USC football coach Clay Helton threw the ceremonial first pitch before Wednesday evening’s Los Angeles Dodgers-Colorado Rockies at Dodger Stadium on USC Night.
USC’s ties to the Dodgers include 13 alumni who have played for the team, beginning with Fay Thomas, who pitched in seven games in 1932 when the team was located in Brooklyn.
Other Trojans to have played for the Dodgers include Ron Fairly, a first baseman on the Dodgers 1959, 1963 and 1965 World Series championship teams; Rod Dedeaux, who played two games for the Dodgers in 1935 and coached USC from 1942-86, guiding the Trojans to a record 11 NCAA championships; and outfielder Stu Pederson, who played five games for the Dodgers in 1985 and is the father of current Dodger outfielder Joc Pederson.
USC annually played an exhibition game against the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium from the mid-1960s to the early 1990s. Players from the Dodgers 40- player major league roster were barred from the game in the early 1980s by a rule of the Major League Baseball Players Association, the union representing the players.
The game ended when the NCAA adopted a rule declaring that games against major league teams would count against the number of games the team could play, a Dodger official said.
