It’s been well over a month since the last home game of the 2025 season was held at Dodger Stadium, which was the subject of one of Dodgers Nation’s Doug McKain’s latest videos.
The stadium has a long and complicated history in the city of Los Angeles, with its controversial origins leading to countless memorable moments in Dodger baseball history.
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After then-Brooklyn Dodgers team president and owner Walter O’Malley failed to build a domed stadium in Brooklyn, he reached a deal with the city of Los Angeles and decided to ship the team over 2,700 miles across the country to a new home in Southern California.
The land, located in Los Angeles’ Chavez Ravine, used for Dodger Stadium had been seized from local owners and inhabitants, who were predominantly Mexican-American.
After several inhabitants refused to comply with the city’s use of eminent domain, a decade-long dispute known as the “Battle of Chavez Ravine” was launched, ending with the last remaining residents being forcibly removed from their homes by the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.The seizure was initially to make way for proposed public housing, but the public housing plans were eventually abandoned and the land was designated for the Dodgers.
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Dodger Stadium was the first Major League park built using 100 percent private financing since the initial construction of Yankee Stadium in 1923, and the last until the Giants built Oracle Park in San Francisco in 2000.
O’Malley, who was friends with Walt Disney, was so inspired by his trip to Disneyland that he told stadium architect Emil Praeger to base his plans off of the futuristic Tomorrowland. Original Dodger stadium plans even included a monorail, just like Disney had at the time.
Visiting Dodger Stadium still invokes a feel of futurism, even 63 years after its construction. The next opportunity to pay the historic site a visit is Thursday, March 26 when the Dodgers take on the Arizona Diamondbacks at home to kick off the 2026 MLB season.
Photo credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports
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