Tag: Los Angeles Coliseum

Oct 6: Biggest baseball crowd

OCTOBER 6, 1959 | LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – The biggest crowd to watch a major league baseball game – 92,706 – packed the Los Angeles Coliseum on this date in 1959 for game 5 of the World Series between the Chicago White Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

The mammoth Coliseum was the Dodgers’ home during their first few years in Southern California (after moving from Brooklyn in 1957) until Dodger Stadium was built in 1962. A high screen had to be erected in left field because the coliseum’s dimensions (more suited for football than baseball) made the fence so short.

Oh, by the way, White Sox starter Dick Donovan beat a young Sandy Koufax 1-0.

The second and third largest baseball crowds were the other two World Series games played in Los Angeles that year. The Dodgers went on to defeat the White Sox in 6 games. It was the Dodgers first World Series appearance since leaving Brooklyn after the 1957 season, and the first White Sox World Series since the 1919 Black Sox scandal 40 years earlier.

The biggest crowd to watch a major league game of any kind was set the spring of 2008, also at the LA Coliseum. The 50th anniversary of the Dodgers playing at the Coliseum brought 115,300 out to watch an exhibition between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Boston Red Sox.

Contributing Sources
October 6, 1959 box score & play-by-play
Baseball-Almanac
MLB attendance records

April 7 – The “screen” monster

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