Photos: Roz Wyman dies; council member helped bring the Dodgers to L.A.
Roz Wyman
April 15, 2012 | 5:25 p.m.
Updated 5:25 p.m.
On Sunday, the Dodgers came to Los Angeles, setting a Major League Baseball record that now stands with eight straight years of a 50-win season.
But with it came the death of one of the most important figures in the Dodgers’ early history.
Rosie Wyman, who as a toddler grew up in North Hollywood and went to the Los Angeles schools that became the Dodgers, died in her sleep on Friday. She was 90.
The daughter of immigrants who worked night and day in the Depression, Wyman attended Hollywood High School with Babe Ruth and Mickey Mantle, and joined the Army as a teenager in 1944, where she was stationed at the Presidio of Monterey.
After her discharge, she moved to North Hollywood and found work with the National Motion Picture Company, which published “The Great Manners of Our National Hockey League,” which was one of the first baseball and hockey cards of the new sport.
She then began her lifelong friendship with the Dodgers’ owner, Walter O’Malley, who had been part of the Hollywood movie world for seven years before moving to L.A. When O’Malley was named Dodgers owner in 1957, he moved the team from Brooklyn to the Hollywood Park neighborhood, which he saw as home, and named it the Dodgers.
In 1961, Wyman, then 28, was given the honor of meeting O’Malley and introducing him to his new team.
“She was so gracious, and told me what to bring him,” O’Malley said. “From that day on she was a special part of our organization. She was always around and would give us suggestions on baseball. She’s one of the reasons why we were able to win.”
Wyman took to O’Malley’s plans for the Dodgers in her own way: She brought him a letter from President Franklin Roosevelt, calling the team “the most loyal baseball team in America.”
She also introduced O’Malley to baseball commissioner Ford Fr