Water and Power Associates Informing the Public about Critical Water and Energy Issues facing Los Angeles and California

Historical Notes

1892 - The original Los Angeles Angels baseball team, playing with the four-team California League, plays through the 1893 for one season.

1893 - The California League Los Angeles Angels and the team from Stockton play a nighttime exhibition game - the first ever night professional baseball game on the Pacific Coast. The game is played at Athletic Park in Los Angeles.

1903 - Los Angeles joins the formation of the Pacific Coast League with the debut of the Los Angeles Angels baseball team. The team had no relationship to the team that played 1892-1893. The rival Pacific National League also debuts a team in Los Angeles, but it plays for barely a season.

Historical Notes

In 1909 Peter Maier, a meatpacker, built the first stadium, Maier Park, at 38th and Irving in the city of Vernon. The Vernon Tigers would play there until 1913 when they moved to Venice (Not coincidentally, both Venice and Vernon were the only two cities in the area where the sale of alcoholic beverages was legal). Weak attendance in Venice forced Maier to dismantle the entire stadium and move it back to Vernon in 1915.

During their history the Tigers also played at Washington Park when the Angels were on the road.

Doyle's Tavern was butted up to left field at Maier Park and it was rumored that there was a door in the left field wall where some players would run in to Doyle's for a quick beer between innings. It was also used for letting the crowd in and out of the park.

The team was eventually purchased by Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle in 1919 who was a Hollywood movie star. Shortly thereafter the team had a scandal which was a lesser "Black Sox" type event that resulted in several player suspensions.

In 1925 the franchise was sold to San Francisco investors who renamed the team the Mission Reds. The Reds moved back to LA in 1938 and morphed into the Hollywood Stars.

Historical Notes

The Boston Red Sox were in town on March 9th, 1911 to play the Vernon Tigers at Washington Park – if the weather permitted.  Note that several of the players are looking up to the sky at, possibly, rain clouds.

A Los Angeles Times article dated Mar 9, 1911 with the title ‘Ball Game If Weather Permits’, read as follows:

"The Boston Red Sox and the Vernon team are scheduled to play a game this afternoon at the new Washington Park if—

Hap Hogan said last night that “if” meant two things: That the game would be at the Washington Park if “It” did not rain all night and if the ground was not too soft; and if not at the Washington street ground it would be at the Vernon Park, if there was not too much rain.

With this beautifully lucid and clear statement everyone should know as much as any one about “weather” there will be a ball game this afternoon.

Dillon called off the San Bernardino game last night."

Historical Notes

In 1900, a baseball diamond was completed on the northern end of the Chutes Park, with a team to play in the new California League. It would be the first team to be called the Los Angeles Angels. It was also home of the Vernon Tigers. Following games, a gate in the center field fence was opened and fans were allowed to enter the theme park.

Historical Notes

Chutes Park was replaced by Washington Park in 1912, which had been built nearby just two blocks away at Washington and Hill Streets. The Chutes / Washington area was abandoned entirely when the Angels moved to Wrigley Field at 42nd Street and Avalon Boulevard.

The Chutes Park baseball field has also been referred to as Washington Park.*^

Historical Notes

The Venice PCL entry of 1913-14 also played its home games at Washington Park, except for Sunday morning and special holiday games. In 1915, they would move back to Vernon and once again become the Vernon Tigers.

A football game between USC and California was played at Washington Park on November 25, 1915.  It drew 8,000 spectators, the largest crowd to have seen a football game in southern California at that time.

Historical Notes

From 1903 through 1957, the Los Angeles Angels were one of the mainstays of the Pacific Coast League, winning the PCL pennant 12 times. The Angels, along with the Portland Beavers, Oakland Oaks, Sacramento Solons, San Francisco Seals, and Seattle Indians were charter members of the Pacific Coast League which was founded in 1903.

Historical Notes

In 1921, the team was purchased by chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr., the owner of the Chicago Cubs of the National League. When Wrigley could not get the city of Los Angeles to make the improvements to Washington Park he requested, he began construction of his own 21,000-seat stadium, appropriately named Wrigley Field, at 42nd Place and Avalon Boulevard in what is now known as South Central Los Angeles. The Angels began play at Wrigley in 1926, and responded by winning their eighth PCL pennant, finishing 10½ games ahead of the second-place Oakland Oaks.*^

Washington Park was eventually demolished in the Mid-1950s.

Historical Notes

Charlie, a Chicago Cubs pitcher made famous by the apocryphal story of Babe Ruth calling his shot by pointing to the center field bleachers with Root on the mound, is seen here in his last year in the minor leagues with the Los Angeles Angels (the triple-A Cubs affiliate). The car may have been his but the photograph was commissioned by Walter M. Murphy Motors Company for an advertising shot.  This is the last year the Angels will play at Washington Park moving into their own Wrigley Field, at 42nd Pl and Avalon, next season.

Historical Notes

Italian American brothers, John and Joe Pirrone, used their earnings from their wholesale fruit business to purchase the land to build White Sox Park in 1924. Joe Pirrone organized the California Winter League to lure Negro League teams to southern California to play against local semi-pro teams and minor league teams, including Japanese American and Mexican American teams. During the 1920s African Americans were barred from playing in Pacific Coast League parks including Wrigley Field and Gilmore Field in Los Angeles. According to William McNeil, “The California Winter League was apparently intended as a showcase for Negro league baseball. White Sox Park, which was strategically located in or near black sections of the city, hosted the majority of league games.” Some of these teams included the Kansas City Royals and Monarchs, Philadelphia Giants, Detroit Giants and Nashville Royal Giants. There were also all-black teams from the sandlots of Los Angeles, such as the Royal Giants, Colored Giants, Monarchs, Stars and many others.*

Historical Notes

IWhite Sox Park was also the home of Mexican American baseball teams. Mexican American baseball teams and leagues dotted the southern California landscape “working to play, playing to work.” El Paso Shoe Store from San Gabriel fielded one of the strongest teams called, “Los Zapateros,” that played a majority of its games in White Sox Park.  Hollywood celebrities, city political figures and the Mexican Consul attended games at White Sox Park.*

Historical Notes

The Los Zapateros team was owned and managed by Don Rodrigo Castillo, who founded El Paso Shoe Store when he moved to Los Angeles from El Paso.

Throughout the 1930s baseball teams from Mexico were invited to play against local Mexican American teams. Los Zapateros also played matches against the Los Angeles Nippons, a nisei baseball team.

By the early 1940s the ballpark fell into disrepair and was demolished at the end of World War II to make way for veteran housing project and the Ross Snyder Recreation Center.*

Historical Notes

From 1933 to 1942 and from 1946 to 1950, the Chicago White Sox held their spring training in Brookside Park.^^

(1935)^^ - Joseph Barry, J. Louis Comiskey, William Wrigley Jr., and Harry Grabiner sit on an arroyo stone wall at Brookside Park while the Chicago White Sox play a baseball game during spring training.

Historical Notes

William Wrigley Jr. owned the Chicago Cubs and the team had its annual spring training on Catalina Island, which he owned.

Joseph Barry was the White Sox traveling secretary, J. Louis Comiskey was owner and president of the White Sox organization and Harry Grabiner was vice president..^^

(1938)^^ - Chicago White Sox players line up in front of a movie camera for a newsreel that would be shown in theaters. (Brookside Park, Pasadena)

Historical Notes

William Wrigley Jr., the owner of the Chicago Cubs and the Wrigley Company, purchased a controlling interest in the Cubs in 1916 and subsequently bought Catalina Island in 1919. His vision was to transform the island into a premier tourist destination and a unique spring training location for his baseball team.

Historical Notes

The Cubs began their spring training on Catalina Island in 1921, continuing this tradition until 1951, with a hiatus during World War II (1942-1945). The training camp was set up in Avalon, the island's main town, where a field and clubhouse were constructed.

When the Chicago Cubs began spring training on Catalina Island in 1921, they practiced at Avalon Ball Park. This field served as their training site until Wrigley Field on Catalina Island was established in the late 1920s. The field on Catalina Island was colloquially called Wrigley Field by the Chicago Cubs players and fans before it was officially named Wrigley Field. The Catalina Island Wrigley Field was named after the Los Angeles Wrigley Field, which had been named in 1925. This naming occurred before the Chicago Wrigley Field received its current name in 1927. The field's association with the Wrigley family, who owned both the Cubs and significant property on Catalina Island, led to the informal use of the name prior to its official designation in the late 1920s.

Historical Notes

The Cubs were treated like royalty on the island, greeted with a parade each spring, fed at the ornate Hotel St. Catherine, and able to cavort with actresses like Betty Grable, Grace Bradley and Rochelle Hudson. They stayed at the Hotel St. Catherine in Descanso Bay and played on a ballfield built in Avalon Canyon that was named Wrigley Field.

Historical Notes

Players stayed at the Hotel St. Catherine in Descanso Bay and played on a ballfield built in Avalon Canyon. The Cubs continued to use the island for spring training until 1951, except during the war years of 1942–45.

Historical Notes

Today, only a plaque noting the location of "Wrigley Field" remains on the grounds of what is currently the Catalina Island Country Club, though its clubhouse is the same structure that Wrigley built for the Cubs.

Click HERE to see more Early Views of Catalina.

Historical Notes

Wrigley Field was built in South Los Angeles in 1925 and was named after William Wrigley Jr., the chewing gum magnate who owned the first tenants, the original Los Angeles Angels Pacific Coast League team. In 1925, the Angels moved from their former home at Washington Park (Los Angeles), which was also known as Chutes Park. Wrigley also owned the Chicago Cubs, whose home (Wrigley Field) is also named after him.

Chewing-gum magnate William Wrigley Jr. bought the Angels in 1921 as a farm team for his Chicago Cubs for the (then) astronomical sum of $150,000 and then built a stadium for the team a few years later. Construction for Wrigley Field began in 1924 and the stadium opened in 1925.

Historical Notes

For 33 seasons (1925-1957) Wrigley Field was home to the Angels, and for 11 of those seasons (1926-1935 and 1938) it had a second home team in the rival Hollywood Stars. The Stars eventually moved to their own new ballpark, Gilmore Field.

Prior to 1925, the Angels played at their former home at Washington Park, and before that, at Chutes Park.

Historical Notes

The Los Angeles Wrigley Field was built to resemble Spanish-style architecture and a somewhat scaled-down version of the Chicago ballpark (known then as Cubs Park) as it looked at the time. It was also the first of the two ballparks to bear Wrigley's name, as the Chicago park was named for Wrigley over a year after the L.A. park's opening. At the time, he owned Santa Catalina Island, and the Cubs were holding their spring training in that island's city of Avalon (whose ballfield was located on Avalon Canyon Road and also informally known as "Wrigley Field").

Coincidentally, one of Wrigley Field's boundary streets was Avalon Boulevard (east, behind right field and a small parking lot). The other boundaries of the block were 41st Street (north, behind left field), 42nd Place (south, behind first base), and San Pedro Street (west, behind third base and a larger parking lot). Not only did L.A. Wrigley get its name first, it had more on-site parking than the Chicago version did (or does now).

Historical Notes

The inaugural game was won by the Los Angeles Angels defeating San Francisco Seals, 10-8, before 18,000 fans.

Historical Notes

Erected in 1925 at 42nd Place and Avalon Blvd., Wrigley Field was a 21,000-seat, home-run hitters paradise. It also doubled as the set for such films as "Pride of the Yankees", "Dam Yankees" and "Alibi Ike" and the "Home Run Derby" television show.

Historical Notes

Los Angeles was the first city to have a ballpark named Wrigley Field. The Los Angeles ballpark opened in 1925 with the name Wrigley Field, while the Chicago ballpark, originally named Weeghman Park, was renamed Wrigley Field in 1927.

Historical Notes

The first night baseball game in Los Angeles took place at Wrigley Field on July 22, 1930, when the Los Angeles Angels defeated the Sacramento Senators 5–4 in 11 innings before a crowd of 17,000. This historic Pacific Coast League game marked one of the earliest uses of stadium lighting in professional baseball. A little-known fact: Chicago’s Wrigley Field, the more famous namesake, didn’t host its first official night game until August 9, 1988—making it one of the last Major League ballparks to add lights.

Historical Notes

The Los Angeles Times caption reported the next day that “The overflow crowd was stationed in the outfield but no ground rules were necessary as none of the contestants was able to wallop the ball that far…”

Historical Notes

Wrigley Field in Los Angeles was conceived in 1921 when William Wrigley Jr., owner of the Chicago Cubs, purchased the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast League and decided to build a new ballpark to replace Washington Park. Designed by Zachary Taylor Davis, the stadium featured a double-decked grandstand, a Spanish-style exterior, and a distinctive clock tower, opening on September 29, 1925, with a seating capacity of around 21,000. It served as home to the Los Angeles Angels and Hollywood Stars until the Angels moved to Dodger Stadium in 1962. The ballpark was eventually demolished in 1969, and the site is now home to Gilbert Lindsay Park and the Kedren Community Health Center.

(1951)* - Chuck Connors, baseball player for both the Angels and the Hollywood Stars. During his short baseball career, 1949 - 1951, Conners also played on the Brooklyn Dodgers and Chicago Cubs.

Historical Notes

Chuck Connors, made a successful move from one side of the box seat railing to the other, becoming the star in "The Rifleman", a popular 1950's TV show.

Historical Notes

In 1956 Steve Bilko had a notable achievement. That year he won the Triple Crown with stats (Home Runs, RBI's, and Batting Average) exceeding that of Mickey Mantle, who also won the Triple Crown that same year in the American League.

The 1956 Angels Club featured second baseman Gene Mauch. The "Little General" as he would be nicknamed years later, went on to become one of the winningest managers in Major League Baseball history.

Historical Notes

In February 1957, Phil Wrigley (heir son of William Wrigley), sold both the team and Wrigley Field to Walter O'Malley, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, for $3,000,000. The last Pacific Coast League game at Wrigley Field was played on September 15, 1957.

Historical Notes

The Angels franchise of today was established in MLB in 1961 after former owner Gene Autry bought the rights to continue the franchise name from Walter O'Malley, the former Los Angeles Dodgers owner who had acquired the franchise from Phil Wrigley, the owner of the Chicago Cubs at the time. As stated in the book Under the Halo: The Official History of Angels Baseball, "Autry agreed to buy the franchise name for $350,000, and continue the history of the previously popular Pacific Coast League team as his own expansion team in the MLB." After the Angels joined Major League Baseball, some players from the Angels' PCL team joined the MLB Angels in 1961.

As an expansion franchise, the club continued in Los Angeles as the Los Angeles Angels, and played their home games at Los Angeles' Wrigley Field, which had formerly been the home of the PCL Los Angeles Angels. The Angels, along with the Washington Senators, were the first expansion teams in Major League Baseball. The team then moved in 1962 to newly-built Dodger Stadium, which the Angels referred to as Chavez Ravine, where they were tenants of the Los Angeles Dodgers through 1965.

Historical Notes

In 1961, the Los Angeles Angels joined the American League as an expansion team and took residence at Wrigley Field for just one season. The Angels then moved into Dodger Stadium with the Los Angeles Dodgers, until 1965. In 1966, the Angels moved into their own home, Anaheim Stadium. Sadly, with no minor league baseball teams left in the area, Wrigley Field was torn down in the mid 1960s; Gilbert Lindsay Park presently occupies the site.

Historical Notes

Gilmore Field opened on May 2, 1939 and was the home of the Hollywood Stars until September 5, 1957.

The team that came to be known as the Hollywood Stars took a circuitous route on its way to Los Angeles.  It began its existence in 1903 as the Sacramento Solons, a charter member of the PCL. The team moved to Tacoma in 1904, where it won the pennant as the Tacoma Tigers. During the 1905 season, the team returned to Sacramento to finish out the season, moved to Fresno in 1906 to finish last as the Fresno Raisin Eaters, then left the PCL altogether. The Sacramento Solons rejoined the PCL in 1909, then moved to San Francisco during the 1914 season, finishing out the season as the San Francisco Missions. The team was sold to Utah businessman Bill "Hardpan" Lane and moved to Salt Lake City for the 1915 season. They played as the Salt Lake Bees for the next eleven seasons until Lane moved the team to Los Angeles for the 1926 season. Originally they were known as the Hollywood Bees, but soon changed their name to the Hollywood Stars.

After but one season, the team was sold to new owners, among them Bob Cobb of Brown Derby Restaurant fame and the inventor of the California Cobb Salad. In their salad days, as it were, the Stars attracted glamorous actors and other celebrities or anyone else who wanted to be "seen", much as Dodger Stadium would later.

Historical Notes

Built by Earl Gilmore, Gilmore Stadium opened in May 1934 and was demolished in 1952. The first professional football team in Los Angeles, the Los Angeles Bulldogs played at Gilmore. Before the neighboring Gilmore Field opened on May 2, 1939, the Hollywood Stars used Gilmore Stadium for their home games (apparently for only one month).

Hsitorical Notes

The Gilmore Field ballpark was located on the south side of Beverly Boulevard between Genesee Avenue and The Grove Drive, just east of where CBS Television City is currently located. A couple hundred yards to the west was Gilmore Stadium, an oval-shaped venue built several years earlier, which was used for football games and midget auto racing. To the east was the famous Pan-Pacific Auditorium. Both facilities were built by Earl Gilmore, son of Arthur F. Gilmore and president of A. F. Gilmore Oil, a California-based petroleum company which was developed after Arthur struck oil on the family property. The area was rich in petroleum, which was the source of the "tar" in the nearby La Brea Tar Pits.

Historical Notes

The field had intimate quarters from the spectator standpoint - first and third bases were 24 feet from the first row of seats. Home plate was 34 feet from the stands. The outfield gave the pitchers more of a break with foul lines 335 feet long, power alleys about 385, and 407 to center field. The power alleys were thus 40 feet deeper than in the cross-town counterpart, Wrigley Field.

Historical Notes

The team's owners realized the team needed to represent Hollywood in order to succeed. They sold stock in the team to movie stars, movie moguls, and Hollywood civic leaders ("the Hollywood Stars owned by the Hollywood stars"). One of these, Gene Autry, subsequently became owner of his own major league franchise, now the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Another major investor was William Frawley from TV's I Love Lucy. Moreover, the team actually played in the Hollywood area, beginning in 1939 when 13,000-seat Gilmore Field was opened in the Fairfax District adjacent to Hollywood. The club played part of the 1939 season in nearby Gilmore Stadium, after having played at Wrigley Field during 1938.

Historical Notes

The Stars had the dubious distinction of being the first team to replace the traditional bloused baseball trousers and stirrup socks with shorts and long socks in 1950. The theory was that players could run faster in this gear than in the baggy wool or cotton flannel uniforms of the day. The new uniforms resembling those worn by female softball players were "too Hollywood" even for Hollywood, as well as being very tough on the legs when sliding. They were soon replaced.

The new Stars (or “Twinks”) caught on and became a very popular team, winning three pennants before 1958. They had successful affiliations with the Brooklyn Dodgers and Pittsburgh Pirates of Major League Baseball. In 1955, actress Jayne Mansfield was named Miss Hollywood Star. The Stars became genuine rivals of the Angels, and it was not uncommon for fights between the teams to break out during Angels-Stars games. In fact, on August 2, 1953, a brawl between the two teams lasted 30 minutes, broken up only when 50 riot police were sent to Gilmore Field by Chief of Police William Parker, who was at home watching the game on television when the fight started.*^

Buddy Hicks, Hollywood, is nipped at first in a close play in yesterday's first game as the Twinks beat San Diego in a double header. Jack Graham is the Padre first sacker.

Historical Notes

LA Times Published Caption: "TAIN'T FUNNY--When Seal Hurler, Chet Johnson sizzled his first pitch behind Jim Baxes' back to mimic Jim's wildness, he got a big laugh. But it wasn't so funny when Johnson's next pitch, this steaming curve, caught Baxes in middle of back in eighth inning. Seals won 13-3." *^*

Historical Notes

In 1952 CBS Television City was built facing Beverly Boulevard on the site of Gilmore Stadium.

Historical Notes

In 1950, the Gilmore Company sold both the football stadium and baseball park to the Columbia Broadcasting System who then announced plans to raze the facility to build a new headquarters - CBS Television City, as it became known.

In 1958 Gilmore Field was also demolished and the studio expanded on the grounds where baseball was once played.

Historical Notes

In October 1957, the Brooklyn Dodgers confirmed their long-rumored move to Los Angeles for the 1958 season, which forced the Stars and the Angels to relocate.

The Angels, who had been purchased by Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley prior to the 1957 season, became the Spokane Indians in 1958.

Having no interest in operating the Twinks anywhere but in Los Angeles, the ownership group led by Frank J. Kanne, Jr. was compelled to sell the team, which it did, to a group based in Salt Lake City. The Stars, in a sense, "returned" to Salt Lake City (from whence the original Stars had moved in 1926) in 1958, becoming the Salt Lake Bees once more.

Historical Notes

This image shows how vast the Coliseum was—so large that even fans sitting dozens of rows up could barely make out home plate. The dotted lines printed on some photos indicated where the foul lines would run on the makeshift diamond.

Historical Notes

To welcome the Dodgers to their new city, a parade rolled down Broadway as thousands lined the streets. Players waved from convertibles while city officials celebrated Los Angeles becoming a major-league town.

Historical Notes

This photo captures the city’s excitement on Opening Day. The Dodgers’ first manager in Los Angeles, Walter Alston, would lead the team to four world championships during his 23-year career.

Historical Notes

The move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles marked a new chapter in team history. Players stepped off the buses into a sea of fans and photographers eager to witness baseball’s debut on the West Coast.

Historical Notes

The Dodgers beat their long-time rivals, the Giants, 6–5 before a record crowd of 78,672 fans. It was the first Major League Baseball game ever played in Los Angeles, ushering in a new era for the sport.

Historical Notes

This scene reflects the pageantry of Opening Day. The ceremony and the packed stands symbolized Los Angeles’ pride in welcoming big-league baseball.

Historical Notes

From the air, the Coliseum’s unusual baseball layout is clear. The left-field fence was only 251 feet from home plate, protected by a high screen to keep fly balls from becoming home runs.

Historical Notes

Although the Coliseum wasn’t designed for baseball, its massive size allowed Los Angeles fans to turn out in record numbers. The sheer enthusiasm for the Dodgers helped the team settle quickly into its new home.

Historical Notes

Fans joked that you needed binoculars to watch a game in the Coliseum. Despite the distance, the spirit of those afternoons captured the excitement of a city discovering baseball on a grand scale.

Historical Notes

The bullpen lineup included several future stars. Don Drysdale would go on to win the Cy Young Award in 1962, helping cement the Dodgers’ reputation as a powerhouse pitching team.

Historical Notes

By 1959, the Dodgers were a sensation. With seating for more than 90,000, the Coliseum routinely drew the largest baseball crowds in the nation, surpassing all previous attendance records.

Historical Notes

The Dodgers hosted Games 3, 4, and 5 of the World Series, each setting new attendance marks. Game 5, played on October 6, 1959, drew a record crowd of 92,706 fans—the largest in World Series history.

Historical Notes

Game 3, played on October 4, 1959, was the first World Series game ever held on the West Coast. A record crowd of 92,394 fans filled the Coliseum, part of a three-game stretch that averaged over 90,000 attendees—still among the largest crowds in baseball history. The Dodgers defeated the White Sox in six games to win the championship.

Historical Notes

The 1959 Dodgers finished tied for first place with the Milwaukee Braves, won a two-game playoff to capture the National League pennant, and then defeated the Chicago White Sox in the World Series. It was their first championship in Los Angeles and a defining moment of the Coliseum years.

Historical Notes

The Coliseum played a pivotal role in Major League Baseball’s westward expansion. During the Dodgers’ four-year stay, it hosted record-breaking events such as Roy Campanella Night in 1959, which drew 93,103 fans. In 1962, the Dodgers moved to their new home, Dodger Stadium, but the memories of baseball in the Coliseum remain a unique chapter in Los Angeles sports history.

Few places in Los Angeles carry a story as layered as Chavez Ravine. What became Dodger Stadium in 1962 was not simply a construction project, but the result of more than a decade of change — community displacement, political conflict, and one of the most ambitious engineering efforts the city had ever undertaken. The photographs that follow trace that transformation, from the neighborhoods that once covered these hills to the creation of one of baseball's most enduring landmarks.

The land had already been transformed once before a single stadium shovel turned. In the early 1950s, the city of Los Angeles acquired most of Chavez Ravine through eminent domain, displacing more than 300 families from the neighborhoods of Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop to make way for a federally funded public housing project. When a change in the political climate killed those plans, the cleared land sat largely empty for years. It was not until June 1958, when Los Angeles voters approved a referendum bringing the Brooklyn Dodgers west, that a new purpose emerged for the ravine. The last remaining residents were removed in May 1959. Groundbreaking came four months later.

What followed was an engineering achievement on a scale the city had rarely seen. Nineteen earthmovers relocated eight million cubic yards of earth across 300 acres, flattening ridges and filling ravines to create the bowl-shaped foundation that architect Emil Praeger and builder Vinnell Constructors would fill with 21,000 precast concrete units, some weighing as much as 32 tons. From groundbreaking in September 1959 to Opening Day in April 1962, the stadium rose in less than three years — privately financed, built without public construction funds, and opened before 52,564 fans who drove in on terraced lots designed so that fans could walk directly from their cars to their seats.

THE COMMUNITY THAT CAME BEFORE

Before the stadium, there were neighborhoods. For generations, Mexican American families had built homes, schools, and churches on the hills of Chavez Ravine. Their story does not begin with baseball. Within a few years, nearly all of it would be gone.

Historical Notes

Chavez Ravine had been home to Mexican American families since the early 1900s, and by the 1950s the neighborhoods of Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop had developed into a self-sufficient community with their own churches, schools, and small businesses. Many residents had come to the ravine specifically because racial housing discrimination in other parts of Los Angeles had closed those neighborhoods to them. Owning land in Chavez Ravine represented something rare and hard-won: a place that was genuinely theirs.

In 1950, the Los Angeles Housing Authority began acquiring land in Chavez Ravine under the Federal Housing Act of 1949, which had authorized the construction of 10,000 new low-income housing units across the city. Residents were told they would receive fair compensation and would have priority access to the new housing once it was built. In many cases, the prices offered were well below market value, and those who held out were threatened with still lower offers or seizure by eminent domain. By 1953, most of the land had been acquired and the neighborhood structures demolished, though a small number of families refused to leave.

Historical Notes

The planned housing project for Chavez Ravine, known as Elysian Park Heights, was designed by Austrian-born architect Richard Neutra. His plans called for 24 thirteen-story towers and 163 low-rise townhouses, along with rebuilt schools and playgrounds — among the most ambitious public housing proposals in Los Angeles history. It never advanced beyond plans and cleared land. The political climate shifted sharply when anti-communist sentiment made public housing a target of suspicion, and Mayor Norris Poulson was elected in 1953 on a platform that included stopping the project entirely.

The city returned the now nearly empty land to local control with one condition: it must be used for a public purpose. For years the ravine sat idle, its homes and churches gone, while the city searched for a new direction. The answer would eventually arrive from Brooklyn — but not before several more years of legal battles over whether a private baseball stadium satisfied the terms of that agreement.

Historical Notes

Walter O'Malley had spent much of the early 1950s trying to replace Brooklyn's aging Ebbets Field, which seated only about 32,000 fans and had parking for fewer than 700 cars. He had hoped to build a new domed stadium in Brooklyn, but years of negotiations with New York City officials came to nothing. Los Angeles offered something Brooklyn could not: a large parcel of already-cleared land, a booming population, and no existing major league competition. O'Malley announced the move in October 1957, the same week the New York Giants announced their move to San Francisco — ensuring that both teams would bring big-league baseball to California together.

The deal gave the Dodgers 300 acres of Chavez Ravine in exchange for the deed to the minor league Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, plus a commitment to build a privately financed stadium and improve the surrounding parkland. Voters approved the arrangement in June 1958, and lawsuits followed almost immediately. The courts would not clear the last legal obstacle until late 1959 — just months after the final Chavez Ravine families had been removed.

THE DODGERS COME WEST

In 1958, the Brooklyn Dodgers became the Los Angeles Dodgers, and baseball arrived on the West Coast for the first time. While their permanent home was still being planned and fought over, the team made a temporary home in the largest stadium in the country. For Los Angeles, it was the beginning of something new. For Brooklyn, it was the end of something irreplaceable.

Historical Notes

The Dodgers' arrival in Los Angeles in 1958 was one of the defining events in the city's modern history. Baseball had been present in Southern California for decades in the form of the Pacific Coast League, but the Pacific Coast League's Los Angeles Angels and Hollywood Stars were a different world from the National League champions who had just won the 1955 World Series in Brooklyn. The city embraced the team with enthusiasm that surprised even the Dodgers' front office. In their first season at the Coliseum, the Dodgers drew more than 1.8 million fans.

The move was celebrated in Los Angeles and mourned in Brooklyn. Ebbets Field, the Dodgers' home since 1913, was demolished in 1960. In New York, the team's departure — along with the simultaneous departure of the Giants — left the National League without a New York franchise for four years, until the expansion New York Mets began play in 1962. The move permanently shifted the geography of Major League Baseball, establishing that the sport could thrive in car-dependent Western cities that had grown up around the automobile rather than the subway.

Historical Notes

The 1958 Dodgers brought with them a roster that included some of the most recognizable names in the game. Gil Hodges, Duke Snider, Don Drysdale, and Carl Furillo had all been part of the Dodger teams that won the 1955 World Series. The team also carried with it the legacy of Jackie Robinson, who had broken Major League Baseball's color barrier as a Dodger in 1947, though Robinson had retired before the move. His presence in the franchise's history gave the team a particular significance as it arrived in Los Angeles, which had its own complex history of racial segregation in housing and public life.

Playing at the Coliseum presented both opportunities and peculiarities. The stadium had been built for football and track and field, and its dimensions forced the Dodgers to use a 42-foot screen in left field to compensate for a foul line that was only 251 feet from home plate. Despite the unusual configuration, the temporary arrangement worked well enough. The Dodgers won the World Series in 1959, drawing more than 2.25 million fans during the regular season — a National League record at the time — while construction on their permanent home was just beginning to break ground in Chavez Ravine.

GROUNDBREAKING AND GRADING

On September 17, 1959, the first shovels went into the ground at Chavez Ravine. What followed was one of the largest earthmoving operations in Los Angeles history — a transformation so complete that the landscape itself became unrecognizable. In less than 31 months, a baseball palace rose where neighborhoods had stood.

Historical Notes

The groundbreaking on September 17, 1959, came four months after the last Chavez Ravine families had been forcibly removed from the land and just weeks after the United States Supreme Court declined to hear the final legal challenge to the Dodgers' acquisition of the property. The ceremony marked the moment when years of political battles, court cases, and community displacement finally gave way to construction. For Dodger fans, it was the beginning of something long anticipated. For the displaced residents of Palo Verde, La Loma, and Bishop, it was something else entirely.

Emil Praeger, the architect and engineer who designed Dodger Stadium, had a long history with the O'Malley family. He had previously designed Holman Stadium at the Dodgers' spring training facility in Vero Beach, Florida, and had been consulting on the Los Angeles project since the late 1950s. A Navy captain with experience in bridges, foundations, and large-scale public works, Praeger brought both technical precision and a willingness to innovate. He insisted that the largest precast concrete elements, some weighing 32 tons, be cast on site rather than transported by truck — a decision that led to the construction of a six-acre casting yard on the Chavez Ravine property itself.

The earthmoving operation at Chavez Ravine was one of the largest in Los Angeles history outside of freeway construction. Nineteen earthmovers worked continuously across a 300-acre site, removing the tops of ridges and filling in ravines to create a level foundation for the parking lots and the bowl-shaped amphitheater that would hold the grandstand. At the highest point, a 726-foot promontory known variously as Mount Lookout, Silverwood Hill, and O'Malley Hill was cut down and its material redistributed across the site. The removed earth and rock were used to fill Sulfur and Cemetery Ravines, giving the parking lots their current flat, terraced character.

One unusual consequence of the grading was the fate of the former Palo Verde Elementary School, which had served the Chavez Ravine community before the neighborhood's demolition. Rather than removing the building, construction crews simply buried it beneath the parking lot northwest of third base, where it remains today. The school stood as the community's most visible symbol of its own organization and self-sufficiency. Its burial under asphalt, unannounced and unacknowledged, became one of the details most frequently recalled by former residents in later years as they tried to make sense of what had happened to the neighborhood they grew up in.

CONSTRUCTION UNDER WAY

Once the earth was moved and the courts had cleared the last legal obstacles, the stadium itself began to take shape. What rose from the reshaped hillside was unlike any ballpark that had come before it — a privately built, cantilevered concrete structure that gave every fan an unobstructed view of the field.

Construction of the stadium structure was delayed through much of 1960 by legal challenges that forced the Dodgers to continue earthwork while the right to build remained unsettled. A faction of the Los Angeles City Council attempted to rezone the Chavez Ravine property after the 1959 groundbreaking, and additional lawsuits raised questions about the terms of the city's agreement with O'Malley. The California Supreme Court ruled in the Dodgers' favor twice. Walter O'Malley finally signed the full construction contract with Vinnell Constructors on August 25, 1960.

A handful of property holders, separate from the original Chavez Ravine community, also remained near the stadium footprint and required individual negotiations before the site was fully cleared. Each delay pushed the opening date, and at various points it seemed possible the stadium would not be ready until 1963. O'Malley set his jaw and publicly vowed that Dodger Stadium would open in April 1962 — no matter what.

Walter O'Malley's insistence on private financing for Dodger Stadium was both a business decision and a statement. He had accepted city-owned land as part of his deal with Los Angeles, but he was determined that no public construction funds would pay for the building itself. In an era when taxpayer-funded stadiums were becoming the norm, O'Malley's approach was unusual enough to attract national attention. It also meant that every construction decision — every material choice, every engineering compromise, every delay caused by weather or legal action — had a direct financial consequence for the Dodger organization rather than for the public.

The $23 million final cost included both construction and the land purchase, as well as required improvements to the surrounding parkland that were part of the city's agreement with the team. Construction involved 21,000 precast concrete elements, a six-acre on-site casting yard, and a German-built crane that was at the time the largest in North America. Contractor Vinnell Constructors, based in Alhambra, had originally hoped only to handle the earthmoving contract; they ultimately became responsible for the entire project under the direct supervision of company vice president Jack Yount.

The aerial perspective reveals how deliberately the Dodger Stadium site was integrated into Los Angeles's freeway network. Walter O'Malley had chosen Chavez Ravine partly because of its proximity to the 101, 110, and 5 freeways, which allowed fans to arrive from virtually any part of the metropolitan area by automobile. The terraced parking lots, designed by Praeger to sit at the same elevation as the stadium's various seating levels, were as important to O'Malley's vision as the grandstand itself. He wanted fans to park close to their seats, walk a short distance, and leave quickly after the game — a system built entirely around the car.

The freeway corridors visible in this photograph were themselves relatively new at the time. The postwar freeway building boom in Los Angeles had proceeded rapidly through the 1950s, and several of the expressways shown had opened within the previous decade. The stadium's placement in Chavez Ravine, overlooking the interchange of multiple routes near downtown, made it one of the most accessible large-scale venues in the region. O'Malley had studied traffic patterns carefully before committing to the site, and the parking lot configuration — 21 terraced lots across five different levels accommodating 16,000 cars — reflected that study.

The phrase "preliminary grading finished" in the original Times caption understates what had already been accomplished on the site. Moving eight million cubic yards of earth across 300 acres was itself a project of enormous scale, equivalent in volume to a building covering a city block and standing more than 260 stories high — an analogy that Dodger vice president Fresco Thompson later offered to help people comprehend the numbers. The completion of that phase left behind a dramatically reshaped landscape: the dominant ridgelines of the original Chavez Ravine were gone, replaced by graded slopes and leveled plateaus ready to receive the stadium's foundation work.

The June start that the Times caption hoped for was delayed by the continuing legal battles over zoning and the terms of the stadium contract. The full construction contract was not signed until August 1960, meaning that the actual structural work on the grandstand did not begin until that fall. The delay pushed the projected opening from 1961 to 1962, costing the Dodgers a season in their new home. O'Malley accepted the setback but made clear that 1962 was an absolute deadline. He later recalled that nothing short of the stadium literally falling down would have prevented him from opening on April 10, 1962.

Historical Notes

The delays came from multiple directions at once. Critics argued the original referendum had been improperly conducted. Others challenged the city's authority to transfer publicly acquired land to a private franchise. The California Supreme Court had already ruled twice for the Dodgers, but each ruling seemed to prompt a new challenge. The idle machines at Chavez Ravine became a recurring image in Los Angeles newspapers that spring and summer — a visible symbol of civic ambition waiting on the courts.

O'Malley responded with a patience that occasionally broke into open frustration. He had committed to building a major stadium without public money and had expected the city to hold up its end. At one point he warned publicly that continued delays might make the Dodgers' position in Los Angeles untenable. The final resolution came in the fall of 1960, and by August of that year the full construction contract was signed. The machines went back to work.

RISING FROM THE HILLSIDE

With the legal battles settled and the earthwork done, the stadium itself began to take physical form in 1961. Concrete frames rose from the shaped hillside, a massive German crane moved the heaviest pieces into place, and what had been a raw graded bowl became, month by month, recognizable as a ballpark.

The decision to build the grandstand using precast concrete rather than steel set Dodger Stadium apart from most of the ballparks of its era and gave it a distinctive solidity. Walter O'Malley specifically wanted concrete — he believed it would age better and require less maintenance than steel, and he had seen enough examples of deteriorating urban stadiums in the Northeast to be convinced that durability mattered more than speed of construction. The precast approach required more planning and a larger on-site operation, but it ultimately produced the structure that has survived, with relatively modest upgrades, for more than six decades.

The February 1961 caption refers to the stadium as the "Dodger Bowl," a name that was sometimes used during the planning phase before the final designation as Dodger Stadium was settled. O'Malley had initially favored "Dodger Stadium" to distinguish it from the many ballparks named after their locations or their owners, and that name eventually prevailed. The seating capacity noted in the caption, 56,200, remained close to the stadium's official opening-day figure of 56,000. Over the following decades, renovations and reconfiguration would adjust that number, and Dodger Stadium today seats approximately 56,000 fans.

Historical Notes

The pace of construction in 1961, once legal obstacles were cleared and the full contract was in place, impressed even those who had been skeptical that the stadium could be completed on time. At the project's peak, 342 workers were on site simultaneously, handling everything from concrete casting to steel placement to finish work on the parking structures. The project required a level of coordination that was unusual for the era, and Jack Yount, the Vinnell Constructors vice president who supervised the work, later recalled that the variety of tasks proceeding at once made it one of the most complex projects his company had ever undertaken.

The construction of the grandstand itself was only part of the challenge. The surrounding parking lots, designed on 21 terraced levels at five different elevations, required their own substantial concrete work, as did the access roads connecting the freeway system to the stadium entrances. The entire project — stadium, parking, roads, and landscaping — accounted for the full $23 million cost. That figure included the $4.47 million in city and county improvements to surrounding parkland that were part of the original agreement, making the purely private construction cost somewhat lower, though still the largest private investment in a baseball facility since the 1920s.

The cantilevered grandstand was one of the features that most distinguished Dodger Stadium from its contemporaries. Traditional stadium construction of the era often placed vertical support columns between seating sections, creating obstructed views for some ticketholders. O'Malley had studied stadiums across the country and in Japan, and he was determined that Dodger Stadium would not repeat that problem. The cantilevered design eliminated the columns but required more complex structural engineering and heavier concrete work in the horizontal elements — a tradeoff that O'Malley accepted without hesitation.

The stadium's integration into the hillside also gave it a characteristic that no flat-site ballpark could replicate. Because the grandstand was built into the contours of the reshaped terrain rather than sitting on a flat foundation, fans entering at each level of the stadium stepped off the parking lots and directly into their seating section at roughly grade level. The upper deck was as accessible as the field level, requiring no long climbs up interior stairways. O'Malley had planned this from the beginning, and the terraced parking lot system was designed specifically to make it work.

Historical Notes

The German crane, which cost approximately $150,000, was one of the more unusual pieces of equipment in Los Angeles construction history at the time. Its purchase underscored the scale of what was being attempted: the 32-ton precast frames that made up the stadium's primary structural members simply had no American crane capable of handling them on a construction site. The crane's arrival in Chavez Ravine attracted considerable attention, and it appears in several construction-era photographs as one of the most distinctive features of the job site.

The six-acre on-site casting yard that produced the precast elements was itself a substantial operation, essentially a temporary factory built on the stadium grounds to serve the construction project. Workers cast the concrete forms in sections, cured them, and then lifted them into place with the German crane. This approach gave the construction team precise control over the quality of each element and eliminated the risks involved in transporting oversized loads on Los Angeles streets. When construction was complete, the casting yard was removed and the area incorporated into the parking lot system.

Historical Notes

Panoramic photographs taken during this phase of construction reveal how dramatically the landscape of Chavez Ravine had been transformed. The ridgelines and ravines that had defined the terrain of the old neighborhoods were gone, replaced by the clean geometric curves of a structure designed to hold 56,000 people. The surrounding city — visible in the background of many construction photographs — provides a sense of scale that reinforces just how large an undertaking this was in relation to its neighbors.

The pace of work visible in photographs from the spring and summer of 1961 reflected the pressure on the construction team to meet the April 1962 opening. O'Malley had made the deadline public, and the city of Los Angeles had invested considerable civic energy in the idea of the Dodgers playing in their permanent home by 1962. Spring rains in early 1962 would ultimately create a final crisis, forcing the turf to be dyed green with the help of a Hollywood producer's suggestion, and delaying the completion of finish work until the very last days before opening. But in the summer of 1961, construction was proceeding well enough that observers were describing the project as ahead of schedule.

Historical Notes

The relationship between Dodger Stadium and downtown Los Angeles has always been both close and distinct. The stadium sits less than two miles from City Hall, visible from the playing field on a clear day, yet its hilltop location and enclosed parking system give it the character of a self-contained world. O'Malley had wanted the stadium to feel like a destination rather than simply a facility, and the combination of the hillside setting, the terraced parking, and the sweeping views of the San Gabriel Mountains in the distance gave it an atmosphere unlike any other ballpark in the country.

The aerial photograph also shows how quickly the surrounding neighborhoods had developed by the early 1960s. The freeways that O'Malley had counted on to bring fans from across the region are visible threading between residential and commercial areas that had grown up rapidly in the postwar decade. Dodger Stadium was being built into a city already shaped by the automobile, and its design reflected that reality at every level. When it opened, it would be the most car-friendly major sports venue in the country — a model that other cities and other teams would spend the following decades trying to replicate.

The gathering of civic and baseball leadership around the stadium model in December 1961 represented a moment of genuine anticipation for the city. Los Angeles had been waiting for this building since 1958, through legal battles and construction delays and four seasons at the Coliseum. The model shown in the photograph had been built by the Warner Bros. studio art department as a gift from film producer Mervyn LeRoy to Walter O'Malley, and it accurately represented the pastel-colored seating palette that the stadium would display when it opened. O'Malley had studied color psychology and specifically chose the soft turquoise, sky blue, yellow, and light orange of the original seats.

Gene Autry's presence in the photograph is a reminder that Dodger Stadium's opening in 1962 also marked the arrival of a second Los Angeles team, the expansion Angels, who played at the stadium from 1962 through 1965. O'Malley had actively supported Autry's effort to bring an American League franchise to Southern California, even though it created direct competition for broadcast coverage and fan attention. The two teams shared the ballpark under a rental agreement that required the Angels to remove certain Dodger insignia on days when they played at home. The arrangement ended when the Angels moved to Anaheim in 1966 and opened what eventually became Angel Stadium.

THE FINISH LINE

Spring storms, last-minute construction heroics, and a Hollywood solution for a rain-soaked outfield all played their part in getting Dodger Stadium ready for Opening Day. On April 10, 1962, more than 52,000 fans arrived to see what Walter O'Malley had built.

The parking lot design was as carefully considered as the grandstand itself. Praeger's system placed each terraced lot at roughly the same elevation as the corresponding seating level, so that a fan parked in Lot 3 could walk directly into the Loge level, while a fan in Lot 6 would enter at the Top Deck. The result was an unusually comfortable arrival experience for the era: no long walks from distant lots, no steep interior stairways, and a relatively quick exit after the game through multiple road connections to the surrounding freeway system. O'Malley had studied traffic flow at stadiums across the country and had designed the entire circulation system to minimize congestion.

The parking lots also represented a significant physical legacy of the earthmoving operation that had reshaped Chavez Ravine. The flat, terraced surfaces that made the lots possible were the direct result of moving eight million cubic yards of earth from the ridge tops and depositing it in the low areas of the site. The former Palo Verde Elementary School, the last structural remnant of the old neighborhood, was among the features buried beneath the parking asphalt as the final leveling work was completed. Its location, northwest of the third-base line, was unknown to most fans for decades.

The 1962 winter rains tested O'Malley's resolve in the most direct way possible. He had spent years fighting legal battles to build the stadium, had committed to opening in April, and now found the field itself turned to mud weeks before the scheduled first game. A jet engine drying machine was brought in and its blasts carried across the construction site for hundreds of feet. Construction halted temporarily and then resumed at a frantic pace. O'Malley looked at options including temporarily using Wrigley Field and even wrote to the American Seating Company, the only subcontractor not affiliated with Vinnell, about installing the stadium seats on schedule.

The solution for the outfield grass came from an unlikely source. O'Malley's friend Mervyn LeRoy, the Hollywood producer who had earlier commissioned the stadium model as a gift, suggested that the Dodgers do what the movie studios did — dye the grass the color it was supposed to be. The Dodgers applied green dye to the struggling turf, and it worked well enough to be essentially invisible from the stands on Opening Day. The only evidence of the improvisation was a handful of green-stained trouser legs on Dodger players who dove or slid in the early days of the season.

Opening Day on April 10, 1962, drew 52,564 fans, somewhat short of the stadium's stated capacity of 56,000 but still an enormous crowd by any measure. A parade through the center of the city preceded the game, and the civic atmosphere reflected years of anticipation finally realized. The Dodgers' temporary home at the Coliseum had been functional and occasionally spectacular, but it had never felt like a proper baseball setting. Dodger Stadium, with its immaculate sight lines, its mountain views beyond the outfield, and its new-concrete smell, was something different — a facility designed from the ground up for the game.

The loss to the Cincinnati Reds on Opening Day was quickly set aside. Sandy Koufax pitched a complete game the following afternoon, and over the course of the 1962 season, the Dodgers drew 2.7 million fans to their new home, setting what was then a National League attendance record. The stadium that Walter O'Malley had fought for across a decade of negotiations, legal battles, and construction crises was an immediate success. It would go on to host four World Series, several All-Star Games, and, over more than six decades of continuous operation, more than 150 million visitors — making it one of the most attended venues in the history of professional sports.

The aerial view of a full parking lot and packed grandstand captures exactly what Walter O'Malley had imagined when he first began planning a new stadium in the early 1950s. Ample parking, freeway access, and an unobstructed view from every seat had been his guiding principles, and the attendance figures of the early 1960s confirmed that the formula worked. The Dodgers set the National League attendance record in 1962, their first year in the stadium, and led the major leagues in attendance in most seasons that followed.

Dodger Stadium stands today as both a triumph of design and a reminder of what came before. Beneath the parking lots and grandstands lies the history of a community, reshaped by forces far larger than itself — an enduring part of the story every time the gates open and the crowd arrives. It remains the third-oldest active ballpark in Major League Baseball, behind only Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, its cantilevered concrete grandstand set into the same reshaped hillside where Emil Praeger and Jack Yount finished their work in the spring of 1962.

The opening of Dodger Stadium brought something Los Angeles had never quite experienced — a major league ballpark built for the city it served. The Coliseum years had been a novelty; this was the real thing. Within a few seasons, Dodger Stadium would routinely lead all of baseball in attendance, a record it would hold for years.

The 1962 team was a preview of what was coming. Sandy Koufax was finding his dominance, Don Drysdale was already established, and Maury Wills was rewriting the stolen base record book. The ballpark and the team were growing into each other at the same time.

Historical Notes

Vin Scully joined the Brooklyn Dodgers broadcast team in 1950 at age 22, making him one of the youngest announcers in major league history at the time. He would remain the voice of the Dodgers for 67 seasons, retiring after 2016 — the longest tenure of any broadcaster with a single team in professional sports history. His conversational style, built for radio but equally suited to television, became inseparable from the sound of summer in Los Angeles.

Jerry Doggett joined Scully in the booth in 1956 and remained his partner through 1987. Together they formed one of the most recognizable announcing partnerships in baseball. Doggett's steady, reliable style complemented Scully's storytelling, and for more than three decades their voices accompanied the Dodgers through championships, heartbreaks, and a generation of change in the city around them.

Historical Notes

They were the most dominating 1-2 pitching punch in Los Angeles history, combining during a five-year period from 1962-66 for 209 regular-season victories, 53 shutouts and four Cy Young Awards. And they only pitched for the Dodgers and manager Walter Alston, two of many parallels to the respective careers of Hall of Famers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale.

Johnny Podres spent most of his career with the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. He is perhaps best remembered for being named the Most Valuable Player of the 1955 World Series, pitching a shutout in Game 7 against the New York Yankees to help bring the Dodgers their only World Series title in Brooklyn before their move to Los Angeles after the 1957 season.

Historical Notes

Like Drysdale, Sandy Koufax began his career in Brooklyn. Like Drysdale, he came into his own in L.A. And, like Drysdale, he retired because of an arm injury. Beginning in 1961, Koufax won 25 or more games three times and led L.A. to three World Series titles. One of the few elite Jewish athletes, he refused to pitch the opening game of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. With the Series tied at 3-3, Koufax pitched the seventh and deciding game on two days rest--and beat the Minnesota Twins, 2-0. The "Left Hand of God," indeed.

Koufax's career peaked with a run of six outstanding seasons from 1961 to 1966, before arthritis in his left elbow ended his career prematurely at age 30. He was named the National League's Most Valuable Player in 1963. He also won the 1963, 1965, and 1966 Cy Young Awards by unanimous votes, making him the first 3-time Cy Young winner in baseball history and the only one to win 3 times when the award was for all of baseball, not just one league. In each of his Cy Young seasons, Koufax won the pitcher's triple crown by leading the NL in wins, strikeouts, and earned run average. Koufax's totals would also have led the American League in those seasons.

Koufax was the first major leaguer to pitch four no-hitters (including the eighth perfect game in baseball history). Despite his comparatively short career, Koufax's 2,396 career strikeouts ranked 7th in history as of his retirement, trailing only Warren Spahn (2,583) among left-handers. Koufax and Nolan Ryan are the only two pitchers inducted into the Hall of Fame who had more strikeouts than innings pitched.

Historical Notes

When the Dodgers hired manager Walter Alston before the 1954 season, he signed a one-year contract. Some 23 year later, he continued to labor under those terms. Alston won four World Series and over 2,000 games before being replaced by Tommy Lasorda before the 1977 season. He died in 1984.

Historical Notes

Tommy Lasorda's first off-field assignment with the Dodgers was as a scout from 1961 to 1965. In 1966, he became the manager for the Pocatello Chiefs in the rookie leagues, then managed the Ogden Dodgers to three Pioneer League championships from 1966–68. He became the Dodgers AAA Pacific Coast League manager in 1969 with the Spokane Indians (1969–71) and remained in the position when the Dodgers switched their AAA farm club to the Albuquerque Dukes (1972). His 1972 Dukes team won the PCL Championship. Lasorda was also a manager for the Dominican Winter Baseball League team Tigres del Licey (Licey Tigers). He led the team to the 1973 Caribbean World Series Title in Venezuela with a series record of 5 wins and 1 loss.

In 1973, Lasorda became the third-base coach on the staff of Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston, serving for almost four seasons. He was widely regarded as Alston's heir apparent, and turned down several major league managing jobs elsewhere to remain in the Dodger fold.

Historical Notes

Bill Russell played his entire 18-year, 2,181-game career with the Los Angeles Dodgers as the starting shortstop for four National League pennant winners and one World Series champion. He also served as the team's manager from 1996 to 1998.

Historical Notes

Lopes spent nine seasons with the Los Angeles Dodgers as their regular second baseman. Along with Steve Garvey (1B), Bill Russell (SS) and Ron Cey (3B), they formed the longest running infield in baseball history, which stayed together for eight and a half seasons.

Historical Notes

A page one story in the Oct. 29, 1981, Los Angeles Times reported:

Pedro Guerrero drove in five runs with a home run, triple and single and the Dodgers climaxed a remarkable series of playoff comebacks Wednesday night by routing the New York Yankees, 9-2, to win the 78th World Series at Yankee Stadium.

It was the fourth straight victory for the Dodgers after they had dropped the first two games at Yankee Stadium. Previously they had come from an 0-2 deficit to beat the Houston Astros, 3-2 in the National League West divisional playoffs and had overcome Montreal, 3-2, after trailing 1-2, in the NL championship playoffs.

The result was the exact reversal of the 1978 World Series, when the Yankees lost the first two games at Dodger Stadium, then won the next four.

The victory gave Los Angeles its fourth world championship and its first since 1965 when they beat the Minnesota Twins. Previously, they won championships in 1959 over the Chicago White Sox and in 1963 over the Yankees.

Historical Notes

In 2009, Tommy Lasorda marked his sixth decade in one capacity or another with the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers organization, the longest non-continuous (he played one season with the Kansas City Athletics) tenure anyone has had with the team, edging Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully by a single season. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame as a manager in 1997.

Historical Notes

Dodger Stadium is currently the third oldest ballpark in Major League Baseball (behind Fenway Park in Boston and Wrigley Field in Chicago) and is the largest ballpark by seating capacity. It has always held 56,000 fans, due to a conditional-use permit limiting its capacity. Every time the Dodgers add seats, they always remove an equal number of seats in the upper deck or in the pavilion to keep the capacity the same.

Historical Notes

Work began almost as soon as the groundbreaking ceremony adjourned. Contractor Del E. Webb, who happened to own part of the New York Yankees, had pledged to complete the $15.8 million stadium by the opening day of the 1966 season.

Historical Notes

The stadium was built on a parcel of about 160 acres of flat land originally used for agricultural purposes in the southeast portion of Anaheim.

Historical Notes

Consistent with many major-league sports stadiums built in the 1960s, Anaheim Stadium is located in a suburban area, though one that is host to major tourist attractions.

Historical Notes

Over a 20 month construction period, Del Webb's construction workers poured 42,000 cubic yards of concrete, laid 7 million pounds of reinforcing steel and 8 million pounds of structure steel, and installed 1,900 light bulbs.

Historical Notes

The stadium was built on a parcel of about 160 acres of flat land originally used for agricultural purposes by the Allec, Russell, and Knutzen families in the southeast portion of Anaheim.

Historical Notes

The field dimensions (333 feet instead of 347 or 350, for example) were derived from a scientific study conducted by the Angels. Based on the air density at normal game times (1:30 pm and 8 pm), the Angels tried to formulate dimensions that were fairly balanced between pitcher, hitter and average weather conditions. The Angels tinkered with those dimensions several times, expanding or contracting parts of the outfield by a few feet here and there, to try to refine that balance. 396 feet is the shortest center-field in the American League, and tied for 2nd-shortest in the major leagues with Petco Park behind only Dodger Stadium's 395 feet.

Historical Notes

The Big A 230-foot high scoreboard support cost $1 million and was unveiled in 1966. It was moved to the parking lot in 1980.

Historical Notes

Angel Stadium, the fourth oldest active Major League Baseball stadium, was selected to host the 2010 Major League Baseball All-Star Game.

The stadium also houses the studios and offices of the Angels' owned and operated flagship radio station, KLAA (830 AM).

Historical Notes

The design of the stadium was very similar to the popular Dodger Stadium, but without the outfield seats.  Outfield bleacher seats were not in demand, Anaheim being in Orange County did not fit the image of the traditional bleacher bum.  So no changes were necessary for this relatively new stadium.  However, a new tenant wanted to move in, the Los Angeles Rams, and changes would be required to make this a multi-purpose stadium.

Anaheim Stadium became a multi-purpose stadium between 1980 and 1996. When the deal was complete to bring the NFL Los Angeles Rams to Anaheim, major changes were needed.  The stadium needed to become enclosed.  Enclosing the stadium angered the baseball fans.  By building grand stands in the outfield, the views of the mountains and infamous Big A scoreboard were going to be lost.  The Big A scoreboard was moved to the parking lot. The additional stands increased the size of the stadium from 43,000 to 65,000.

Historical Notes

In his first season with the Angels, Ryan, given a chance to pitch regularly as a starter for the first time in his career, had a league-leading 329 strikeouts—nearly a third more than the AL runner-up, and to that point, the fourth-highest total of the 20th century. Within five seasons, the season would only be Ryan's fourth-highest strikeout total. He also set a still-standing Major League record by allowing only 5.26 hits per nine innings, breaking Luis Tiant's 5.30 in 1968, as well as posting a 2.28 earned run average that year, to date the second lowest in franchise history, trailing only Dean Chance's 1.65 in 1964. Though Ryan's actual winning percentage hovered only slightly over .500, his strikeouts and no-hitters brought him media attention.

Historical Notes

Reggie Jackson played 21 seasons and reached the post-season in 11 of them, winning six pennants and four World Series. His accomplishments include winning both the regular-season and World Series MVP awards in 1973, hitting 563 career home runs (sixth all-time at the time of his retirement), maintaining a .490 career slugging percentage, being named to 14 All-Star teams, and the dubious distinction of being the all-time leader in strikeouts with 2,597 (he finished with 13 more career strikeouts than hits). Jackson was the first major leaguer to hit one hundred home runs for three different clubs, having hit over 100 for the Athletics, Yankees, and Angels.

Historical Notes

Gene Mauch played in Major League Baseball as a second baseman for the Brooklyn Dodgers (1944, 1948), Pittsburgh Pirates (1947), Chicago Cubs (1948–49), Boston Braves (1950–51), St. Louis Cardinals (1952) and the Boston Red Sox (1956–57).

Mauch was best known for managing four teams from 1960 to 1987. He is by far the winningest manager to have never won a league pennant, three times coming within a single victory. He managed the Philadelphia Phillies (1960-68), Montreal Expos (1969–75, Mauch was their inaugural manager), Minnesota Twins (1976–80), and California Angels (1981–82, 1985–87). His 1,902 career victories ranked 8th in major league history when he retired, and his 3,942 total games ranked 4th. He gained a reputation for playing a distinctive "small ball" style, which emphasized defense, speed and base-to-base tactics on offense rather than power hitting.

Mauch gained a reputation for being loyal to his players and became known as the Little General.

Historical Notes

The original Anaheim Stadium seated 43,204 (later 43,250). The stadium underwent construction in 1979-80 for additional seating to accommodate the Los Angeles Rams of the NFL. Upon completion in 1981, the stadium seated 65,158 (later 64,593) for baseball. The Rams left Anaheim for St. Louis, MO in 1995. The new Angel Stadium of Anaheim has a seating capacity of approximately 45,050 for the Los Angeles Angels.

Historical Notes

In the late 1970s, Anaheim Stadium tried to earn extra revenue any way it could. It staged more rock concerts, motocross events and brought in new (and briefly) successful tenants in soccer’s California Surf and the Southern California Sun of the short-lived World Football League. But just as they had wooed an unhappy Angels franchise out of Dodger Stadium 15 years earlier, local politicians were now sniffing out another disgruntled tenant in 1978 when they heard that the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams were looking to upgrade from their current situation at the ancient Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Anaheim and Orange County were hardly clandestine in their efforts to woo the Rams, even placing a full-page pitch to them in the Los Angeles Times. The ballpark would do more than just add 20,000 makeshift seats in right field, as had been planned for the Chargers back in 1966; this time the idea was to turn Anaheim Stadium into a fully enclosed, multi-purpose facility, tucking into the back of the second level 107 brand new luxury suites—all for the Rams to own and profit from. Like Gene Autry before him, Rams owner Carroll Rosenbloom was happily on board with the concept and told Anaheim he’d be theirs.

Autry and the Angels were fine with the ambitious $33 million project to enclose and expand Anaheim Stadium to 67,000 seats, even if it meant wrecking the baseball ambience. Just to be sure there was no ill will, the Rams played nice and offered to buy Angels season tickets for every row that butted up against the front of the new luxury boxes. But when Autry discovered that the expansion pact also called for a high-rise business complex to be built for the Rams on part of the existing parking lot, smiles became snarls. The Angels sued Anaheim, triggering a 12-year battle in which the Angels, the Rams and the City of Anaheim all took turns suing one another over control of the parking lot. Finally, in 1994, it was ruled that the lots belonged to the city but needed to be fully used by the Angels, negating any chance for development.

Historical Notes

The Big A scoreboard was moved to the south end of the parking lot when Anaheim Stadium was enclosed in 1980.  Talk of bringing it back during the ballpark’s second makeover ended when it was determined it would be too costly to do so.

In 1998, the stadium was renamed Edison International Field of Anaheim after local utility Edison International reached a deal giving it naming rights over the stadium for 20 years, and during this time, the stadium was referred to as the Big Ed. However, after the 2003 season, Edison International exercised its option to exit the sponsorship deal. On December 29, 2003, the Angels announced that from then on the stadium would be known as Angel Stadium (in full, Angel Stadium of Anaheim), some locals can still be caught calling the venue by its original name; Anaheim Stadium as well. After the name change in 2004, its original nickname The Big A was restored. Despite efforts to cover them up with the Angels' halo insignia, Edison's insignia can still be found on the ends of seating rows throughout the ballpark.