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LOS ANGELES - The Dodgers used a five-man infield against the Boston Red Sox. Too bad they weren’t allowed to put a player or two in the Los Angeles Coliseum stands.
Kevin Cash and Kevin Youkilis hit cheap homers off Esteban Loaiza to account for five runs in the first three innings, and the Red Sox beat the Dodgers 7-4 Saturday night before an announced crowd of 115,300 — largest ever to watch a baseball game.
The previous record of about 114,000 attended an exhibition between the Australian national team and an American services team during the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
This exhibition game was part of the Dodgers’ 50th anniversary celebration of their move west from Brooklyn in 1958. They played at the Coliseum for four years before making Dodger Stadium their permanent home in 1962.
In the last baseball game played at the Coliseum, on Sept. 20, 1961, Sandy Koufax pitched all 13 innings in a 3-2 victory over the Chicago Cubs before a crowd of 12,068.
The Coliseum was built for track and football, not baseball.
Routine fly balls, even popups, soared over a 42-foot high screen in left field, where the distance from home plate to the foul pole was just 251 feet. Meanwhile, drives to right and center of more than 400 feet were easy outs.
The distance to the left-field foul pole for this game was 201 feet and the screen was 60 feet high. And the fences around the rest of the field were far closer to home plate than in the old days.
Cash lined a two-out, three-run homer to left-center in the second — a ball that might have split the gap elsewhere but certainly wouldn’t have gone out. Youkilis connected with two outs in the third, popping the ball over the screen with a runner aboard.
“It was pretty cool,” Cash said. “I would have rather it had been a regular-season game.”
Regarding his homer, Cash smiled and said: “I thought I hit it good. You put it at Yankee Stadium, it’s probably not a home run. It was a home run here.”
Surprisingly, there were only two more homers, a solo shot by Dodgers’ first baseman James Loney in the seventh off Bryan Corey, and a two-run blast by rookie Blake DeWitt off Jonathan Papelbon in the ninth.
“I thought it was a heck of a show,” Dodgers manager Joe Torre said. “I didn’t see any empty seats. That’s pretty imposing. Everybody seemed to have a good time.”
While Loaiza struggled, Boston knuckleballer Tim Wakefield excelled, allowing five hits and an unearned run in five innings to make a mockery of catcher Jason Varitek’s pre-game forecast of doom.
“Wakie’s a fly ball pitcher. That’s great,” Varitek said some 3½ hours before the game as he walked down the Coliseum tunnel and glanced toward the left-field screen.
Then, in his best broadcast voice, Varitek he intoned: “Dodgers 85, Red Sox 81.”
He was way off.
“It wasn’t one of those 21-20 games a lot of people anticipated,” Torre said.
Torre joked beforehand about using a five-man infield, but the Dodgers did so throughout the game. Center fielder Andruw Jones played behind second base on the skin of the infield at the start, with left fielder Andre Ethier in center, leaving left field unprotected.
When Jacoby Ellsbury was thrown out trying to steal in the fourth, Jones was on the receiving end of catcher Russell Martin’s throw — the unconventional putout from catcher to center fielder.
The Red Sox went with a more conventional defensive approach, although their left fielders were stationed in left-center, well off the line.
Longtime announcer Vin Scully, who moved with the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, was honored before the game. He referred to himself as “an ordinary man who was given an extraordinary opportunity.”
After being given a long ovation, Scully told the fans: “Aw c’mon. It’s only me.”
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Jeremy Lin hit a free throw with 4.9 seconds left to overcome a dreadful second half and lift the New York Knicks to their fifth straight victory, 100-98, over the Minnesota Timberwolves on Saturday night.
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Wesseling: Each NFL team enters the offseason with a series of pressing needs. Sometimes a team can address them all, sometimes they ignore them all. But if a team's smart, they'll listen to us. These are the most crucial aspects for AFC teams.