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“Now, I’m first introduced to O’Malley on this phone call after many months. I’ve never spoken to him. He said, ‘Mrs. Wyman, I want to thank you for all you’ve done.’ And he said, ‘I know it’s been difficult’ and he was very gracious. I don’t want to get to the question and I’m talking about the weather almost. You know, how’s the weather in New York? Finally, Norrie says ‘Ask him, ask him, ask him!’ I mean literally yelling at me, ‘Ask him, ask him, ask him!’ And I thought Roz don’t, but finally I thought I’ll never get out of this room if I don’t do it. So, I said Mr. O’Malley, I take it if we vote this deal through, you will come. And he said, ‘I do not know if I will come. I’m certainly seriously giving it consideration. Do you know if you have the votes?’ I said I think I have the votes. He continued the conversation, ‘I am a New Yorker. I still believe that possibly the better place for us is in New York.’ He said, ‘Baseball has never been very successful in California.’ He said, ‘I don’t know if we will come.’ At this point, I was so deflated, I thought why argue with him, as I had to get back to the Council Chambers. I said Mr. O’Malley, that’s a pretty disappointing answer. I said we’ve gone a long way to get here. I said, but I do have to go back to the City Council and fight this thing through. I said it was nice meeting and talking with you on the telephone. Goodbye.
“I was really devastated. It took me a little while, in fact, I went back to my office to really collect myself. I was really disappointed. I didn’t have time to get into my personal feelings. I had to get back to the floor of the council.
“I never deceived people in my career in the City of L.A. I thought will the council be smart enough to ask me, ‘Is he coming? Did I know for sure the Dodgers would come to L.A.?’ As it turned out, they never asked me and, if they had, I was concerned because I didn’t want to deceive my colleagues or the City of Los Angeles with my answer. If my answer was negative, that surely would have affected the vote which was coming very soon. I felt O’Malley wouldn’t have had a team negotiating if he wasn’t seriously considering coming to Los Angeles. That was the best I got from that conversation.”
How long was it until the City Council voted that night?
“It was more than a couple of hours and I decided it was time to call for the vote. We went into an evening session, which was rarely done. We went quite late, after having debated all day. My biggest problem then was to hold Rundberg in (to get to 10 votes). There’s an old saying in City Council about voting, ‘I’m with you until roll call...then who knows?’ I called for the vote, still not sure of Rundberg. I decided we had discussed and debated this far enough. We were going to win or lose.”
When the Council voted 10-4 to approve the contract on October 7, 1957 with the Dodgers and ask them to relocate to Los Angeles for the 1958 season, did you have a great sense of accomplishment and relief?
“I was exhausted! I didn’t enjoy it at that point. I was absorbing what O’Malley had told me on the phone. We voted. I’m going to go home and hope O’Malley’s going to say yes the next day. The next day, October 8, the Dodgers announced they had drafted the Los Angeles territory according to the City Council terms and invitation. Now I had a sense of elation. I still didn’t understand why, if the Dodgers planned to announce the next day after our vote that they were coming to L.A., O’Malley didn’t tell me on the telephone conversation.”
Were you surprised by the unexpected fierce opposition that took place almost immediately thereafter?
“We were surprised that the opposition was well-organized. The opposition was well spread all over the city and we began to realize there was real money behind this effort. It took me a long time to figure out about J.A. Smith down in San Diego, who was behind it and trying to get a team that he would own there. Smith decided that there would never be another major league team to come because of the Dodgers. He knew the PCL would be gone and thought that they would never get a San Diego team. It took 11 years to actually get one.
O’Malley and I often discussed with the P.R. firm Baus and Ross Company that this was a well-organized, funded campaign. The opposition had a lot of material handed out which was getting around the city. The signs that are wonderful are the signs that are homemade. All the signs and all the literature we saw were not homemade. We kept saying there’s money here somewhere. The funniest thing of all, my little Mother, who loved baseball, was sent by the campaign to some of their public meetings. We needed information. She got on their mailing list and would show up and she’d come home and say, ‘Rozie, they are really out to beat this thing.’ And she said, ‘They’re even doing a phone bank.’ It was just like a political campaign. My Mother knew something about campaigning as our drugstore was (Franklin) Roosevelt — (John Nance) Garner headquarters in 1932.”
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Walter O’Malley speaks to legendary manager Casey Stengel at the city’s Welcome Luncheon for the Dodgers at the Statler Hotel in Los Angeles on October 28, 1957. Roz Wyman (left), Dodger Manager Walter Alston (standing) and Los Angeles Mayor Norris Poulson (right) all look on. Unidentified man standing behind O’Malley and Stengel. |
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