The Splendor That Was the Coliseum Now Is in Eye of Beholder

Whether the current pro football tenant remains in the Coliseum, or another is solicited, it is increasingly clear that folks down there are dealing with a stadium as dated as the sleeve garter.

The problem is one that the senior occupant of the stadium, USC, also addresses. USC played the first football game in the Coliseum. Humbled the Pomona Sagehens, 23-7, in 1923.

Pomona is long gone from USC’s life, but the Coliseum isn’t, a lingering detriment to a school picturing itself as one of the foremost producers of amateur football teams, remanded to an inside cabin.

It always has been, and remains, the unclouded view here that every major city should treat itself to a stadium twice a century. Sports is part of the culture.

And it usually happens that revenues generated by the stadium will pay it off, or come close.

A village at the time of only 160,000, Anaheim took a flyer on a stadium in 1966. It hit big, not only as a good investment, but as a comfortable gathering place, pleasing to the populace.

Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Indianapolis, Seattle, San Diego, East Rutherford, Houston, Dallas, Buffalo, New Orleans, Minneapolis, Tampa, Kansas City and countless others--all able to get new stadiums off the ground.

But you suggest tearing down the Coliseum in Los Angeles and replacing it with something contemporary, and you will be told this amounts to desecration of a historic landmark.

Merely to lay a chisel to the place, you’ve got to deal with a Historic Building Code Board, not to mention an Office of Historic Preservation, neither of which would let you proceed without a fund of compelling reasons.

They might even invoke the Geneva Convention.

The question posed here is why was the Coliseum, to begin with, designated a historic landmark?

The place is a knockoff. The original is sitting there in Rome. If you go down to Tijuana and buy a “Louis Vuitton” for $8, are you getting a Louis Vuitton?

The Roman Colosseum was begun in the year 75 by Emperor Vespasian, who ordered 40,000 to 50,000 seats. He wanted something intimate, giving the lions the home-field edge in the event of a contest. Since the crowd-noise rule hadn’t yet been instituted, audibles would be tough for those opposing the cats.

Well, in 1952, it occurred to the Coliseum Commission in Los Angeles that it would be nice to decorate the grand entrance of its stadium with a piece of stone from the original Roman edifice.

The only trouble was, the Italian government said no. So did our State Department.

But the story goes that A. P. Giannini, the late banker with connections in the old country, worked a quiet deal whereby a two-ton piece of the Colosseum was placed, under cover of night, on a dray wagon and hauled to a freighter, which brought the prize to L.A.

So the stone now reposing at the Coliseum, depicting what is called there “the grandeur that was Rome,” actually is hot.

And this place is designated a historic landmark?

When the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1958 and asked to use the Coliseum as a temporary home, a major ruckus developed over a charge of desecration of the “historic architecture.”

The Dodgers had proposed to put home plate in the west end, near the tunnel, and construct a left-field fence on the north side of the stadium.

Sacrilege, the commission cried. Anyone who would deface that precious concrete with a garish fence would paint a mustache on the Mona Lisa. The commission ordered the Dodgers to set up home plate in the east, or go back to Brooklyn.

“We can’t put home plate in the east,” a Dodger spokesman protested. “For day games, batters would be looking into the sun. There aren’t enough neurosurgeons in Los Angeles to look after the beaning victims who would be brought in.”

At that point, a genius from Arcadia appeared at the commission office, proposing a solution--a captive balloon, 50 feet in circumference, which would float above the west rim of the stadium, shielding batters’ eyes from the sinking sun.

Politely, the Dodgers rejected the plan and faced a shutout when the commission, as a contribution to the city, yielded to the left-field fence, but only with assurance from the Dodgers that when they moved out, they would restore the “historic architecture” to its original pristine beauty.

The Coliseum is so threadbare that one can’t even lower the windows in the press box. The glass is too pitted for observers to see through it.

“Don’t lower it,” guys in the second row yell. “We can’t see.”

“Do you want to see, or die of exposure?” they are asked.

Quickly, you’ve got a beef on your hands.

But the Coliseum Commission needn’t concern itself with matters so earthly. It has a rendezvous with history, preserving the heritage of its knockoff stadium, embodying all the grandeur that was Rome.