When the Angels Called Dodger Stadium Home

History students who want to learn about uneasy détente during the 1960s could study the tense Cold War between the US and other democratic nations on one side, and the USSR and other “Iron Curtain” Communist nations on the other.

Or they could just look at the smiles-out-front, scowls-in-private relationship between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels during the four seasons – 1962 to 1965 – that the National and American League teams shared Dodger Stadium.

The teams’ disagreements began with the name of the ballpark. Trying to establish their own identity, the fledgling Angels famously insisted on referring to the ballpark as Chavez Ravine when they played there.1 From the start this gave the Dodgers-Angels relationship the same feel as two rival nations squabbling over the size and shape of the negotiating table in a conference room.

The Battle of Dodger Stadium was a losing effort for the expansion Angels, who consistently ran a distant second to their landlords before they departed for nearby Anaheim in 1966. But the junior team authored some moments that still echo in stadium lore. The first pitcher to throw a no-hitter at the ballpark was an Angel. So was the first batter to hit for the cycle. And some 60 seasons later, a few of Dodger Stadium’s record-setting or most noteworthy performances still belong to the Angels, not the Dodgers.

The Singing Cowboy Rents a Ravine

When Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley moved his team to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, he had to have known that he wouldn’t have sunny, glamorous, populous, and affluent Southern California to himself forever. Still, he was displeased when the American League advanced plans after the 1960 season to award an expansion franchise to the city he’d occupied just two years earlier.2

Using his influence on Commissioner Ford Frick, O’Malley pushed through an agreement that compensated him nicely for the intrusion on his territory. The new team, to be called the Angels, would pay O’Malley $350,000 for the privilege of playing in Los Angeles.3 After playing the 1961 season in Wrigley Field – a former Pacific Coast League bandbox the Dodgers had passed up – the Angels would become O’Malley’s tenants in the new Dodger Stadium. The annual rent would be 7½ percent of paid admissions, or a minimum of $200,000; the Angels would receive half the concessions, but no money from parking.4 (O’Malley had a knack for spreading his business costs to his new competitors: The Angels leased the Dodgers’ team plane, too.5)

O’Malley thanked Angels owners Gene Autry and Robert Reynolds for supporting the Dodgers’ move west, adding: “These are people who are good for the game. I am delighted that they were awarded the franchise.”6 Autry and Reynolds stifled any objections they might have had. The agreement that brought the Angels into existence was settled only four months before Opening Day 1961, leaving the ownership team with little time to argue, negotiate, or seek other arrangements. Autry, famed as a Hollywood singing cowboy, simply told reporters that owning a team was “the realization of a lifetime dream.”7

The tenants made headlines in November 1961 by staking a small but important claim to their own identity. Autry announced that the Angels would refer to their new home as Chavez Ravine in all settings, rather than Dodger Stadium. “Our relations with the Dodgers up to now have been the finest,” Autry assured reporters. “Using a different name for the same stadium is not to be construed as an objection to the Dodgers’ name for their park. We just want to use our own identity.” An unnamed Dodgers spokesman took the high road with the team’s response, while reminding the Angels where they stood: “A tenant has the privilege of calling the ballpark whatever he wants when he’s using it.”8

 

After drawing just 603,510 fans at Wrigley Field in 1961, second lowest attendance in the AL, the Angels moved into Dodger Stadium – or Chavez Ravine – on schedule. They opened with a 5-3 loss to the Kansas City Athletics on Tuesday night, April 17, 1962. Only 18,416 attended. Those early adopters were the first of 3,292,244 fans who saw the Angels play at home during their four seasons in their rented ravine.

One of the Angels’ chronic squawks about their landlords developed that July, after Angels outfielders struggled on a reseeded and over-watered field. One of their number, Gordie Windhorn, accused O’Malley of building a $20 million stadium and a 10-cent field. A perceptive reporter added, “It will be noted with interest that this work wasn’t done just before the Dodgers were to play in Chavez Ravine.”9 Autry expanded on the point in a later outburst, calling O’Malley a “difficult landlord” and noting that the Dodgers only had the field resodded when the Angels were occupying the ballpark.10

Autry went public with complaints about the ballpark’s parking arrangements for fans and visiting teams in 1963, noting that New York Yankees manager Ralph Houk had demanded improvements to the parking setup. Autry also regretted the fact that fans couldn’t roam the entire ballpark, but had to stay in the area where they’d bought a ticket. “As a tenant, however, these are matters he has to live with,” a reporter wrote. “He has no control over them.”11

The Angels had no control over the ballpark’s signage, either, which favored the Dodgers and the National League. “When I came into the park today there was nothing that told me the American League plays here,” Angels farm director Roland Hemond said.12

Also in 1963, a proposal was floated to build a 55,000-seat domed ballpark adjacent to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum – a far cry from the lopsided field the Dodgers had jerry-rigged for use at the Coliseum between 1958 and 1961. The proposal occurred at the same time as a tax dispute between O’Malley and Los Angeles County that underlined the importance of the Angels’ rent payments to O’Malley’s pocketbook.13 Autry, perhaps trying to make his landlord break a sweat, said he would “listen with interest” to the pitch. It came to nothing.14

Rumors about a potential move elsewhere in Southern California had gained steam by the spring of 1964. While Autry said relations with the Dodgers were “cordial,” he added, “You can never be anything more than a stepchild to the people you rent from.” He went on to take another dig at the “ridiculous” parking at Chavez Ravine, adding that he believed the Angels could build a better ballpark of their own.15

The Dodgers held their tongue throughout these rough patches. The Angels periodically downplayed any tension as well. And once the Angels’ interest in Anaheim was confirmed in April 1964, concord came firmly to the forefront. “Mr. O’Malley had tremendous courage to buck the odds and give our area major league representation,” Reynolds said in June of that year. “Our departure from Chavez Ravine is not based on personal animosity with the Dodger president but to build ourselves a better mousetrap.”16

Wins on the Field, Losses in the Stands

In another time or place the Angels might have fared better in close rivalry with another team, because they were fairly competitive by the standards of expansion teams.

The 1961 Angels, playing at Wrigley Field, posted 70 wins. As of 2023, no first-year expansion team has won more. Playing at Chavez Ravine the following season, the Angels won 86 games, held first place as late as the Fourth of July, and finished third in the AL. It was a distant third, 10 games back, but third nonetheless, and skipper Bill Rigney won The Sporting News’ Manager of the Year award.

The Angels fell out of the running in subsequent seasons. They finished ninth in 1963 at 70-91, fifth in 1964 at 82-80, and seventh in 1965 at 75-87, and made no significant runs at first place. Still, the Angels remained a cut above the majors’ other 1961-62 expansion teams, the New York Mets, Houston Colt .45s/Astros, and Washington Senators. Only the Senators managed to win as many as 70 games in a season during this period, going 70-92 in 1965.

Rigney’s team even outperformed the Dodgers at home in 1964: The Angels went 45-36 at Chavez Ravine, while the Dodgers went 41-40. It was the only year of the teams’ co-tenancy that the AL team managed a better home record.

The Angels boasted stars and recognizable faces for fans to watch and follow. Pitcher Dean Chance won the AL Cy Young Award in 1964 and finished fifth in MVP voting. He led the AL in ERA, complete games, shutouts, and innings pitched, and tied for the league lead with 20 wins.17 Outfielder Leon Wagner contributed 37 home runs in 1962 and 26 in 1963, placing fourth in Most Valuable Player voting in ’62 and making All-Star teams in both seasons. Albie Pearson, AL Rookie of the Year in 1958, resurrected his sagging career as the new team’s spark-plug center fielder. Shortstop Jim Fregosi, just 20 years old in his rookie season in 1962, emerged as an infielder with pop and an All-Star. And colorful pitcher Bo Belinsky made his own distinctive impact, which we’ll get back to shortly.

But against the star power and established success of Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Maury Wills, and Walter Alston, none of it mattered.

A famous axiom of military success says, “Get there firstest with the mostest,” and the Dodgers had the unbeatable twin advantages of early arrival and strong performance.18 The Dodgers had wrapped up LA’s first World Series title in 1959, before the Angels’ creation, and delivered two more in 1963 and 1965. They led the NL in attendance every season from 1962 to 1965 and crushed their tenants at the box office by a larger margin each year.

The 1962 Angels were fourth in the AL with 1,144,063 paying fans. That was respectable by most teams’ standards, but less than half of the Dodgers’ remarkable 2,755,184 attendance. By 1965, LA’s junior team was drawing less than one-quarter the attendance of its senior team. The Angels attracted just 566,727 fans – eighth in the 10-team AL – while the Dodgers drew 2,553,577.

 

Won-Lost Records at Dodger Stadium/Chavez Ravine

Season	Dodgers	Angels
1962	54-29	40-41
1963	50-31	39-42
1964	41-40	45-36
1965	50-31	46-34
Total	195-131 (.598)	170-153 (.526)

 

Yearly Attendance and Rank in League

Season	Dodgers (NL)	Angels (AL)
1962	2,755,184 (1st)	1,144,063 (4th)
1963	2,538,602 (1st)	821,015 (6th)
1964	2,228,751 (1st)	760,439 (7th)
1965	2,553,577 (1st)	566,727 (8th)
Total	10,076,114	3,292,244

 

Sagging attendance in the Angels’ final two seasons might also have been a reflection on the team’s lame-duck status in Los Angeles, as the team had confirmed its plans to move to a new, 45,000-seat stadium in Anaheim.19

The Angels played their final home games at Chavez Ravine on September 22, 1965, in a Wednesday day-night doubleheader. Just 3,353 fans turned out to see the Angels sweep the Boston Red Sox, 10-1 and 2-0. George Brunet won the second game with a complete-game two-hitter, one of five he pitched in his 15-season major-league career. (Jerry Stephenson, who opposed Brunet and took the loss, was an Anaheim High School graduate.)

Angels players expressed mixed emotions about the move. Fregosi said he wouldn’t miss the spacious dimensions of Chavez Ravine, adding, “Having our own park with our own fans will mean a great deal to team pride. There won’t be 10,000 fans in the stands listening to the Dodgers.” Pitcher Bob Lee was more circumspect: “The bigger the better and Dodger Stadium is the best park in the majors for a pitcher. It was a paradise for me. I could come in dead tired, throw the ball right down the middle and still end up all right.”20

Dodgers general manager Buzzie Bavasi attended the final games, presenting Autry and Angels general manager Fred Haney with a ballpark-shaped cake bearing the slogan “Good Luck California Angels.”21

Amid the bonhomie, Bavasi recalled a comment Autry had once made about O’Malley. News writers said the wisecrack was good-humored, but decades later, it seems sharp-edged. “O’Malley said nothing was too good for us,” Autry said, “and nothing is what we got.”22

History Written in Red: Stadium Records and Noteworthy Games

Perhaps the most memorable Angels home game at Chavez Ravine took place a scant month into the team’s residence there. On May 5, 1962, rookie left-hander Belinsky no-hit the Baltimore Orioles, 2-0. It was only Belinsky’s fourth major-league game and the Angels’ 11th at their new home. A freewheeling nighthawk, Belinsky briefly became a national sensation but lacked the discipline to be a consistent winner. He left the majors in 1970 with a 28-51 lifetime record.23 Belinsky claimed the park’s first no-hitter by a margin of less than two months, as Koufax threw the first of his three no-hitters at Dodger Stadium on June 30, 1962.

Fregosi was as committed to baseball as Belinsky was carefree, and had a longer career as a result. The San Francisco native played 18 seasons in the majors and managed for 15 more. He played in six All-Star Games, won a Gold Glove in 1967, and skippered the 1993 Philadelphia Phillies to the NL championship. And on July 28, 1964, in front of 35,976 fans at Chavez Ravine, Fregosi recorded the park’s first cycle. Hitting against Stan Williams and Hal Reniff of the Yankees, Fregosi collected a first-inning double, a third-inning homer, a sixth-inning triple, and an eighth-inning single. Los Angeles won 3-1.

Earlier that season on June 6, 1964, Chance pitched 14 innings of three-hit-shutout ball, also against the Yankees. As of May 2023, this outing remained the Dodger Stadium single-game record for innings pitched. (Angels relievers Willie Smith and Dan Osinski coughed up two runs in the 15th and the Yankees won 2-0.) The Angels’ Ken McBride hit four batters in a game on April 23, 1964, setting a less desirable stadium record that has since been tied by two other pitchers.24 Similarly, the Angels’ Rudy May is one of seven pitchers who have walked nine batters in a game at the stadium.25

Two Cleveland Indians pitchers opposing the Angels at Chavez Ravine also claimed spots in the stadium record book. As of May 2023, no pitcher had allowed more hits in a single game than Barry Latman, who surrendered 16 in 10⅔ innings in a complete-game loss on September 22, 1962. And Sudden Sam McDowell’s four wild pitches in a game on July 10, 1965, stood alone as a ballpark record for 52 seasons until Adam Ottavino of the Colorado Rockies tied it on June 25, 2017.

 

Other games became noteworthy with the passage of time. On September 13, 1963, 300-game winner and future Hall of Famer Early Wynn made his final big-league appearance, 24 years to the day after his first, in front of just 7,363 fans at an Indians-Angels game. Relieving Jack Kralick in the sixth inning of an eventual 7-6 Indians win, Wynn gave up an RBI single to Fregosi, then retired Charlie Dees on a line drive to shortstop to end the inning.

The 9,737 fans who attended the Orioles-Angels game of September 4, 1964, could boast years later that they’d seen the big-league debut of Lou Piniella, future AL Rookie of the Year and NL and AL Manager of the Year. Piniella, then 21 years old, pinch-hit for Robin Roberts and grounded to second base. More than a decade later Piniella returned to the ballpark as a participant in three Yankees-Dodgers World Series in 1977, 1978, and 1981.

One of the saddest stories in Sixties baseball unfolded at Chavez Ravine on Friday, April 13, 1965. Hard-throwing rookie pitcher Dick Wantz made the Angels as a nonroster player,26 and in his first appearance, he allowed three hits and two runs in an inning of work against Cleveland. Shortly afterward, he told the team doctor he was suffering from extreme headaches, which were initially diagnosed as a virus.27 Further testing revealed a fast-spreading cancerous brain tumor. Exactly one month after his only big-league game, Wantz died at age 25 following surgery in a Los Angeles hospital.28

One other Angels game lives on in Dodger Stadium annals, though not many fans could tell you about it firsthand. On Thursday, September 19, 1963, the Angels and Orioles played a day game to make up for a rainout two days earlier. Only 476 fans attended. As of summer 2023, this remained the smallest officially announced crowd in Dodger Stadium history, excluding the COVID-19 pandemic season of 2020.29 Belinsky scattered five hits in a complete game as the Angels romped, 7-2. It might have been the definitive example of Dodger Stadium’s junior tenants putting on a show while Los Angeles’s collective back was turned.30

KURT BLUMENAU is a frequent contributor to the SABR Games Project and Biography Project. He grew up in the Rochester, New York, area, following the Mets and the Triple-A Rochester Red Wings. He works in corporate communications in the Boston area.

 

Sources

In addition to the sources identified in the Notes, the author consulted other news articles from Los Angeles-area newspapers. He also consulted Baseball-Reference and Retrosheet for basic background information on teams, seasons, games, and players.

 

Notes

1 Alex Kahn (United Press International), “New Stadium Slated to Have Two Names,” Ogden (Utah) Standard-Examiner, November 16, 1961: 10C.

2 Unless otherwise specified, the background on the creation of the Angels and the business agreement between Walter O’Malley and Gene Autry is based on the SABR biographies on O’Malley (by Andy McCue) and Autry (by Warren Corbett), accessed May 2023.

3 According to a Consumer Price Index inflation calculator made available online by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, $350,000 in December 1960 had the same buying power as more than $3.5 million in April 2023.

4 “Will Angels Transfer to Coliseum?” Long Beach (California) Press-Telegram, July 18, 1963: C1; Joseph A. St. Amant (United Press International), “Angels Say Goodbye to Dodger Stadium,” Alexandria (Indiana) Times-Tribune, September 23, 1965: 6; George Lederer, “Baseball Treaty Reached, L.A. Angels Play Next Year,” Long Beach Independent, December 8, 1960: D1.

5 Melvin Durslag, “Critics Tell O’Malley ‘Get Out of Town,’” San Francisco Examiner, June 19, 1962: 47.

6 Lederer, “Baseball Treaty Reached, L.A. Angels Play Next Year.”

7 Jeanne Hoffman, “Autry Set to Build Angels in 120 Days,” Los Angeles Times, December 13, 1960: IV-5. Autry had stepped in to replace Hall of Famer Hank Greenberg, who withdrew his interest in ownership of the proposed AL expansion team due to O’Malley’s request for payment.

8 Kahn, “New Stadium Slated to Have Two Names”; Ross Newhan, “Dodger Stadium – Not to Angels,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, November 16, 1961: C1; Hank Hollingsworth, “Autry Still Fast on Draw,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, November 16, 1961: C1.

9 Maxwell Stiles, “Styles in Sports,” Los Angeles Evening Citizen-News, July 14, 1962: 13.

10 Al Carr, “When and Will Angels Move?” Los Angeles Times, February 9, 1964: 14.

11 Sid Ziff, “Money Makers,” Los Angeles Times, February 20, 1963: III: 3.

12 Wells A. Twombly, “That Old Sweet Song,” North Hollywood Valley Times, September 9, 1963: 8.

13 Paul Zimmerman, “Some Strange Site Changes,” Los Angeles Times, July 19, 1963: III: 2.

14 United Press International, “Angels Baseball Club May Leave Chavez Ravine,” Redlands (California) Daily Facts, September 10, 1963: 1; Melvin Durslag, “Will Angels Quit Ravine?” San Francisco Examiner, September 10, 1963: 49; Associated Press, “Angels Hinting at Coliseum,” San Bernardino County (California) Sun, September 11, 1963: A8.

15 Ross Newhan, “Angels Admit They’re Moving,” Long Beach Press-Telegram, March 30, 1964: C1.

16 Maxwell Stiles, “Bob in Tomorrowland,” Los Angeles Evening Citizen-News, June 29, 1964: B2.

17 Chance also led the league in numerous advanced statistical categories, such as Fielding Independent Pitching, Base-Out Runs Saved, and Adjusted Wins. While these are significant accomplishments, they’re not mentioned here because they wouldn’t have brought fans to the ballpark in 1964.

18 The phrase “Get there firstest with the mostest” is incorrectly attributed to Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate general during the US Civil War. Forrest, who had a clear command of English, instead used the grammatically correct “Get there first with the most men.” Forrest was a slave trader and Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, and public tributes and monuments to him have been removed or challenged, but the saying associated with him is embedded in the American vernacular. “Nathan Bedford Forrest,” Encyclopedia Britannica, accessed May 26, 2023. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nathan-Bedford-Forrest.

19 United Press International, “Angels Sign Contract to Transfer Franchise,” Kingsport (Tennessee) Times-News, August 9, 1964: 3C.

20 Ross Newhan, “No Tears by Rig on Move,” Long Beach (California) Independent, September 23, 1965: C1. Sure enough, while Lee’s won-lost record and ERA remained solid in 1966, his Wins Above Replacement declined from 4.1 in 1965 – second-best on the team – to 1.2 in 1966.

21 “Fond Farewell” (photo and caption), Los Angeles Times, September 23, 1965: III: 1. According to Baseball-Reference, the Angels changed their name from the Los Angeles Angels to the California Angels in September 1965, late in their tenure at Chavez Ravine.

22 Bob Myers (Associated Press), “So Long LA, It’s Good Knowin’ Ya,” San Pedro (California) News-Pilot, September 23, 1965: 10.

23 Gregory H. Wolf, “Bo Belinsky,” SABR Biography Project, accessed May 2023.

24 The other two pitchers were Orel Hershiser of the Dodgers against the Houston Astros on April 19, 2000, and Lance McCullers of the Astros on November 1, 2017, in Game Seven of that season’s World Series.

25 “Top Individual Performances at Dodger Stadium,” Retrosheet, accessed May 1, 2023. https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/L/PKTP_LOS03.htm

26 John Hall, “It’s Cimoli, Si! Satriano, No as Angels Pare Their Team,” Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1965: III: 3.

27 John Hall, “Chance Labors, but Still Beats ‘Pigeon’ Yanks, 6-3,” Los Angeles Times, April 25, 1965: III: 1; John Hall, “Chance Loses Stuff as Angels Blow One, 5-4,” Los Angeles Times, April 29, 1965: III: 1.

28 “Angels’ Dick Wantz Succumbs to Brain Tumor,” Los Angeles Times, May 15, 1965: III: 1.

29 Based on the author’s review of Dodgers attendance figures from 1962 through 2022 and Angels attendance from 1962 through 1965 on Retrosheet’s year-by-year game logs, accessed May 2023. The author did not find any examples of an officially announced Dodgers home attendance of fewer than 1,000 fans between 1962 and 2022. The smallest official attendance on record for a Dodgers game at Dodger Stadium is 6,559, for a doubleheader against the Atlanta Braves on September 13, 1976, that was rescheduled from two days earlier due to rain. Major-league ballparks were closed to fans throughout the 2020 season because of COVID-19 safety restrictions.

30 The Dodgers returned home the following night for a regularly scheduled Friday-night game and drew an officially announced crowd of 40,476 against the Pittsburgh Pirates.