The Los Angeles Dodgers will be playing an exhibition game next month at the Los Angeles Coliseum (where the 1984 Summer Olympics were held). The coliseum was the Dodgers home their first four years in Los Angeles.

The most memorable game ever played there by the Dodgers did not affect the standings, but an emotional 93,103 turned out to see the Dodgers play the New York Yankees on May 7, 1959, on “Roy Campanella Night,” still the largest crowd to ever attend a Major League Baseball game.

Campanella had been paralyzed from the chest down in an auto accident in January 1958, 2-1/2 months before the Dodgers opened their first season in Los Angeles.

The most vivid image came when former teammate Pee Wee Reese pushed the wheelchair of the three-time National League’s Most Valuable Player toward the pitcher’s mound as the stadium lights were dimmed. The fans struck matches inside the darkened stadium in a moving, silent tribute. Broadcaster Vin Scully said it looked like “the world’s biggest jewel case.”

Gate receipts from the exhibition game with the New York Yankees would help defray Campanella’s medical bills.

Roy Campanella was elected to the Baseball Hall-of-Fame in 1969. He passed away at age 71 in 1993.

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