Los Angeles Coliseum

After 17 months of court stays, the city of Irwindale was freed Friday to proceed with final arrangements for construction of its proposed Los Angeles Raiders football stadium. Superior Court Judge Charles E. Jones lifted the last of the stays, formally finding that Irwindale has "prepared, certified and filed" an environmental impact report for the 62,000-seat stadium project as required under state law. "I'm very pleased," said Kenneth L. Adams, the city's attorney in the matter.

For sale? For shame. That, in essence, was the message the Coliseum's top official sent to Sacramento on Thursday in a news conference that blasted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to sell the historic stadium to raise cash amid the state's growing fiscal crisis. "Whoever made the decision to throw this on the table five days before an election made a boneheaded decision," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, president of the Coliseum Commission.

It's one thing to parade naked in front of your bathroom mirror, quite another to face the world in the altogether. Terry Schroeder knows. A four-time U.S. Olympic water polo player from Santa Barbara, Schroeder is immortalized in bronze outside the Coliseum, his nude torso standing tall for the idealized, universal Olympic athlete.

The lingering symbol of the 1984 Los Angeles Olympic Games--the statues of two nude, headless athletes at the peristyle entrance of the Coliseum--will remain undraped during the start of the Olympic torch relay Saturday morning.

Faced with continuing demand for tickets for the Dodgers' return to the Coliseum on March 29 despite an early sellout, the club has announced an additional 25,000 tickets will go on sale Saturday, increasing the capacity to 115,000 for the exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox. That would be the biggest crowd to watch a baseball game.

Don't pack up those wooden stakes just yet, Buffy. The proposed deal to bring a National Football League team to the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum may yet stir in its grave. At least, that is how local officials on both sides of the issue were acting Friday, despite the announcement that the NFL was kissing off the downtown landmark--and, thus, the prospects of pro football in Los Angeles any time soon--because state taxpayers will not cough up additional public money to sweeten the deal.

Al Davis did not announce where--if anywhere--his football team would be moving before last Saturday's vote for the NFL's Hall of Fame. Maybe he deliberately waited. Or maybe he couldn't have cared less. I do not know how much making the Hall of Fame means to Davis, or why he hasn't already made it, or how much his herding of the Raiders from Northern to Southern California has do to with it. Furthermore, I haven't lost one minute of sleep feeling sorry for him.

Ten years before Martin Luther King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and became an icon in the civil rights movement, Jackie Robinson was already a trailblazer, opening doors for black Americans by integrating major league baseball.

The smart money downtown says that Los Angeles may have lost its chance for a National Football League expansion team, but in the process, gained a foothold on the future. These observers in and around City Hall cite the fact that, when the process began, the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum and its surrounding park were a public asset valued at near zero.

The commission in charge of the Memorial Coliseum seems at a crossroads: should it keep chasing its NFL dream, or sign a long-term deal with USC? That will be the focus of today's monthly meeting, its last before summer break. Clearly, there are divergent opinions on the nine-member commission, with some not ready to give up on pro football returning, and others fed up with the flirtations that have dragged on since the Raiders left after the 1994 season.

For sale? For shame. That, in essence, was the message the Coliseum's top official sent to Sacramento on Thursday in a news conference that blasted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's proposal to sell the historic stadium to raise cash amid the state's growing fiscal crisis. "Whoever made the decision to throw this on the table five days before an election made a boneheaded decision," said Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, president of the Coliseum Commission.

Fight on? Not anymore. USC and the Coliseum Commission have worked through their differences, and Wednesday signed off on their first long-term lease, one that will keep the Trojans playing football at the historic stadium for decades to come. It was six months ago that USC, frustrated with the lack of progress on much-needed improvements to the 84-year-old Coliseum, threatened to relocate its games to the Rose Bowl.

Charitie McArthur says she bleeds Dodger blue. She thinks Vin Scully is a genius, wept with joy when Steve Finley's grand slam clinched a division title in 2004 and scored big when she got married at home plate at Dodger Stadium the following summer. But as the team returns to town this week for the new season, the 32-year-old teacher from Redondo Beach is already cringing. It's not the team's prospects that have her down, but the prospect of the bad traffic expected at this weekend's games.

The Dodgers' one-night return to the Coliseum has the team wrestling with a familiar problem -- parking. The Dodgers are offering round-trip shuttles from the Dodger Stadium parking lot to the Coliseum for Saturday's exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox. That wasn't an option in 1958, before the Dodgers' first game in Los Angeles.

Times staff writer Steve Springer participated in a conference call Monday with 11 former Dodgers who played in the Coliseum. Their reflections: Every Dodger who played in the Coliseum can picture a special moment there. Half a century later, right-hander Carl Erskine still pictures a moment that didn't happen. The year was 1958.

Faced with continuing demand for tickets for the Dodgers' return to the Coliseum on March 29 despite an early sellout, the club has announced an additional 25,000 tickets will go on sale Saturday, increasing the capacity to 115,000 for the exhibition game against the Boston Red Sox. That would be the biggest crowd to watch a baseball game.

Argentina's national soccer team, minus Barcelona wunderkind Lionel Messi, will be on display when it takes on Guatemala at the Coliseum tonight at 7:30. Messi, 20, is still not fully recovered from a left thigh injury. But his absence doesn't mean Argentina brought its "B" squad to face Guatemala -- even if it is primarily fielding the under-23 team that will participate this summer at the Bejing Olympics.

Representatives of both sides in the effort to keep USC playing football in the Coliseum expressed optimism Tuesday that an agreement could be reached as early as next week. The Coliseum Commission is expected to vote on the most recent set of negotiated proposals at its monthly meeting next Wednesday. Pat Lynch, general manager of the Coliseum and Sports Arena, said, "We're not done yet, but we are very, very close."

The stalemate between USC and the Coliseum Commission took another public turn on Wednesday night when the nine commissioners emerged from a special meeting with a four-page letter to the university. The letter voiced numerous concerns about USC's latest proposal for a long-term lease that would keep the Trojans football team at the venue. Although financial issues were addressed, the commissioners emphasized their belief that USC wants control of the historic stadium.

In an effort to keep USC from moving its home football games to Pasadena, the Coliseum Commission is expected to deliver a long-term lease proposal to university administrators this morning. The document, crafted during a special closed-door meeting Wednesday evening, represents a potential step forward in the long and sometimes acrimonious negotiations between the commissioners and the school that has played in their stadium since 1923.