Wyman was an influential figure in the Democratic Party for more 60 years but she is best known for her role in a move that transformed professional sports and Los Angeles.
Editor’s note: Former Los Angeles City Councilwoman. Wyman was the youngest person ever elected to the city council but she is best known for her role in bringing the Dodgers to Los Angeles, a move that transformed American sports and the city. This article appeared in April 2008 on the 50th anniversary of the Dodgers’ move from Brooklyn to the West Coast.
In September 1955, Wyman, a 25-year-old Los Angeles city councilwoman unknown outside the smallest of Southern California political circles, wrote her first letter to Brooklyn owner Walter O’Malley asking to meet and discuss the possibility of moving the Dodgers to the West Coast. O’Malley blew her off. Wyman refused to take no for an answer and on April 18, 1958 played their first game in Los Angeles.
“It definitely changed the climate,” said Alan Rothenberg, CEO of the 1994 World Cup organizing committee. “She really changed Los Angeles,” said Christine Pelosi, daughter of the Speaker of the House and like her mother a long-time friend of Wyman. Wyman’s passion for baseball and politics and a determination to follow her convictions came naturally.
But in 1953, at 22, Wyman found herself running for city council, going door to door in Los Angeles’ 5th District, handing out some of the 35,000 3×5 inch business cards she bought at a local printer for $20.“The cards had a checklist of the issues I was running on, my platform,” Wyman continued. “Like transportation and there would be check-off next to it. One of the check-offs was bring big league baseball to Los Angeles.
Wyman sensed the timing was perfect for a move. Aviation advances made travel to the West Coast reasonable. She also realized that a nation restless after World War II was already moving westward. The population of Los Angeles County in 1940 was 2.7 million. By 1950 it was 4.1 million. Major league baseball, Wyman reasoned, would accelerate that growth with companies chasing the masses west. Making it to the majors would also rid Los Angeles of its backwater reputation.
“I was mad,” Wyman said. “I wasn’t just ticked off, I was plain old mad. I thought he was rude. He didn’t take me seriously. He thought it was a political joke, that I wrote the letter as a political stunt. But I was serious. I couldn’t have been more serious. So I was frustrated but I just couldn’t quit. I told myself ‘Wyman, you wanted to get baseball here so why quit now?’”
O’Malley, an attorney who acquired the Dodgers in 1950, wanted to build a domed stadium at the intersection of Flatbush and Atlantic Avenues, near the Long Island rail line. But O’Malley would have to get the approval of New York City construction coordinator Robert Moses and Moses didn’t like O’Malley or his plans.“Robert Moses shaped New York,” Robert A. Caro wrote in The Power Broker, his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Moses.
On the evening of October 7, shortly before a vote to finalize the offer to the Dodgers, Wyman was summoned to the office of Mayor Norris Poulson. Concerned about the potential embarrassment should O’Malley at such a late date reject the deal, Poulson insisted they call Brooklyn to make sure O’Malley would indeed move West. Wyman initially resisted. Eventually, O’Malley was reached. Poulson, too nervous to talk, handed Wyman, then pregnant, the telephone.
Two weeks later Wyman climbed up the steps to O’Malley’s Convair 440 plane at Los Angeles International Airport to finally meet the Dodgers owner. O’Malley had barely stepped out the plane door when he was met by a process server.“You’ve just been served,” Wyman said. “Mr. O’Malley just accept it. I’ll explain it later.“It was just the beginning,” Wyman recalled.