by Paul R. Spitzzeri
The dawn of 1876 was amid an increasingly troubled financial period for Los Angeles as a late August 1875 panic emanating from the collapse of the Bank of California in San Francisco followed telegraph wires south and precipitated a run on the Angel City’s two commercial banks, Farmers’ and Merchants’ and Temple and Workman. The former, operated conservatively and soundly, weathered the subsequent storm, but the latter, which was more speculative as well as poorly managed, did not. A loan from “Lucky” Baldwin failed to fend off the inevitable and, on 13 January 1876, it failed.
Despite the dour economic days, baseball seemed to grow in popularity in town as there were a few clubs in town by the end of that first month, including the Active, Confidence (which mirrored the second volunteer fire company in the city) and Silver Star squads. On New Year’s Day, the latter squared off against a picked nine team for a contest “on the hill near the cemetery,” this being the City, or Protestant, burying ground on Fort Moore Hill and the picked nine group eked out a 24-22 win. On the 16th, the Silver Stars dominated the Confidence team, 32-11, in a game at the same location.
Ten days after the Active club was formed, it played a practice game against the Confidence team at a spot on Pearl Street, now Figueroa, south of 8th Street. In early February, the two squared off in an official contest, with the latter prevailing 18-9. Meanwhile, the hill location was so consistently utilized that the Los Angeles Express of 21 February informed its readers that,
Fort Hill, on Sunday, is surrendered to the boys and base-ball. The numerous ladies and gentlemen who throng there for the view which is obtained from that commanding height are merely there on sufferance.
A couple of days later, the first found reference to the sport being played in the San Gabriel Valley concerned the picnic thrown by the San Gabriel Orange Grove Association, formed in November 1873 for the purpose of establishing a colony of Indiana residents on the Rancho San Pasqual, though the community soon was called Pasadena. Following a parade from the schoolhouse to a park studded with live oak trees, speeches extolled the fact that there were 40 families in the nascent town, along with more than 20,000 trees planted (and 3 million in nursing stages) as well as 150,000 grapevines, and, after lunch, “a base ball club, organized by Fred Gillman, was a prominent feature of the rest of the festivities.”
Another Valley community that embraced the sport during this period was El Monte, with a team formed by April and a grand ball offered at Thompson’s Hall under its auspices on the 1st of May. Late that month, reported the Express, efforts were undertaken, as part of planning for the nation’s centennial, “to have a picnic in which Azusa, Duarte and the neighborhood will join, and at which we can have some speaking, a match game of base-ball between the El Monte and Azusa boys, music, dancing, and a good time generally.”
Just prior to that announcement, the Star of 23 May, commented on the fact that a pair of Concord stagecoaches headed out to the Arroyo Seco, likely at Sycamore Grove, now a City of Los Angeles park, where “a fair bevy of picnickers and their friends,” with most of the listed participants being members of the Angel City’s Jewish community, participated in a variety of activities, including “croquet, swinging, base-ball, dancing, promenading, target-shooting and gymnastics” after which was a lunch.
The last several months of the year included the report of a new club in the Vernon district, southeast of Los Angeles, the Young Oaks, challenging the Confidence squad (which earlier was said to be in training for a possible game at Philadelphia during the Centennial, though that plan fell through). A game was scheduled for mid-September, though nothing could be located as to whether it was played.
At the end of the month, squads from Orange and Riverside squared off at the latter town, where the visitors won and a local wrote the Anaheim Gazette to observe that there were only two ill persons in the community, both with “sprained fingers from playing base-ball,” presumably from that match—towards the conclusion of the year, the Express briefly noted that the night manager of the local branch of the Western Union Telegraph Company had a finger dislocated by a “hot” ball. Not quite two months later the Anaheim paper was cited by the Star for a report that the Orange club took on that of Azusa and prevailed.
With the onset of 1877 came word that a Los Angeles Gymnastic and Base Ball Club was formed and this sounds like it might have been a precursor of the Los Angeles Athletic Club that was established three years later and is still with us. The Express of 5 January reported that there were 25 charter members, following a meeting at the Havana Cigar Store (an apt location for such an organization, to be sure), and that “a game of base ball was played on the hill . . . between two impromptu nines, the score standing 47 to 7 runs.” While the paper concluded that “indications are that it will be a permanent organization,” nothing was found subsequently about it.
The 26 April issue of the Express cited the Gazette for a report that a club in Tustin demanded “the customary ball and bat presented by the losing club to the winners” after a scheduled game against “the Los Angeles club” was canceled, with the paper admonishing that “our boys will have to pay the forfeit, or else lose their standing as a club.” It also advised,
They should, hereafter, make some arrangement with the [Southern Pacific] railroad company for their transportation, or else refrain from challenging clubs located in places to which they cannot walk.
Speaking of organizations in good standing, the Express of 11 October briefly informed readers that “a number of good base ball players of the city have associated themselves together to form a first-class nine, and they expect to derive much amusement from the National game.” Applications were open for a few more members and it may be that it was one of the teams, wither the Olympias or the Oak Leaf, contending on the penultimate day of the year in a match game. The same day’s Star, however, merely remarked “we understand that we are soon to be afflicted with another base ball club,” suggesting that the sport was growing in interest and popularity.
The year 1878 opened with a report in two January issues of the Express of new baseball teams, including the Amateur and the Dauntless organizations—the first of these established its grounds in the recently established neighborhood of Boyle Heights, with William H. Workman, nephew of Homestead founders William Workman and Nicolasa Urioste, in partnership with John Lazzarovich and Isaias W. Hellman in the subdivision. Moreover, the number of 28 January included news that a contest between the second nine of Los Angeles High School and the Mutual Club ended with the teens prevailing 34-13.
The Herald of the 24th reported on “a remarkably even and hotly contested game, and some fine playing” between the host Orange team and the Dauntless quad, with the contest ending in a tie at 11. Apparently, any thought of extra innings was preempted by “the premonitory screeching of the locomotive” which “warned all that the hour for returning had arrived,” so the players headed for the station and the two-hour ride back to the Angel City, during which “no accident or untoward incident having occurred to mar the pleasure of the occasion.”
The Valentine’s Day issue of the Express quoted from the Santa Monica Outlook, which took a challenge from the Los Angeles Base Ball Club “to any similar organization in the City by the Sea” with a certain amount of equanimity in asserting “it appears that we are wholly deficient in the cultivation of this ‘manly art'” and concluded, “surely we are ‘undone.'”
In its 25 February number, the Express discussed the second of a three-game series for the local championship, fought by the Young Oaks of Vernon and the Academy squad of the Angel City, with the game played “near the corner of Tenth and Pearl streets,” this being today’s Olympic Boulevard and Figueroa Street. The latter organization which fell behind 10-4 after five innings, scored six times in the top of the ninth to eke out a 15-12 victory.
A prior post here on early Boyle Heights baseball discussed the creation of a prize created by Fred Linde, an employee of jeweler Lorenzo W. Thatcher, this being a silver imitation of a regulation-size baseball and to be bestowed on the champion Southern California team, of which ten such organizations attended a conference concerning the tournament for the regional championship. That post stated that the location of the Boyle Heights grounds was likely situated somewhere near Brooklyn Avenue, now César A. Chávez Avenue, about where Interstates 5 and 10 pass through the neighborhood today. A late 1889 reference mentioned the existing baseball field in the same general area, so looks to be corroborative.
The post also included a March reference stating that “Boyle Heights are [sic] to be known hereafter as the regular base ball grounds of Los Angeles,” and, while it is true that subsequent references to games frequently mentioned that location, there were soon other sites, including at Agricultural (now Exposition) Park, just outside the southern city limits and where proprietor H.J. Wood, among other recent improvements cited in a 26 April article in the Herald, oversaw “the preparation of a base ball field according to the rules laid down by the authorities on that subject.”
Moreover, the post shared some box scores for games played during 1878 that included several Spanish-language surnames, including Aguirre, Bernal, Bilderrain, Botello, Machado and Moreno. A July contest involving yet another local club, cheekily called Nameless, and a squad from Bakersfield involved an admission fee of 25 cents, the first time this was found. That Los Angeles team ended up playing the Academy club for the Linde Prize in a mid-August contest with the latter taking home the silver ball.
Local poet Albert F. Kercheval made an allusion to the growing sport in a typically idiosyncratic poem, simply titled “Man,” in which he remarked that,
Man is just the queerest [strangest] cuss
Always spoiling for a muss,
Looking out for something, this:
Struts about and wants to fight;
Like a mushroom, springs at night;
As a mushroom, melts from sight.
Munching peanuts as a boy;
Tickled with a base-ball joy;
Pleased with every passing toy.
Swift released from childhood’s ban,
Learns to hold a lady’s fan;
Gets to be a nice young man . . .
Elsewhere, a more serious look at “Physical Culture” in the Herald of 23 August posited that “it is pleasant to know that in the United States, of late years [how many would be good to know!], much attention is given” to exercise, as it was added that many cities sported a gymnasium or a multiplicity of them, while
Out doors sports are becoming popularized. Cricket, base-ball, rowing, horseback riding and walking are universally resorted to by persons who before resigned themselves to the inertness born of sedentary pursuits. Even our girls are being put through regular courses of calisthenics at our leading schools and colleges. The result is apparent in more robust physiques.
There is certainly more early Los Angeles baseball history to explore, but we’ll save that for a later date. This includes even more growth in the sport as the “Long Depression” of the Seventies gave way to an improving financial situation in the Eighties, leading to the great boom that largely took place in 1887-1888 when William H. Workman was mayor of the Angel City and as the game markedly evolved.
A more professional type of play looks to have ensued, so that the wildly high scoring games of yore were replaced by more modest and modern scores, articles and box scores contained more description and information, and a Los Angeles Base Ball Park was established on Sixth Street between Olive Street and Grand Avenue and became the preferred venue for the Angel City’s contests.
So, we’ll look to return to this subject sometime in next year, perhaps around the time of the opening of the 2027 Major League season. As for this campaign, the Milwaukee Brewers romped to a 10-1 victory in Game 3 and look to be a cinch to clinch its first title in club history, while the Tampa Bay Devil Rays face a near-impossibility of a comeback that would be nothing short of the greatest miracle in MLB history.