Roz Wyman, Who Helped Bring the Dodgers to Los Angeles, Dies at 92

Roz Wyman, who helped lead Los Angeles’s successful campaign to persuade Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, to move west after the 1957 season, died on Wednesday at her home in the Bel Air neighborhood of Los Angeles. She was 92.

Her son Robert Wyman confirmed the death.

Major League Baseball had 16 teams until 1961, and until 1958 none was farther west than Kansas City, Mo., although California had minor league teams, most prominently in the Pacific Coast League. When Ms. Wyman, at 22, ran for a seat on the Los Angeles City Council in 1953, she vowed to import a major league team. She focused on the Dodgers and, to a lesser extent, the New York Giants.

“The time appears to be ripe,” she said in 1955, as it became apparent that the Dodgers and Giants might be in play. “Certainly if the people of New York must act to keep the clubs there, we can act to bring them here.”

In Mr. O’Malley, Ms. Wyman and her allies, including Norris Poulson, the city’s mayor, and Kenneth Hahn, a county supervisor, had a cagey target. He pledged publicly to stay in Brooklyn and engaged in long-drawn-out talks with New York City officials about building a new ballpark. In 1955, he rebuffed Ms. Wyman’s request for a meeting; she responded that she would talk to the Giants instead.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/30/us/politics/roz-wyman-dead.html