Received an email today from an old friend.

The L.A. Dodger-themed photo exhibit he has curated opens July 12 at the Los Angeles Public Library (aka the Central Library). The email reads, in part:

“Play Ball! Images of Dodger
Blue, 1958-1988” opens on July 12th and runs through
November 9th in the Central Library’s first floor
galleries. (No opening reception is scheduled.)

Like the previous exhibit that I curated (“Play By
Play: A Century of L.A. Sports Photography,
1889-1989“), the Dodgers exhibit draws exclusively
from the LAPL’s historic photo collection. Most of
these photos are from the archives of the now-defunct
Los Angeles Herald Examiner newspaper (which shuttered
in 1989); many of these images haven’t been seen since
their original publication in the newspaper.

“Play Ball!” traces significant Dodgers stories,
including the team’s arrival in 1957, Wally Moon and
baseball at the L.A. Coliseum, Sandy Koufax, Don
Drysdale, Walter O’Malley and the battle over Chavez
Ravine, Roy Campanella, Vin Scully, Jaime Jarrin,
Maury Wills, James Roark’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated
photograph of Rick Monday’s rescue of the American
Flag, Tommy John surgery, Andy Messersmith and the
advent of free agency, Garvey-Lopes-Russell-Cey, Dusty
Baker and the first “high five,” Fernando Mania, Al
Campanis, Orel Hershiser, Kirk Gibson, and more.

If this exhibition is anything like “Play-by-Play” it should prove fascinating. The Herald’s old photographs have mostly been in storage since the paper shut down the presses, getting a chance to see them — and to see them used to articulate the history of the Dodgers, a history inexorably linked to the recent history of Los Angeles — is a rare treat.