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Los Angeles' Wrigley Field was a ballpark which served host to minor league baseball teams in the region for over 30 years, and was the home park for the Los Angeles Angels in their expansion season of 1961.
The park was built in South Central Los Angeles in 1925 and is named after William Wrigley, the chewing-gum magnate who owned the first tenants, the original Los Angeles Angels minor league team. It is the same Wrigley that owned the Chicago Cubs, who play in a more famous park named after him. The Los Angeles Wrigley Field was built to resemble the stadium in Chicago, known at the time as Cubs Park. It was also the first to bear Wrigley's name, as the Chicago park was named for Wrigley several months after the L.A. park's opening. At the time, he owned Santa Catalina Island and the Cubs were doing their spring training in Avalon.
For 33 seasons, 1925 to 1957, the park was home to the Angels, and for 11 more seasons, 1926 through 1935 and 1938, it had a second home team in the rival Hollywood Stars.
With its location near Hollywood, it was a popular place to film baseball movies. Among the most well known movies filmed there were The Pride of the Yankees and a movie version of Damn Yankees. It later found its way to television, serving as the backdrop for the Gillette Home Run Derby series in 1959, a popular show which featured one-on-one contests between baseball's top home run hitters. An episode of The Munsters also was filmed here.
In 1961, the L.A. Angels joined the American League as an expansion team and took residence at Wrigley for the season. The team set a still-standing first-year expansion team record with 71 wins, and the park set another record by yielding 248 home runs. After the season, the team moved to Dodger Stadium, or Chavez Ravine as it was known for Angels games. There were no more regular tenants afterwards, and the park was torn down in 1966.
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