Special Los Angeles Ballpark Photo Galleries
Wrigley Field
Los Angeles, California
Groundbreaking: 1924
First PCL Game: September 29, 1925
Last PCL Game: September 15, 1957
First American League Game: April 27, 1961
Last American League Game: October 1, 1961
Demolished: 1969
Cost: $1.1 million
Owners: William & Philip Wrigley (1925-57); Walter O'Malley (1957-59); City of Los Angeles (1959-69)
Seating Capacity: 20,457
Dimensions:
Left field 340 ft.; power alleys: 345 ft.; center field: 412 ft.; right field: 339 ft.
Fences: Left field to center field: 14.5 ft (ivy-covered brick); center field to right field: 9 ft. (cyclone)
Notable Films/TV Shows: Pride of the Yankees (1942); The Stratton Story (1949); It Happens Every Spring (1949), The Kid from Left Field (1953), Alibi Ike (1935); The Winning Team (1952); Pride of St. Louis (1952), Elmer the Great (1933); Rhubarb (1951); Kill the Umpire (1950); Death on the Diamond (1935); Fireman, Save My Child (1932); Whistling in Brooklyn (1943); Damn Yankees (1958); Gillette Home Run Derby (1959-60); The Munsters (1966).
The double-decked grandstand extended from the left field foul pole to home plate, and around to the right field foul pole. Bleachers and a scoreboard were located in right field. There was no seating in left field -- just a 15-foot high concrete wall, with ivy growing on it in later years. Batted balls on occasion lodged in the ivy, and were ruled doubles during games. The bottom of a light tower in left center field was in play. Any ball that hit the standard above a painted white line (parallel with the top of the wall) was ruled to be a home run. Two other features made LA's Wrigley Field different from the one in Chicago: The first was a twelve story office tower was at the entrance of the ballpark, with the clock visible from the playing field; and the second was that it had field lights for night games, installed on July 22, 1931 -- decades before Chicago's park.
Major outdoor wrestling and boxing programs were held at Wrigley Field during the first 30 or 35 years of its existence -- including six world title boxing matches. But the main draw was always the baseball games of the legendary Pacific Coast League. In the first half of the 20th Century, the Pacific Coast League ruled the west. In all but name, it was a third major league, with its own traditions and records. There were no American or National League teams in the west, and players who often turned down major-league offers because they were paid more in the PCL. Great western players like Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams played for their hometown teams. Finally, in 1952, the PCL was given AAAA status, raising it above farm league status and protecting their players from the major league draft.
Two PCL teams used Wrigley Field. The mighty Los Angeles Angels, owned by Wrigley, were the main tennants. The Angels were probably the most succesful franchise in the history of the league, and they were the team that the field was built for; But the Hollywood Stars played there from 1926 to 1935, whenever the Angels were on the road. Then, when Wrigley tried to double their rent to $10,000 a month, the team moved south and became the San Diego Padres. But in 1938, the San Francisco Mission Reds moved into town and took over the name of the Stars. They also played in Wrigley Field for a year, until their own ballfield -- Gilmore Field -- was built closer to Hollywood (The former site of Gilmore Field is now CBS Television City). This created the most heated rivalry in PCL history.
At the birth of the PCL in 1903, the Angels played at Washington Park, located in downtown Los Angeles on 8th and Hill streets. It could hold up to 15,000 kranks, as fans at the turn of the century were called. The team played at Washington Park for seventeen years, winning five pennants, until they were bought by Wrigley. When the city of Los Angeles refused to build parking facilities for Washington Park, Wrigley Jr. drew up plans for a newer, more krank-friendly ballpark a few miles south of that location, on the edge of town (now it's south-central LA).
In the Angels' fifty-five year history, they were one of the most successful Pacific Coast League franchises, winning titles in 1905, 1907, 1908, 1916, 1918, 1926, 1933, 1934, 1938, 1943, 1947, and 1956. They won over 1000 games in the 1930's alone. The 1934 team had a record of 137-50 (.733), almost 30 games ahead of the Seals, led by Joe DiMaggio. In fact, they were so good and so far ahead of their competition that the PCL created an All-Star team from seven other franchises to play them in the finals, instead of having a traditional playoff series... the Angels still won.
But the Angels' greatest battles were with cross-town rivals: First, the Vernon Tigers in the early teens and twenties, and after they moved to San Francisco, the Hollywood Stars in the twenties and on into the fifties. Angels/Stars brawls are especially legendary in their violence and mean-spiritedness. One melee in 1953 took 50 policeman to calm things down.
Then in 1957, Phil Wrigley sold both the team and Wrigley Field to Walter O'Malley, the Brooklyn Dodgers' owner, for $3,000,000 and the rights to the Dodgers' Texas League franchise in Fort Worth. O'Malley reassured PCL directors that the Angels would continue as part of the Coast League, but everyone knew he was considering moving the big league Dodgers out of rickety Ebbets Field to Los Angeles, and his purchasing the Angels and the stadium gave him territorial rights to the area. The Angels knew their days were numbered. Steve Bilko enjoyed one more season of glory, hitting .300 with 56 dingers and 140 RBI, but a surrounding cast led by Sparky Anderson, Tommy Lasorda, and Larry Sherry wasn't enough to lift them above seventh place. The last PCL game at Wrigley Field was played on September 15, 1957.
In February, O'Malley signed a deal to move the Dodgers into the Los Angeles Coliseum on weekends and Wrigley Field during the week, and they took over the site. An architect's 1957 drawing envisioned enclosing the field for use by the Dodgers, with double-decked stands in left and right, and center field bleachers, very much like the Polo Grounds. But then O'Malley decided against using Wrigley, maybe because the field was too small, or maybe because he wanted more seats for fans -- legend has it that he was upset about a whorehouse that was running across the steet from the stadium. In any event, the Dodgers finally moved to Los Angeles in 1958.
But with the Angels exiled to Spokane and the Dodgers at the Coliseum, there was nobody left to play baseball at Wrigley Field... unless you count baseball in the movies, that is. Hollywood had quite a love affair with Wrigley Field. Pride of the Yankees was filmed there with Hollywood Stars owner Gary Cooper playing the Iron Horse; James Stewart played one-legged White Sox pitcher Monty Stratton there in The Stratton Story; Ray Milland filmed there several times, in It Happens Every Spring and Rhubarb (in which a cat inherits a baseball team). Joe E. Brown filmed there quite a bit in the Thirties. Brown briefly played semipro ball, so he was a natural for baseball films like Elmer the Great, Alibi Ike (Co-starring Stars co-owner William "Fref Mertz" Frawley), and Fireman Save My Child.
Other films lensed at Wrigley include The Winning Team, with Ronald Reagan as Grover Cleveland Alexander; Dan Dailey was a player-turned-popcorn vendor in The Kid from Left Field, and then starred as Dizzy Dean in The Pride of St. Louis; and in one of the weirdest films ever made, Red Skelton donned a beard to disguise himself and hide from gangsters on a House of David-like team in Whistling in Brooklyn. Damn Yankees -- the classic musical starring Gwen Verdon and Tab Hunter, in which Joe Boyd sells his soul to the Devil to beat the Yankees, was filmed at the field in 1958. The TV sitcom The Munsters even filmed an episode there in 1965.
The Gillette Home Run Derby was shot there in 1959 and 1960, in a weekly television program matching two of baseball's premier sluggers in a nine-inning home run hitting contest. Nineteen marquee players, including nine future Hall of Famers, agreed to participate in the inaugural season: Hank Aaron, Harmon Killebrew, Ernie Banks, and Duke Snider all took their turns.
The ballpark remained without a team, however, until Major League Baseball awarded the area an expansion team -- ironically, also called the Angels -- to play in the American League. The Angels played only one season at Wrigley Field, in 1961. The pro batters loved those Wrigley power alleys: 248 home runs were hit there, more than in any other ballpark in Major League history during a single season -- an average of more than three a game. Steve Bilko, at long last an everyday major leaguer, hit twenty homers for the team. Joe Falls of the Detroit News watched a game there and said, "They had only 238 bulbs in the light towers (I counted them) and it was the darkest ballpark I have ever been in."
The Angels then moved into Dodger Stadium with the Los Angeles Dodgers, until 1965. The Angels moved into their own home, Anaheim Stadium, in 1966. Sadly, with the Dodgers and Angels in their own stadiums, and with no minor league baseball teams in the area, the stadium was torn down in the mid-sixties. South-central LA decayed along with the rubble, and it is now one of the poorest sections of Los Angeles (it was ground zero for the LA riots in the nineties). The site where the once-proud stadium once stood is now occupied by a public park and recreation center, a community mental health center, and a senior citizens' center.
Courtesy: Jeff Hause.
Coliseum Photo Gallery
• Former Los Angeles ballparks •
Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum
Los Angeles, California
Architect: Donald and John Parkinson
Groundbreaking: 1921
Opened: June, 1923
First game: October 6, 1923 (USC vs. Pomona College)
First NFL game: September 29, 1946
Last NFL game: December 24, 1994
First National League game: April 18, 1958 (L.A. 6, S.F. 5, att- 78,672)
Last National League game: September 21, 1961
Owner: Los Angeles Coliseum Commission
Cost: $954,000 (1923); $950,294 (1958 retrofitting for baseball)
Seating capacity: 74,000 (1923), 105,000 (1932), 93,000 (1958), 94,600 (1959), 92,516 (Current)
Surface: Natural Grass
Dimensions:
LF foul line: 251 ft.
LF power alley: 320 ft.
Center Field: 425 ft.
RF power alley: 380 ft.
RF foul line: 300 ft.
Fences: Left field to left-center: 42 ft.; Deep Left-center: 8 ft.; CF to RF corner: 6 ft.; RF corner: 4 ft.
Hosted All Star Game: 1959
Hosted World Series: 1959
Hosted Olympic Games: 1932, 1984
Hosted Super Bowl: I (1967); VII (1973)
The fabled history of the Coliseum spans eight decades. It is the only facility in the world to play host to two Olympiads (Xth and XIIIrd), two Super Bowls (I and VII), and one World Series (1959), and along with the adjacent Sports Arena, is credited with the migration of professional sports to the West Coast.
When the Coliseum was constructed no one ever envisioned that it would be used as a baseball stadium. But when Walter O'Malley moved the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles after the end of the 1957 season, he decided that the Coliseum would be a great place to play baseball while Chavez Ravine was under construction. Why? Sheer capacity. O'Malley must have drooled at the prospect of cramming 90,000 paying customers into a stadium to see the Dodgers. And while Wrigley Field (the former home of the Pacific Coast League's Los Angeles Angels) or even the Rose Bowl would have made a more appropriate home for a baseball team, they lacked the sheer capacity that the Coliseum had.
And so began the great experiment. Some basic work was done to make the Coliseum appropriate for baseball: dugouts, three banks of lights and a press box were added. Because of the orientation of the diamond, there was a ton of space in foul ground down the left-field line, but very little space between the right-field line and the bleachers. The baseball diamond was crammed into one end of the stadium, resulting in a left-field line measuring only 250 feet. A 40-foot screen was constructed to counter the intimate dimensions, but it didn't do that much good: the balls flew out of the park because of the intimate dimensions. In fact, the disparity between home runs hit to left and home runs hit to right field was staggering. In 1958, 193 home runs were hit in the Coliseum -- 182 to left, 3 to center, and 8 to right. SABR's Hugh Mechesney describes the the two soft fly ball home runs over the left field screen by Pee Wee Reese that ended up as home runs -- and probably would have been routine outs anywhere else. The main entrance to the stadium was at the opposite end of the stadium from home plate. Since the stadium was only one tier, there were some pretty bad seats located far, far away from the action -- oldtimers recall that they considered themselves barely in the stadium when sitting in the outfield bleachers.
On April 18, 1958, the Dodgers played their first game the Coliseum, defeating the Giants 6-5 before 78,672 fans at the Coliseum. On that day the Coliseum became the largest stadium ever in major-league baseball -- a record that still stands. The size of the stadium allowed the Dodgers to set the all-time single-game attendance record on May 7, 1959: a crowd of 93,105 showed up to see former Dodger great Roy Campanella honored during an exhibition game between the New York Yankees and Dodgers. In 1958 the Dodgers drew over 1.8 million fans (good enough for second in National League attendance -- the Milwaukee Braves drew over 1.9 million fans to County Stadium), and in 1959 and 1960, the team drew over 2 million fans -- records at the time.
It wasn't a bad run for the Dodgers in the Coliseum -- the team won a World Series while playing there, and interest in the Dodgers certainly was whetted by the Coliseum's enormous capacity. The Dodgers finished their occupancy on September 21, 1961, and then moved to Chavez Ravine for the 1962 season. Over the years the Los Angeles Coliseum has been the home of the University of Southern California (USC) football team (still to this day, as a matter of fact) as well as UCLA Football (1933-1981), the AFL's Los Angeles Chargers (1960), the NFL's Los Angeles Raiders (1982-1994) and Los Angeles Rams (1946-1979).
The Los Angeles Coliseum also did duty as a baseball stadium in 2001, representing other ballparks in the HBO movie 61, Billy Crystal's account of the home-run race between Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle in 1961. To look like Baltimore's Memorial Stadium, new fences were put in the outfield, dugouts were planed in the infield, a facsimile scoreboard was erected, and an infield was cut out of the existing sod. We put the fences exactly, the old scoreboard, and cut an infield. A "Green Monster" was then erected in left field to mimic Boston's Fenway Park, while another wall and repainted dugouts represented Washington, D.C.'s Griffith Stadium.
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