Gladiators return to Coliseum

The first Opening Day game at the Los Angeles Coliseum, Dodgers-Giants April 18, 1958, drew a crowd of 78,682. (File/Associated Press)

LOS ANGELES - The last time they played baseball here, Sept. 20, 1961, Sandy Koufax went all 13 innings, striking out 15 in a 3-2 win over the Cubs. The Dodgers said goodbye to their temporary housing that day and moved to a spanking new stadium in Chavez Ravine for the 1962 season.

Tonight, 50 years after leaving Brooklyn for California gold, the Dodgers return to their first Los Angeles home. They return to a place where Wally Moon hit 251-foot homers while Bing Crosby, Nat King Cole, and Dinah Shore sat by the home team's dugout.

The Dodgers are coming back to the Coliseum one more time to play the Red Sox in an exhibition game, and officials are hoping for a world-record baseball crowd of 115,000.

"I remember the Coliseum all too well," said commissioner Bud Selig, who watched the Sox in Japan and plans to be at tonight's game. "My team, the Milwaukee Braves, lost the 1959 pennant there. I remember those Wally Moon shots. There's a lot of history here. We're recreating something from 47, 48 years ago, and it's just amazing."

It'll be a circus-like environment. A football and track venue, best known as the college home of O.J. Simpson and site of the 1932 and 1984 Olympic Games, the oval-shaped Coliseum is totally ill suited for baseball configuration. New seats added since the Dodgers departed require that the left-field fence be 201 feet from home plate tonight. There's a 60-foot-high net over the short fence, and balls off the net will be in play. The Screen Monster.

With Manny Ramírez in left field for the Red Sox, the possibilities are endless. Manny, who likes to play shallow, will be taking his position just a few feet behind Mike Lowell at third base. Dodgers left fielder Juan Pierre said he might wear his protective cup while fielding his position.

Back in the day, Dodger Hall of Famer Duke Snider (settling a bet with teammate Don Zimmer) dislocated his elbow trying to throw a ball over the left-field fence - and out of the Coliseum. Moon, now 77, said he hopes to take a few hacks at the new wall tonight.

"Two hundred feet to left?" asked Kevin Youkilis. "That's awesome."

"It is what it is," said Sox starter Tim Wakefield, sounding downright Belichickian. "I don't have any choice in the matter. What am I going to do - refuse to pitch?"

Wakefield - prone to wild pitches because of his knuckleball - will like the Coliseum's backstop, which is approximately 12 feet behind home plate. There's barely room for the catcher and the umpire. No wild pitches or passed balls tonight.

The Sox ordered several additional cases of baseballs - just to get through batting practice. It'll be a good night for Big Papi to think about going to the opposite field (Moon batted from the left side). It's 440 feet to the Coliseum wall in right.

The temporary dugouts are tent-like, and it will be tough for the Sox to find room for their 40 players (14 minor leaguers were imported for the weekend) in their makeshift sanctuary on the third base side.

Frank and Jamie McCourt's ThinkCure charity (think Jimmy Fund West) will reap the proceeds of tonight's gate, and the Dodgers hope it will qualify for the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest crowd to watch a big league baseball game. The Dodgers drew 93,109 when they honored Roy Campanella in the fifth inning of a May exhibition with the Yankees in 1959. That was the night fans held lighters aloft when stadium lights dimmed as Pee Wee Reese pushed Campanella's wheelchair (the Dodger catcher had been paralyzed in a car crash). Later that year, each of three Dodgers World Series games against the White Sox drew more than 92,300.

Still, some records can't be broken and others can't be authenticated. The Coliseum attendance record was set Sept. 8, 1963, when 134,254 filled the bowl to hear evangelist Billy Graham. Folks in Cleveland claim 115,000 watched an amateur baseball game between the Cleveland White Autos and the Omaha Luxus at Brookside Park in 1915. The Australian national team is said to have drawn 115,000 fans for a baseball game during the 1956 Olympics in Melbourne. Tonight's crowd number could be dented by UCLA playing basketball on television at the same time for a spot in the Final Four.

The Dodgers have been tweaked for padding tonight's attendance by moving Coliseum entrances and including fans who will be inside the gates but outside the ballpark, watching the game on TV. The gates open at noon (game time: 7:10 p.m., 10:10 EDT), and there's an all-day festival of baseball attractions, including autograph booths and retro music.

The Red Sox will put on their uniforms at Dodger Stadium, then take buses to the Coliseum, where they are slated to be part of a pre- pregame ceremony, walking in under the fabled stone arches beyond the right-center-field fence. During the seventh-inning stretch, the Dodgers are hoping to record the largest sing-along of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame."

In other words, it's got all the earmarks of a Dr. Charles Steinberg production.

"This celebrates the 50th anniversary of the move to Los Angeles," said Maestro Steinberg, who worked his magic at Fenway from 2002-07. "You can take people back to a time in their lives when the Coliseum was the venue. So many people talk about how they remember the night that everyone lit lighters to welcome back their paralyzed hero, Roy Campanella. Here, tonight, we have the opportunity to take people back to the time in their life when they may have fallen in love with baseball."

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar will be at the game. He grew up a New York City kid and is old enough to remember watching Jackie Robinson steal bases for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Sox chairman Tom Werner, a man with deep roots in New York City and Southern California, will also be there and said, "I have memories of growing up and reading about when the Dodgers played in the Coliseum. I know that the tickets sold so quickly. I've gotten 300 requests myself. I've gotten more requests for this game than for the playoff games in Boston."

It's not a playoff game. It's not even a regular-season game. It's just one more stop on the Sox history tour in the spring of 2008.

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at dshaughnessy@globe.com.