Blog post

October 4, 2010 [LINK / comment]

Are you ready for some football?

Now that the regular baseball season is over, many fans turn their attention to football. So, it's appropriate to mark the occasion by fixing up the diagrams for Memorial Coliseum, the extremely ill-suited home of the L.A. Dodgers from 1958 to 1961. A number of minor corrections have been made, based on a variety of photographs. I recently learned from Bruce Orser that the height of the stadium from ground level to the top rim was much higher than I had thought. The profiles reflect that correction. In addition, the Coliseum is a bit less elongated than I had estimated, so the diagrams are a bit "plumper" in the middle.

Some folks have asked me about doing a 2008 baseball version, based on the exhibition games played there in the preseason of 2008, the fiftieth anniversary of the arrival of baseball in Los Angeles. To me, Memorial Coliseum was enough of a joke as a baseball venue back in 1958, and the addition of extra rows of seats in 1993 made baseball an utter absurdity. The Dodgers should never have been allowed to play baseball there in the first place!

And speaking of being "ready for some football," I'm sure a lot of folks in the Los Angeles area are. Not since 1994 has the NFL had any franchise in the nation's second biggest metropolitan area. This is the 16th year without professional football there. Very, very strange...

Two managers get axed

Deeply disappointed with their fourth-place finish in the NL East, the New York Mets declined to renew the contract of manager Jerry Manuel. They also fired their general manager, Omar Minaya, who used to work in the Expos organization. See MLB.com. Also, the last-place Pittsburgh Pirates fired their manager, John Russell. He just finished the third year of a four-year contract, so the Pirates will have to pay him for next year. See MLB.com.