Column: Patt Morrison asks: Roz Wyman on life for Dodgers fans after Vin Scully

This weekend, as Dodgers announcer Vin Scully calls his last game in Chavez Ravine, the woman who helped to bring him to Los Angeles will be there cheering him on. Roz Wyman, the youngest person and the second woman to serve on the Los Angeles City Council, campaigned on getting major-league baseball to L.A. Then she moved heaven, earth and Walter O’Malley to make it happen. She knew she was getting a big-name team when she helped to persuade the Brooklyn Dodgers to come to LA in 1958. What she didn’t know is that she would also be bringing a future legend to Los Angeles — a man who wears a sports coat, not a sports uniform — and, as it happened, also getting herself a friend. The woman who has bled Dodger Blue for nearly 60 years can’t say enough about the man who has talked a Dodger Blue streak for even longer.

CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO THIS INTERVIEW ON THE ‘PATT MORRISON ASKS’ PODCAST »

Now there are some people in L.A. who don’t like the Dodgers. There are some people in L.A. who don’t even like baseball. But everybody likes Vin Scully. Why is that?

I tell you, he is absolutely unique. When they arrived in L.A., obviously we had baseball stars, you had PeeWee Reese and you had Duke Snyder, and you had all of these great names that were coming into L.A. But we didn’t know there was a gem that was coming with them. And this town fell in love with this man. And when they came to the Coliseum before the stadium was built, and transistors radios became the thing that everybody brought to the stadium. I have said that Vin Scully even taught L.A. baseball.

When and how did you meet Vin Scully?

My good husband was alive at that time and we went out to dinner, et cetera. Something that maybe a lot of people don’t know — he told my husband, who was a lawyer, that he thought at one point he wanted to be a lawyer, and he was so interested in the law. And my husband said, I got a ton of books that I brought from school. And he said to Vinny, would you like those books? And Vinny said yes.

Thank God he decided not to be a lawyer!

The Dodgers’ first year playing here was 1958, and it didn’t exactly go according to plan.

We thought we were getting this great ball club, which was considered the finest in the country at the time in any sport. And we ended in seventh place, Patt! And it was terrible. And then the next year, we crawled back up until, in ’59, we went to the World Series.

But the interesting thing happened. I always say this town, the city, is torn, one side versus another. Vin Scully said, “And now we go to Chicago,” and this town — wherever people were they always drove with their radios on — they started horns blowing, in the Westside, in the Eastside and all over L.A., and then you then knew of his popularity. It was something unreal.

You think of him starting in the days when baseball was on the radio, not on television. Ronald Reagan helped to make his career by calling baseball games by making them so visual. I think that’s a great skill of Vin Scully’s: even if you’re not watching the game, you can “see” the game.

He has a way of telling a story, and it’s very hard, when you’re telling a story and you stop and you say “ball two,” “ball three,” and then he goes back and he never loses his place in telling that story — I mean, the skills that he has that are so natural.

One time we needed five innings to what’s called a full game if it has to be called for some reason. And he started to describe a rainstorm. And he had the clouds coming and he had them moving, and are we going to get the five innings in? And he started to describe the storm, the story about the clouds and the rain, possibly — [the players] were not in L.A. and I swear I was looking out my window, thinking, Oh my goodness, he is describing this storm, I feel like it’s coming in my house!

Even though he’s on the Dodger payroll, any sports announcer, any team announcer, has to be fair, has to be insightful — maybe a little critical, not nasty but fair.

He is the fairest announcer. The Giants are the ones we want to always beat the most, but you know, even if it’s the Giants that we’re playing, and a really good play is made, he says it. And that is one of the things that most announcers in baseball do not do. They’re very, very, very partisan. And he certainly is the Dodgers’ announcer, but again no man is fairer when he describes the baseball game.

The team has undergone so much — changes in ownership, ups, downs, successes, terrible seasons. Is it his presence that — well, describe what that’s meant.

Obviously the O’Malleys were incredible owners, and he of course was part of the original team. I was upset when the O’Malleys actually sold. But Scully was string — I wish I could think of the proper word. He tied it, no matter who became the new owners, if they were even disliked — and some of the owners have really been disliked — and yet he was the steady person. That didn’t change one single bit, no matter how many newspapers wrote bad stories about why didn’t they make this trade? Everybody wants to be the manager in baseball, everyone wants to be the coach, and why did they make this trade? Why did they do that? Vinny was as steady as can be, no matter how we changed ownership.

Are there some of his greatest moments that you can think of?

I really enjoy when he talks about Jackie Robinson. Jackie Robinson is one of the biggest things that changed baseball, the breaking of the color barrier. When Scully talks about Jackie Robinson, Jackie Robinson comes alive.

And of course Vin Scully knew Jackie Robinson, he knew Sandy Koufax, he knew all of these greats.

When he described Sandy’s no hitter, the perfect game, we were on the edge of our seats!

I have this great idea: I would like the last three games, one of the last games, when we’re in the ballpark, that if he could broadcast the last games and it was broadcast into the stadium so those of us who are there in honor of the last three games with him in LA, we could hear him inside the stadium! Wouldn’t that be tremendous?

Maybe this is changing, but you know that for decades, there were people who would not go to Dodger games because they were angry about what happened with Chavez Ravine, the controversy over getting the land to become Dodger Stadium. Do you think that’s changing in Los Angeles?

Most people don’t even know about it. And I must say, the one thing that does get me angry is that the true story of Chavez Ravine — that land stayed idle for five years, that land was cleared for public housing, there was a vote to build public housing there, and there was a vote of the people who voted it out.

Everybody had moved but five families, and they lived there for five years free, no taxes, no anything and the true story, before I die, I am going to get it on the record. Because I know O’Malley had nothing to do with moving the people out of there, except the five who were last, when finally we decided to use that land for baseball.

That land was not taken for, cleared for baseball. That was cleared before O’Malley ever looked at that piece of land.

Back in 1958, the Dodgers had already started playing here in L.A., but Angelenos were still asked to vote on Proposition B, yes or no, to approve a contract between the city and the Dodgers. And a couple of days before the election, in June, Vin Scully was in Chicago, calling a Dodgers game there.

We had a day game with Chicago. He didn’t say how to vote, just said, Don’t forget to vote. We won just by a small margin. So I always say, we got the Dodgers first and then we almost lost them.

Do you think the team and the fans will be different after Vin Scully retires?

Well, I think it’ll take a while because people who’ve heard him and listened to him and know him will say, oh, whoever replaces him …

I hate to be the person who replaces him, that’s all I can say. And they’re grooming a young man right now. And you shouldn’t compare in a way, but we were just so lucky that we got to know him and got to have him.

I don’t think it will affect the Dodgers attendance or anything like that. I might say that if we have a winning team, that helps!

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