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O’Malley rightly pointed out when some residents of Los Angeles opposed the Dodgers’ previously approved agreement with the City and forced the “Proposition B” referendum to let voters decide the Dodgers’ fate on June 3, 1958 that he was now bound to pay baseball’s highest rental at the Coliseum; owned and maintained Wrigley Field in L.A.; and was also paying maintenance expenses both at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn (where he had a three-year lease) and Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, New Jersey, where the Dodgers had played 15 “home” games in 1956 and 1957.
Several key Dodgers, including catcher Roy Campanella, shortstop Pee Wee Reese, center fielder Duke Snider, first baseman Gil Hodges and Manager Walter Alston were asked by O’Malley to assist the team’s community relations and ticket sales during that first winter in Los Angeles. With 30,000 season tickets sold by the end of 1957, Los Angeles was abuzz about the impending arrival of the Dodgers, who had paid $450,000 in territorial rights to the Pacific Coast League for the market. Major League Baseball was about to make its West Coast debut just three months after O’Malley had decided on where the Dodgers would play.
“I played the last game in Brooklyn and anticipated going to L.A. – I had been to L.A.,” said three-time National League MVP Campanella. “I went out to see the Coliseum and the short left field fence. It made me feel good, but I never got to play there. Before my (auto) accident (on January 28, 1958), Mr. O’Malley had the skipper Walter Alston, Pee Wee Reese, Duke, Vin Scully, myself and I think Gil Hodges in L.A. We were like in community relations, selling tickets. For two weeks we would be in L.A. and half of us would go back home to New York, or wherever we lived, and vice versa. But, we sold tickets after the season of ’57 in Brooklyn, we sold tickets in L.A. We had quite a schedule.”
A tragedy shocked the baseball world when Campanella was paralyzed from the neck down in his well-documented single-car automobile accident. O’Malley immediately went to visit Campanella in the hospital and made arrangements for his long-term well-being.
The first games of the inaugural season on the West Coast would be played in Seals Stadium in San Francisco – the Giants’ temporary home (1958-59) until Candlestick Park would be built by the city and its taxpayers. In that series, the Dodgers dropped two of the first three games before returning home on Thursday evening April 17 to attend a Baseball Writers Association of America, Los Angeles chapter banquet at the swanky Biltmore Bowl in downtown Los Angeles.
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