Wrigley Field In Los Angeles?

Dodger Stadium has switched off the lights for another season. But the Dodgers were not always the only game in town. In 1925, Wrigley Field opened at 41st Place and Avalon Boulevard as home of the Pacific Coast League’s Angels. William Wrigley Jr. used the Angels as a farm team for his other sports interest, the Chicago Cubs, and completed the grand slam by buying Catalina Island, where the Cubs spent spring training from 1921 until 1951.

Hollywood loved Wrigley Field’s ivy-covered walls and 10-story clock tower, and filmed them again and again--for “Pride of the Yankees,” “The Babe Ruth Story” and “Damn Yankees”--before the place was pulled down in 1966 in a three-way swap that gave Walter O’Malley the Los Angeles Angels and Chavez Ravine. The site eventually became a community park and mental health center.

Wrigley Field shared its diamond with the Hollywood Stars before that team moved in 1939 to Gilmore Field alongside Farmers Market. CBS bought the field in 1950, and in 1991 construction workers unearthed the old Stars’ dugout.