From the Archives: First game played in Dodger Stadium - Los Angeles Times
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From the Archives: First game played in Dodger Stadium

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Dodger Stadium opened on April 10, 1962, but the home team lost. Writer Frank Finch reported in the next morning’s Los Angeles Times:

All the ingredients necessary to make the grand opening of Walter O’Malley’s brand-new $18 million play-pen a smashing success Tuesday were there, but an outsider from Cincinnati crashed the party and ruined it for most of the 52,564 paying guests.

A three-run homer by Wally Post of the Cincinnati Reds broke a 2-2 tie in the seventh inning and secured a 6-3 victory for the defending National League champions over O’Malley’s Dodgers.

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Even so, it was a suspenseful affair that wasn’t decided until fireman Jim Brosnan induced pinch-hitter Frank Howard to ground out innocuously with two Dodgers on base in the last of the ninth inning.

The crowd fell short by some 3,500 of filling dazzling Dodger Stadium, but apparently those absentee ticket holders either got lost in Chavez Ravine or didn’t even dare risk the traffic maze, because management long since announced that the opening game was a sellout….

Los Angeles Times staff photographers Art Rogers, John Malmin, Ben Olender, Ken Dare, Al Monteverde and Dick Oliver covered the game. Rogers used a special camera shooting 120-millimeter film. Monteverde used a 70mm high-speed motorized Hulcher camera.

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And yes, on April 11, 1962, behind Sandy Koufax, the Dodgers beat the Reds 6-2 for their first win at the new stadium.

This post was originally published on April 3, 2014.

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