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    Sacramento Baseball
    Sacramento Baseball
    Sacramento Baseball
    Ebook189 pages55 minutes

    Sacramento Baseball

    By William D. McPoil

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    About this ebook

    Sacramento has enjoyed baseball since the Gold Rush. As early as 1869, the first professional baseball team in America, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, came to Sacramento and played against a locally organized team. A few years later, the Sacramento team joined the California League to compete against those from San Francisco and Oakland, becoming a charter member of the newly formed Pacific Coast League in 1903. All the while, children and adults alike were picking up the sport in the many parks, sandlots, and schoolyards throughout the city. In the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, amateur and sponsored teams competed against each other for trophies and bragging rights. Then, in the 1950s, Little League, Babe Ruth League, and American Legion Baseball flourished.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateFeb 27, 2017
    ISBN9781439659564
    Sacramento Baseball
    Author

    William D. McPoil

    William D. McPoil is a lifelong resident of Sacramento. He graduated from McClatchy High School and holds a master of arts in history from CSU Sacramento. After retiring from the Sacramento Police Department, he worked as a labor negotiator and taught US history at the Sacramento campuses of Golden Gate University and Chapman University College.

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      Book preview

      Sacramento Baseball - William D. McPoil

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      INTRODUCTION

      Although organized and recreational baseball had been played in the Sacramento area since the Gold Rush, according to Sacramento baseball historian Alan O’Connor, the Sacramento Daily Union published the first written record of professional baseball in the capitol city in 1859. Ten years later, in September 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first recognized professional baseball team in America, came to Northern California and played against the Pacifics, a local team in San Francisco, and then went to Sacramento, where a team was organized to play against them. Although the game was enjoyed by the crowd that turned out, the local squad lost by a score of 50-6.

      A decade after that, in 1879, the California League was established. It is recognized as the first professional league in the state. It was comprised of teams from San Francisco and Oakland— Oakland Pioneers, San Francisco Athletics, San Francisco Californias, and the San Francisco Mutuals. Seven years later, in 1886, the league was expanded. With that expansion, the league now included the Oakland Greenhood and Morans, the San Francisco Haverlys, the San Francisco Pioneers, the San Francisco Star, and the Sacramento Altas. The Altas played at Agricultural Park in downtown Sacramento and later at Snowflake Park, still in the downtown grid but a few blocks south and east.

      In 1890, the Altas were renamed the Senators as a reference to their location in the state’s capital. They competed for a couple of years, but unfortunately for baseball fans, Sacramento did not field a team in the middle of the decade. However, in 1898, a local brewery, Ruhstaller Brewery, sponsored a new team, naming it after their best-selling lager, Gilt Edge, and bringing organized baseball back to town. The Gilt Edge posted impressive numbers in their first three years, winning league championships in 1898, 1899, and 1900. In 1901, the team was again renamed the Senators and finished third in a four-team league.

      A new league, the Pacific Coast League, was formed in 1903, becoming the West Coast’s answer to major league baseball’s two eight-team leagues in the East. The league was formed as an independent league, and the Sacramento Senators was one of the six founding members that represented cities from Los Angeles to Seattle. As if the name change was not confusing enough, in 1906 and 1907, the team’s name became the Sacramento Cordovas, having been named for Cordova wine produced by the California winery. The name changed back to the Senators in 1908, and that team became the 1909 Pacific Coast League Senators and stayed that way until 1936.

      In 1936, the team was purchased by the St. Louis Cardinals. Branch Rickey, the Cardinals’ business manager, expanded player development and pioneered the minor league farm system we recognize today as affiliates of major league clubs. Since Solons had been used casually by sports writers since before World War I, the name was changed officially with the purchase by the Cardinals, and the Sacramento Solons name stayed with the team until they left in 1960 and again for the brief period in the 1970s when they returned.

      Organized fun is a term I chose for any baseball where the competitors are not being paid. That said, they were and continue to be competitive. Whether it was teams sponsored by businesses, hardball leagues, softball leagues, high schools and colleges, or Little League, competitive amateur baseball has been part of Sacramento baseball for more than a century. In the early decades of the 20th century, businesses sponsored teams to help advertise their wares, and in 1925, American Legion Baseball was organized for boys between 13 and 19. After World War II, boys between the ages of 9 and 13 were organized into Little League teams and competed for the right to advance as far as the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, which was won by a Sacramento team in 1969. High school teams have played against other high schools for decades, several of which are noted in the following pages.

      Prior to World War II, Japanese Nisei teams organized and traveled throughout California, competing against each other and local community teams. When Executive Order 9066 was signed by Pres. Franklin D. Roosevelt following the declaration of war on Japan, Japanese American citizens from the Sacramento area were moved to assembly centers and then to internment camps. Internment did not stop them from playing baseball; the teams continued to compete with teams from other camps. Even though the camps were fenced with barbed wire and under guard by the US Army, in most cases the fields and fans’ viewing areas were built outside the compound. When the teams traveled, they traveled in small guarded groups to other camps to compete, and competition was fierce.

      Buffalo Park was built at the corner of Riverside Boulevard and Broadway in 1910 for the Senators—later renamed the Solons—and remained there until 1960. When the Solons left Sacramento and became the Hawaiian Islanders, Edmonds Field was demolished, and a Gemco department store was built on the site. Sacramento’s baseball fans believed baseball was gone forever; with the Giants now 90 miles away in San Francisco and games being broadcast on television, the prospect of a team drawing enough attendance to be profitable seemed remote. However, in 1974, the Eugene (Oregon) Emeralds moved to Sacramento and became the Solons, but the team and Sacramento professional baseball was short-lived. Without a proper ballpark, the Solons played at Hughes Stadium, the football and track and field

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