Dodgers: Roz Wyman, Young City Councilor Instrumental in Bringing Team to LA, Passes Away
Rosalind “Roz” Wyman, the youngest person ever elected to the Los Angeles City Council when she won election at the age of 22 in 1953, has passed away at the age of 92, her family said in a statement reported by the L.A. Times. Wyman was just the second woman elected to L.A.’s City Council, and just a few years after her election, she was instrumental in bringing the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.
Wyman and another council member wrote a letter to Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley in 1955, asking him to consider bringing the major leagues to the west coast.
“He wrote back that he was a New Yorker and he preferred to stay in New York,” Wyman said (in 2010). “But that changed, and it’s proven to be one of the best things that ever happened to Los Angeles.”
It wasn’t just the Dodgers that Wyman brought over. When O’Malley was concerned about the travel with all the other teams across the country, Wyman helped convince New York Giants owner Horace Stoneham that he should move his team to San Francisco. A few years later, Wyman was instrumental in bringing the Minneapolis Lakers to L.A.
Former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, who played for the team in Brooklyn before becoming their public face in L.A., said in 2010:
“What this lady did for baseball in this city, they should erect a monument to her.”
When Wyman — then Rosalind Wiener, as she didn’t marry Eugene Wyman until the year after her election — was running for city council, she knocked doors on Monday evenings because she knew people would be home. After all, that’s when “I Love Lucy” was on TV, and no one wanted to miss that.
To give you an idea what a long, illustrious life Wyman lived, the byline on the Times obituary is credited to Valerie J. Nelson and Kenneth Reich. Nelson no longer works at the Times, and Reigh passed away 14 years ago.
Wyman is survived by three children and three grandchildren. Her husband passed away in 1973.
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