Dodger Stadium

Dodger Stadium is a ballpark in the Elysian Park neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, United States. It is the home of the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball (MLB). Opened in 1962, it was constructed in less than three years at a cost of US$23 million (US$239 million in 2024). It is the oldest ballpark in MLB west of the Mississippi River, and third-oldest overall, after Fenway Park in Boston (1912) and Wrigley Field in Chicago (1914), and is the largest baseball stadium in the world by seat capacity. Often referred to as a "pitcher's ballpark", the stadium has been the site of 13 no-hitters, two of them perfect games.

The stadium hosted the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in 1980 and 2022, as well as the World Series twelve times (1963, 1965, 1966, 1974, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1988, 2017, 2018, 2024, and 2025). It also hosted the semifinals and finals of the 2009 and 2017 World Baseball Classics, as well as exhibition baseball during the 1984 Summer Olympics. The stadium hosted a soccer tournament on August 3, 2013, featuring four clubs: the hometown team Los Angeles Galaxy, and Europe's Real Madrid, Everton, and Juventus. The Los Angeles Kings and Anaheim Ducks played a regular season game in 2014 as part of the NHL Stadium Series. The stadium was also the home of the Los Angeles Angels from 1962 through 1965.

The stadium is commonly referred to as Chavez Ravine Stadium (or just "Chavez Ravine"), after the geographic feature in which the stadium sits. It is sometimes referred to as "Blue Heaven on Earth," a nickname coined by former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda.

In the mid-1950s, Brooklyn Dodgers team president Walter O'Malley had tried to build a domed stadium in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, but was unable to reach an agreement with city officials for the land acquisition, and eventually reached a deal with the city of Los Angeles. The land that would be used for Dodger Stadium had previously been seized from local owners and inhabitants by the city of Los Angeles, using eminent domain with funds from the federal Housing Act of 1949. The city had planned to develop the Elysian Park Heights public housing project, which included two dozen 13-story buildings and more than 160 two-story townhouses, in addition to newly rebuilt playgrounds and schools, and a college.

Before construction could begin on the housing project, the local political climate changed greatly when Norris Poulson was elected mayor of Los Angeles in 1953. Proposed public housing projects such as Elysian Park Heights lost most of their support as they became associated with socialist ideals. Following protracted negotiations, the city purchased the Chavez Ravine property back from the Federal Housing Authority at a drastically reduced price, with the stipulation that the land be used for a public purpose. It was not until June 3, 1958, when Los Angeles voters approved a "Taxpayers Committee for Yes on Baseball" referendum, that the Dodgers were able to acquire 352 acres (1.42 km²) of Chavez Ravine from the city. Los Angeles forcefully evicted residents from their homes, mainly Hispanics. While Dodger Stadium was under construction, the Dodgers played in the league's largest capacity venue from 1958 through 1961 at their temporary home, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, which could seat in excess of 90,000 people.

Los Angeles–based Mike Davis, in his seminal work on the city, City of Quartz, describes the process of gradually convincing Chavez Ravine homeowners to sell. With nearly all of the original Spanish-speaking homeowners initially unwilling to sell, developers resorted to offering immediate cash payments, distributed through their Spanish-speaking agents. Once the first sales had been completed, remaining homeowners were offered increasingly lesser amounts of money, to create a community panic of not receiving fair compensation, or of being left as one of the few holdouts. Many residents continued to hold out despite the pressure being placed upon them by developers, resulting in the Battle of Chavez Ravine, a ten-year struggle by the residents to maintain control of their property, which they ultimately lost.

Dodger Stadium was the first Major League Baseball stadium since the initial construction of the original Yankee Stadium to be built using 100% private financing, and the last until Oracle Park in San Francisco opened in 2000. Ground was broken for Dodger Stadium on September 17, 1959. The tops of local ridges were removed, and the soil was used to fill in Sulfur and Cemetery Ravines to provide a level surface for a parking lot and the stadium. The former Palo Verde Elementary School building was simply buried rather than being demolished, and sits beneath the parking lot northwest of third base. A total of 8 million cubic yards (6,100,000 m³) of earth were moved in the process of building the stadium. A total of 21,000 precast concrete units, some weighing as much as 32 tons, were fabricated onsite and lowered into place with a specially built crane to form the stadium's structural framework. The stadium was originally designed to be expandable to 85,000 seats by expanding the upper decks over the outfield pavilions, but the Dodgers have never pursued such a project.

At the conclusion of the 2005 season, the Los Angeles Dodgers made major renovations during the subsequent off-season.