It wasn’t as aesthetically interesting as Dodger...

It wasn’t as aesthetically interesting as Dodger Stadium or Anaheim Stadium, home of the California Angels. But parking was never a problem: You simply got on a streetcar, and when you got off in South-Central Los Angeles there was Wrigley Field.

The concrete bleachers tested the endurance of the undersides of fans of the minor leagues’ Los Angeles Angels, but the games were easy on their pocketbooks. Tickets were less than a dollar and hot dogs were a quarter.

During the Pacific Coast League team’s night games, people in the neighborhood would sit on their porches, sometimes in robes and slippers, ready to harvest home run balls. There were plenty to chase: Because the PCL played so many games, and because the stadium featured oddly angled fences, Wrigley Field saw more home runs in its 36 years than did any other professional stadium in the country.

The stadium and field were on nine acres at 41st Place and Avalon Boulevard (then South Park Avenue). The fortune behind them came from chewing gum.

William Wrigley Jr., the flamboyant founder of America’s chewing gum dynasty, had been expelled from eighth grade after hurling a cream pie at the school to demonstrate his feelings about education. Thus, at age 13, Wrigley became a traveling salesman for his father’s soap company in Philadelphia.

Later, Wrigley launched chewing gum as a promotional gimmick to sell soap and before long it was his main product. In 1893, Juicy Fruit and Wrigley’s Spearmint made their debuts.

In 1912, seeking to escape the winters at his home base in Chicago, Wrigley built an ornate winter house in Pasadena, now the home of the Tournament of Roses Assn. In 1919, he bought the Chicago Cubs--the same year he bought Santa Catalina Island for $2 million, sight unseen.

In the early 1920s, Wrigley became obsessed with baseball. He paid $150,000 for the Los Angeles Angels, one of six original Pacific Coast League teams, and the team soon became a farm team for his Cubs. By 1925, Wrigley had built a $1.1-million, 22,457-seat stadium for the Angels, designed by architect Zachary Taylor Davis. A year later, Wrigley remodeled and renamed the Chicago Cubs’ stadium, that other Wrigley Field, after the one in Los Angeles.

It was a field of dreams for the L.A. team--nicknamed the Cherubs--which had begun playing in the early 1900s at Washington Park around 8th and Hill streets.

In 1926, the Hollywood Stars arrived from Salt Lake City and shared Wrigley Field for almost 10 years before being transplanted to San Diego and becoming the Padres.

For 14 years, Wrigley Field was the only professional ballpark in town. In 1939, oil magnate Earl Gilmore paid $200,000 to build Gilmore Field near the Farmers Market and invited the former San Francisco Mission team to become the new Hollywood Stars. Where the Stars played, CBS now airs its own stars--at its Television City property.

The Angels produced a few stars of their own. First baseman Steve Bilko was so popular, it is said, that Phil Silvers named Sgt. Bilko--the chief character in his television series, “You’ll Never Get Rich”--after him.

The stadium’s ivy-covered walls and 10-story clock tower also played host to the movie industry. The 1942 film, “The Pride of the Yankees,” starring Gary Cooper as Lou Gehrig, was made there. So were “The Babe Ruth Story” in 1948, with William Bendix, and the next year, “It Happens Every Spring,” starring Ray Milland. Parts of the musical “Damn Yankees” were filmed there in 1958.

But Wrigley, bankrupted three times and wiped out twice by factory fires, did not live long after he built his Los Angeles ballpark. In 1932, he died of a heart attack at age 70. He was buried on his beloved Catalina Island near Mt. Ada, which he had named for his wife.

A quarter of a century later, when Brooklyn Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley brought his team to town, it signaled a slow decline for the South-Central stadium. O’Malley swapped his old team, the Fort Worth Cats, to get Wrigley Field and the Los Angeles Angels. Then he traded Wrigley Field to the city for the property known as Chavez Ravine and a year later, in 1958, he moved the Angels to Spokane.

Three years later, the Angels were reincarnated as a major-league franchise, coming back to Los Angeles and eventually to their new home in Anaheim.

But Wrigley Field, site of 4,000 games, became obsolete. It hosted a few soccer matches before being ordered razed in 1966.

Sports are still played on its acreage at the city’s Gilbert Lindsay Community Center. And where fans once streamed to cheer baseball, people now seek help for their problems at the Central City Community Mental Health Center.