Baseball Again at the LA Memorial Coliseum

The Los Angeles Dodgers returned to their original home in the Southland Saturday night, 29 March, with an exhibition game against the World Champions Boston Red Sox. The game will draw a record over 115,ooo fans and bring back a lot of memories of when the Dodgers played their first four seasons (1958-61) in the football stadium and home of two Olympics that is now 85 years old. All the proceeds from the game are going to charity, and numerous players from the past are invited in tribute as a half-century of Dodger baseball in Los Angeles is celebrated. While the Dodgers have languished and underachieved in the last 19 years for the most part, their first 31 seasons were quite successful with five worlds championships (1959, 1963, 1965, 1981, and 1988), nine National League pennants (1966, 1974, 1977, and 1978), and seven NL West crowns (74, 77, 78, 81, 83, 85, and 88). But the glory days started in LA at the Coliseum, and its great to see the organization honor its roots with an exhibition game there. The current configuration of the Coliseum means left field will be relatively tiny, only 200' from home plate; the distance from the wall to the infield skin will be less than the distance from base to base. The Red Sox ended up winning the ballgame 7-4.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-springer29mar29,0,1645343.story

http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-coliseum25mar25,0,3161856.story

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=neyer_rob&id=3319232

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=neyer_rob&id=3319270

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Los_Angeles_Memorial_Coliseum

http://scores.espn.go.com/mlb/recap?gameId=280329119

*****

The Last Season at Shea

2008 marks the 45th and final season for the New York Mets to be playing at Shea Stadium, in the borough of Queens near La Guardia International Airport in New York City. The venerable old building, largely seen as an eyesore and substandard, will be razed after this season and a new parking lot will cover the surface adjacent to the new Citi Field, now under construction beyond the right field fence, where the Mets will begin play in 2009. I was fortunate enough to see a game at Shea in April 1969 where I was with a group of Boy Scouts and Little Leaguers sitting in the upper deck far down the left field line near the fair pole. I got a signed piece of paper shaped and printed like a baseball with Mr Met 1B Ed Kranepool's signature on it that I still have. The game, played on a sunny Saturday afternoon, ended in a 9-3 defeat to the Chicago Cubs as the Chicagoans took batting practice off Don Caldwell and Al Jackson in a game that was decided early with no drama and no home runs. For a game with that many runs, it only lasted 2:29, showing the lack of a television broadcast which today would extend a game like this at least another 6o minutes or more. I had hoped to make it to the Big Apple for the final season at Shea and at Yankee Stadium, but this seems unlikely. As what happened with Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds, soon people will be thinking of the great 1973 Frank Sinatra song, There Used to be a Ballpark, among their eternal memories of the newly long gone Shea and Yankee stadiums that will join the many others now only in history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/30/sports/baseball/30shea.html?ref=baseball

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shea_Stadium

http://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/NYN/NYN196904260.shtml

*****

The Top Thirty Relocation Possibilities

My goal is to be moving on to one of these locales, hopefully in late summer or early autumn 2009 or 2010. Every place has it plusses and minuses, and each will have to be weighed carefully to determine their worthiness relative to the others on the list as well as others not on the list. Other places may join this list, and some of those listed below will be eliminated rather quickly .

Washington:

1) Bellingham: + cooler climate, near Seattle; - cloudy gloomy weather

2) Vancouver: + taxes, climate, near Seattle; - cloudy gloomy weather

3) Spokane: + small city; - winters

Oregon:

1) Brookings: + small town, on ocean; - isolated, perhaps too small

2) Roseburg: growing, peaceful; - isolated, perhaps too small

3) Medford: larger, more sunshine; - hot summers, remote location

Nevada:

1) Pahrump: + growing, near Vegas; too small

2) Henderson: + growing; - too near Vegas, NV economy

3) Mesquite: + growing, climate - too small

Arizona:

1) Willcox: + smallness, climate; - too small

2) Benson/Sierra Vista: same as Willcox

3) Tucson: + economy, sophistication; - size, crime, demographics, commute

4) Phoenix suburbs (SE or NE): same as Tucson

5) Kingman: + isolation, climate; - costs, opportunities

Idaho:

1) Boise: + economy, climate; - size, demographics

2) Couer d'Alene: + scenery; - remoteness, costs

Montana:

1) Lewistown: + smallness, peacefulness; - remoteness, size

2) Great Falls: + size, costs; - climate

3) Miles City: + size, costs; - climate, size

4) Billings: + size, opportunites; - climate, demographics

5) Helena: + scenery, size; - costs, climate

Wyoming:

1) Sundance: + scenery: - size, remoteness, climate

2) Sheridan: + scenery: - size, remoteness, climate

South Dakota:

1) Rapid City: + size, economy; - climate, economy

2) Spearfish: + scenery: - size, remoteness, climate

Colorado:

1) Colorado Springs: + economy, scenery; - size, demograhics, costs

2) NW Denver metro suburbs: + economy, scenery; - size, demograhics, costs

3) Grand Junction: + size, economy; - costs, remoteness

New Mexico:

1) Carlsbad/Roswell/Artesia/Hobbs/Jal: + climate; - location, economy

Texas:

1) Midland-Odessa: + climate, economy; - Texas

*****

Richard Widmark, 1914 - 2008

Richard Widmark was an American great in acting whose career spanned over a half a century. He played a wide variety of roles from film noir to westerns to dramas, often as as a tough hardened aloof character. Widmark's best known role was as a psychopath in the 1947 film Kiss of Death for which he received an Academy Awards Nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Other memorable and noteworthy roles were in the films Panic in the Streets (1950); No Way Out (1950); Judgement at Nuremberg (1961); Cheyenne Autumn (1964); Murder on the Orient Express (1974); and Coma (1978). Widmark stayed out of the spotlight and maintained his privacy throughout his life. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City in 2002.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Widmark

http://www.azcentral.com/arizonarepublic/news/articles/0327Obit-Widmark0327.html

*****