Lorinda de Roulet, the first woman to oversee day-to-day operations of a major league team when she chaired the Mets board of directors in the 1970s, died on Oct. 26, according to club historian Jay Horwitz.
She was 95.
In November 1978, de Roulet succeeded M. Donald Grant in running the Mets’ daily operations. She remained in the role for one season before the team was sold.
Her involvement with the Mets began in 1975 when she became team president upon the death of her mother, Joan Whitney Payson, the club’s original owner.
Payson was the first woman to buy majority control of a North American sports franchise rather than inherit it. She also served as the team president beginning with the Mets’ inception in 1962.
“It never occurred to me that I would wind up running the team,” de Roulet told The New York Times in 1978. “I guess I thought mother would keep running things and my husband was interested too.”
Payson was instrumental in the trade that brought Willie Mays back to New York in 1972 to conclude his Hall of Fame career. Mays had begun his career with the New York Giants before the franchise’s shift to San Francisco. As a condition of the trade, Payson told Mays the Mets would retire his No. 24. That vow was finally fulfilled in 2022, when the team (under Steve Cohen’s stewardship) retired Mays’ number on Old Timers’ Day.
After the Mets stockholders forced Grant (who had most notably traded Tom Seaver the previous year) to resign following 17 seasons as chairman of the board, de Roulet stepped in and oversaw a club largely devoid of stars that struggled to compete. The Mets, under manager Joe Torre, lost 99 games in 1979 and finished sixth in the NL East. It was the team’s third straight losing season.
“Money was short, and she did the best she could,” de Roulet’s daughter, Whitney Bullock, said Friday.
The team’s sale to Doubleday & Company before the 1980 season ended de Roulet’s tenure. Fred Wilpon, a minority owner, succeeded de Roulet in overseeing the Mets’ day-to-day operations.
But de Roulet remained a devoted fan of the team as a season ticket holder and attended games into the Mets’ first seasons at Citi Field. Bullock said her mother told her this year that if the Mets reached the World Series, she would try to attend a game.
“She was so passionate about the team,” Bullock said.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
