”

Half a century has gone by, and still, the few old Brooklyn Dodger and New York Giants fans who are left out of the millions of fans who once made Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds their second homes hated O’Malley with a passion.

Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Dodgers from 1950 to 1997, did more than just move his Brooklyn Dodgers out of New York in 1958. He convinced his Manhattan neighbor, Horace “The Hoople” Stoneham — owner of my once-beloved New York Giants — to seek California gold with him.

O’Malley, in taking his Dodgers to Los Angeles and convincing Stoneham to move his Giants to San Francisco, did more than rob Dodger and Giants fans of their National League teams.

He took the heart and soul out of millions of fans.

He was the traitor, the Grinch who stole Christmas and summer, and stifled our youth while he destroyed our dreams.

Hall of Famer? Not by a longshot!

I was so shaken up by the incredible news of O’Malley’s coronation that as soon as I returned home, I contacted my friend and fellow writer, Bill “Diz” Deane, who lives in the Cooperstown area not far from baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Diz, by the way, is a baseball author, writer and the best baseball researcher I’ve ever met in the Society for American Baseball Research, “SABR.”

I’ve known for years that if you want a baseball question answered correctly, Bill “Diz” Deane is the man to talk to.

To my “say it ain’t so,” in terms of O’Malley and the Hall of Fame, Diz — who understood my chagrin — responded with “I’m afraid it is so!”

He explained that a revamped Hall of Fame Veterans Committee — most, if not all of the members non-New Yorkers — honored the man by voting him into the Hall for bringing Major League Baseball to the West Coast.

I did some digging and remembering of my own after talking to Bill Deane, and those sad 1950s for New York’s National League fans came back.

Walter O’Malley was a native New Yorker born in the Bronx and as a kid was a Giants fan. He worshipped the team and its legendary manager, John McGraw, in the early 20th century.

A graduate of Fordham University with a degree in law, he became the Brooklyn Dodgers’ legal counsel in 1942.

In 1950 — three years after his predecessor Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson to a contract which finally broke baseball’s “color line” — O’Malley became president of the famed Brooklyn Dodgers, once fondly known as “Dem Bums, duh Trolley Dodgers.”

In the eight years of O’Malley’s reign as Dodger president in Brooklyn, the team became a powerhouse, winning four National League pennants, collecting three second-place finishes — two of them in 1950 and ’51 versus the Phillies and Giants that “Dem Bums” should have won — and one third-place finish.

Not too shabby a track record. Oh, and in 1955, the club finally won a World Series after five straight drubbings by the mighty New York Yankees in those “Fall Classics.”

And that’s not all!

From 1950 through 1957, the Dodgers — playing at Ebbets Field in Flatbush — set all-time Brooklyn attendance records by topping the one-million mark in every one of O’Malley’s years at the helm.

But, O’Malley wanted more, much more, and when California gold stared him in the face he knew what he had to do.

There was gold in “them there hills” — and a shiny new and larger ballpark promised in Los Angeles.

But, O’Malley knew that to move out west, the arrangement would not be sanctioned by the lords of the National League without a second ballclub moving to another big city near the Pacific.

In Horace Stoneham, owner of the ancient New York Giants franchise, Walter O’Malley found his traveling companion, one whom San Francisco would welcome with open arms.

By 1957, the storied Giants were in financial trouble. They had broken the  one-million mark in attendance in 1950 and again in their championship seasons of 1951 and ’54, but sixth-place finishes in the eight-team National League in both 1956 and ’57 saw attendance nosedive to 600,000.

Added to that, the old Polo Grounds (where a polo game was never played), was a decrepit old green horseshoe-shaped ballpark badly in need of refurbishing.

So O’Malley spoke of California gold, and Horace Stoneham listened and salivated at the opportunity to strike it rich.

In truth, while Ebbets Field played to overflow crowds in Flatbush — once known as “Pig Town” in the 1800s — and the Giants struggled along in Harlem, both neighborhoods had gone to seed.

The NYPD tried to ensure the safety of fans arriving and departing those ballparks, but that wasn’t a way to do business.

Rumors had it in the mid-1950s that the Dodgers and Giants — who had turned down the city’s feeble offerings of building the teams new ballparks in safer locations — were in the last stages of business dealings with grateful “high rollers” in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Then out of nowhere, on Dec. 13, 1956, O’Malley traded the aging Jackie Robinson (nearing 38 years of age) to — of all teams — Jackie’s hated New York Giants for a relief pitcher and $35,000.

That was big money in those days.

“Robby,” the pride of Flatbush who had led the Brooks to six National League pennants in his 10-year career, didn’t take that slap in the face lightly.

Robby truly hated the Giants, hated manager Leo Durocher and everything those guys in black and orange trim stood for.

Robby called O’Malley (Duh Boss) up and told him where he could stick that trade and quit the game he loved so much.

O’Malley’s only disappointment was that he had to return the cash.

Three weeks later, the Dodgers bought a 44-seat passenger plane for transporting the team to and from distant cities.

Later in 1957, Horace Stoneham publicly announced to all longtime and loyal New York Giant fans that the Giants would be playing baseball in San Francisco in 1958.

O’Malley, the “founder of the feast,” made no such announcement.

Good old “Walter O” held back his statement until he could squeeze every last dime out of the pockets of Brooklyn fans.

Life was never the same in New York after our teams left forever.

I can understand the feelings of the Napan and San Francisco Giants fan on the induction of Walter O’Malley into Baseball’s Hall of Fame — the same feelings my Napa friend and former Big Leaguer, the late Dario Lodigiani, held for the guy who brought big league baseball to the Pacific Coast.

This past Sunday, Walter O’Malley was officially inducted into the Hall of Fame in far away Cooperstown in upstate New York.

Forgive me if I forgot to stand up and cheer.

Ace Parker can be reached at evjenpar@mailbug.com or 224-9956.