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By Brent Shyer
It took a 22-year-old with leadership, courage and vision to encourage the Brooklyn Dodgers to come to Los Angeles.
Convinced that it was the right course of action for the City of Los Angeles to take, the University of Southern California graduate was compelled to push for the Dodgers, even when it seemed only a remote possibility.
Today, it is more commonplace to have cities interested in luring a professional sports team to relocate. But, in the 1950s, Major League Baseball did not even field a team west of St. Louis. When the Boston Braves relocated to Milwaukee for the 1953 season, it snapped a 50-year period of no movement by teams.
The campaign staged to attract a team -- and not just any team, mind you, but the 1955 World Champion Dodgers — said all one needs to know about the ambition of this elected official.
“Right now, I’m deep in plans to bring major league baseball to Los Angeles. Everybody wants it and we should have it. Baseball is a big business. We have the climate and Los Angeles is a great sports town. We need big league baseball. It would be great for the kids, too. They are great worshippers of top sports figures and sports-minded kids are never delinquent.”1
This quote was delivered in April of 1957, not by the Mayor of Los Angeles, but by a woman.
That’s right, the youngest City Councilperson in the history of Los Angeles, Rosalind Wyman, made that statement, filled with hope that she and a cadre of local officials could woo Walter O’Malley and the Dodgers westward, providing he paid to build the stadium. It was one of the biggest gambles in the City’s history, but one, once achieved, that proved to be the mother lode of risk-taking success.
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