TODAY IN BASEBALL TAKES US TO LOS ANGELES FOR OPENING DAY, APRIL 7, 1958. It used to be common for football games to be played in baseball ballparks like Wrigley Field. Wrigley was the home of the Chicago Bears from 1921 to 1970. What you rarely saw was baseball played in football venues like the Los Angeles Coliseum Field. What the Dodgers had to do to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum on this date in 1958 is why.
Before MLB’s transplanted Brooklyn Dodgers could play the first official major league game west of St. Louis they had to erect a 42-foot screen in left field because the foul pole was only 201 feet away – about the distance normally seen in slow-pitch softball. Straight away left was only about 250 feet.
On the other hand, because the Coliseum is rectangular, straight away right was 440 feet from home.
There was a distinct advantage playing in the mammoth coliseum. It held a lot of people. Game 5 of the 1959 World Series between the Dodgers and the Chicago White Sox still holds the record for the biggest crowd to watch a major league baseball game – 92,706.
The Dodgers spent four seasons (1958-1961) in, at the time, the home of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams waiting for Dodger Stadium to be completed.
As much as Dodger fans poured into the Coliseum with the screen monster, they liked the new Dodger Stadium more when it opened in 1962. A major league attendance record (at the time) was set with 2,755,184 fans.
CONTRIBUTING SOURCE:
The Coliseum revisited