Red Sox Go To The Moon

A record crowd packed into the Los Angeles Coliseum on Saturday to watch the Los Angeles Dodgers take on the Boston Red Sox in a Major League Baseball pre-season exhibition game.

The Dodgers called the Coliseum home for four years after moving west from Brooklyn in the late 1950s.  In 1959 LA outfielder Wally Moon mastered the art of blooping fly balls – ”moonshots” – over the 41-foot-high fence that was only 250 feet down the left foul line.

The field on Saturday was configured similarly, with a 60-foot screen looming over left field — only 201 feet from home plate.  So bizarre were the dimensions that Dodgers manager Joe Torre stationed centerfielder Andruw Jones as a fifth infielder directly behind second base.

But the gimmick positioning could not defend the Little League scale of left field, and Boston’s Kevins (Cash and Youkilis) took advantage by homering over the screen to help the Red Sox to a 7-4 win.

The crowd of 115,300 was the largest ever to attend a baseball game.