When the All-Star Game is played at Dodger Stadium for the first time in 42 years Tuesday night, critics of Los Angeles’ baseball culture will again be proven to have it backward.

It’s not that L.A. routinely shows up late for baseball, it’s that baseball routinely shows up late for L.A.

The National and American leagues took a half-century to discover Southern California in the 1950s and ’60s, and even after the Dodgers and Angels arrived, it took a while for the rest of the country to see Greater L.A.’s potential as a “baseball town.”

The seventh-place Dodgers averaged nearly 24,000 fans per game at the Coliseum in their L.A. debut season of 1958, the second-highest attendance in the sport behind the pennant-winning Milwaukee Braves, but New York Daily News baseball writer Dick Young wasn’t impressed.

“There was no television (of home games). It was a brand-new thing,” wrote Young, a Baseball Hall of Fame reporter and the personification of New York’s brash arrogance. “And it will never be that new or that exciting again – not even when the Dodgers come up with a winner, which doesn’t figure to be too soon.”

The very next year, the Dodgers won the World Series and led the big leagues at the turnstiles by a wide margin, both to become regular occurrences in the decade – and decades – ahead.

In Riverside, an adolescent baseball player was smitten by the Dodgers, by their 1960s heavy hitter Tommy Davis, and by Vin Scully’s play-by-play.

“I remember my mom was trying to get me some culture, and she made me go to see the opera or something like that,” said Dusty Baker, now 73, describing how he hid a transistor radio in his pants pocket, running an earpiece up through his shirt on the side away from his mother.

“I was listening to the Dodgers game,” Baker remembered before he managed the Houston Astros against the Angels on Wednesday. “I smiled and let out a cheer. So she figured I really liked (the opera), so she made me go the next week too.”

Baker went on to be an All-Star outfielder for the Dodgers and manage five teams, wearing Davis’ jersey number 12.

One measure of Greater L.A.’s success as a baseball town is seen on the field. Their combined seven World Series championships since 1958 place the Los Angeles Dodgers (six) and Los Angeles Angels (one) behind New York’s 11 (Yankees nine, Mets two) but well ahead of Chicago’s two (White Sox one, Cubs one) among two-team markets.

Another is seen in the stands. Dodger Stadium’s 45,000-plus crowd average in the last eight non-pandemic seasons is perennially at or near the lead in Major League Baseball. The Dodgers and Angels combine to outdraw the other two-team cities, the Dodgers first in the National League and the Angels second in the American League in attendance in 2022.

Another is the impact of this multicultural community on baseball, the Dodgers the team of Sandy Koufax, Fernando Valenzuela and Hideo Nomo, the Angels providing the stage for current sensation Shohei Ohtani.

But the region’s baseball culture is built from the ground up, thanks to practically year-round sunshine and an abundant pool of young talent that produces a self-perpetuating cycle of players and coaches.

Taylor Ward, the Angels’ right fielder, remembered the summers during the three years he played at Shadow Hills High School in Indio.

“Usually, summers, you’re just driving into L.A. somewhere to get reps in because it’s so hot (in Indio),” Ward said. “We went to Whittier a few times. Any junior college, pretty much. We were constantly going up the 91. Every weekend we’d be somewhere new.

“It always seems like the coaches around here just want you to get better. So they’d open the field for you, they’d do whatever you needed, whatever the team needs, because they care so much. That’s just how they’re built. They want you to succeed. They want you to get your work in.

“I think that’s really cool around here.”

Mark Gubicza, the two-time All-Star pitcher for the Kansas City Royals and color analyst for Angels games on Bally Sports West, coached at Chaminade High in West Hills from 2004 to 2019. It was different than when he was growing up in Philadelphia.

“I compared it to my experience as a high school baseball player in Philly, where you played baseball three months a year, and the first month and a half you’re wearing a jacket under your jersey,” Gubicza said.

Chaminade faced competition in the Mission League (including Harvard-Westlake, Notre Dame and Loyola) and the annual Anaheim Lions Tournament (including Gerrit Cole and Orange Lutheran) that Gubicza described as “a small step below minor-league baseball.”

Early in his first year as head coach, Gubicza saw a Chaminade player throw out a baserunner at home plate from the right field warning track, and was shocked to hear the player had been on the junior varsity team as a junior the season before.

“He’s going to be my starting pitcher,” Gubicza said.

The player whose arm strength Gubicza had recognized was Dan Runzler, who indeed started on the mound for Chaminade on opening day, and went on to UC Riverside and five major-league seasons, pitching for the San Francisco Giants’ 2010 and 2012 World Series winners.

“His dad and Dan call me all the time and thank me for that,” Gubicza said. “There’s nothing to thank me for – I just saw what you had, saw he was a tough kid from Simi Valley. He had cleats, and he had holes through his toes like I did.

“I said, ‘Hey, I don’t know if I’m allowed to do this, but here’s a pair of (my) shoes that I might just leave somewhere around so you can grab ’em.’”

The story of Phil Nevin, the Angels’ interim manager, epitomizes the opportunities that L.A.-area baseball provides.

Two years after Nevin’s 12-year major-league career ended in 2006, the Fullerton native got a call from Alan Mintz, owner and GM of the Orange County Flyers of the Independent Golden League, asking if he wanted to manage the team.

“I politely declined,” Nevin said. “Independent ball?”

But the next day, Nevin was playing golf with Tim Wallach, the former major-league player who had coached for the Dodgers and managed in the minors. Wallach encouraged him to take a flyer on the Flyers. That one season launched Nevin’s coaching and managing career.

“Two, three days into what was (the Flyers’) spring training, it was like, ‘Wow, this felt right,’” Nevin said.

People who view L.A.-area baseball from a distance don’t think about cleats with holes in them and independent league grit.

They might think of celebrities who show up for Dodgers playoff games, and fans who show up late and leave early. There’s a lot to do and see in the L.A. area. It’s the only metropolitan area that has won championships in all six major professional sports leagues: MLB (Dodgers), NFL (Rams), NHL (Kings), NBA (Lakers), WNBA (Sparks) and MLS (Galaxy) – all since 2014.

By the time the Dodgers arrived in 1958 and the Angels were founded in 1961, L.A. had won an NFL championship with the 1951 Rams and had storied Pacific Coast League franchises in the Hollywood Stars and Los Angeles Angels.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who grew up in San Diego and played for UCLA and five major-league teams including the Dodgers, said there’s “just a different vibe” to baseball in L.A.

“I think there’s a good mix of, obviously, great (baseball) talent, but also you get other industry talent, celebrities that come to the ballpark. So I think that’s unique,” Roberts said. “It’s not as … I don’t want to (sound) negative … sometimes in the East, it gets to be a little vicious and very cynical.

“I think here on the West Coast it’s a little bit more lax. But make no mistake, guys compete just as hard.”

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On the day in April 1958 when the Dodgers played their first home game in L.A., players rode in a morning parade along Broadway to welcome their arrival from Brooklyn. Carl Furillo and Pee Wee Reese rode in one car. In the New York Daily News, Dick Young would chide fans’ unfamiliarity with the players.

“One fan, reading the names on the side, shouted, ‘Hi Carl.’ ‘I’m Pee Wee,’ said Reese tolerantly,” Young wrote.

At the All-Star Game at Dodger Stadium on Tuesday, Los Angeles will have no trouble recognizing the players.

And the players will have no doubt they’re in one of the greatest baseball towns.