Dodger Stadium: Exactly 56,000 Seats?

Dodger Stadium (Copyright Liamwh7 / dreamstime.com)

 

For over six decades, the Dodgers have maintained that the capacity of their stadium is exactly 56,000, despite a number of renovations over the years. The original dugout seats were removed. The bottom level was extended into foul territory. Seats were added at the front of the outfield pavilions. Still, the team kept to that unlikely 56,000 figure.

The number is tied to the conditional-use permit the city issued, which called for 16,000 parking spaces (another suspiciously round figure) with a ratio of 3.5 people to each parking space. Janet Marie Smith, who has been supervising Dodger Stadium upgrades, declined to give a current figure but said exiting capacity, restrooms, and concessions have always been kept up to the 56,000 standard.

A few months after Dodger Stadium opened, Sid Ziff of the Los Angeles Times reported that it contained exactly 55,792 seats, but the Dodgers would not confirm that.1 After the 1963 World Series, when they reported ticket sales to the commissioner’s office, they said they had sold 57,206 tickets for both Game Three and Game Four. Some temporary seats had been added to the front edge of the lower deck for these games.

Over the last decade, the Dodgers have announced several sellouts, but no crowd over 54,307. Yet, the capacity is still listed at a nice, round 56,000.

ANDY McCUE, a former president of SABR, won the Seymour Medal for Mover and Shaker: Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers, and Baseball’s Westward Expansion. He is also the author of Baseball by the Books: A History and Complete Bibliography of Baseball Fiction and Stumbling Around the Bases: The American League’s Mismanagement in the Expansion Eras (University of Nebraska Press, 2022). He is a retired newspaper reporter, editor, and columnist and a winner of SABR’s highest honor, the Bob Davids Award.

 

NOTES

1 Sid Ziff, “Dupas Bout Was Close,” Los Angeles Times, July 17, 1962: C3.