D e s e r t E x p o s u r e April 2008

The Boys of Summers Past

Take me out to the ball game — in old Grant County, when baseball was "bone breaking" and sometimes featured disgraced "Black Sox."

By James Kelly

It's just spring, and the sights, sounds and smells of America's favorite pastime are fresh on the senses of Grant County residents, just as they have been for some 135 years. It's baseball season!

A Pinos Altos baseball team from the 1890s.
(Photo courtesy of Thomas Ryan)

The flash and dash of the players on the field and the runners rounding the bases have been brightening eyes and charging fans' emotions in America since 1846, when Alexander Joy Cartwright first fielded the New York Knickerbockers against the New York Baseball Club.

The fever first took hold of Grant County in the summer of 1873, when Silver City's "First Nine" took on the town's "Second Nine." The game continued to be played here from that time forward, at every level from Little League to the pros.

Sure, Grant County doesn't have a professional team today, so fans have to get their kicks cheering at community and school league games, or maybe by driving over to Arizona to catch a Cactus League game or a Diamondbacks series.

But this was not always the case. Southwestern New Mexico, along with the borderlands of northwest Texas and Eastern Arizona, has a rich baseball history, including brushes with some of the most famous and infamous characters to ever play the sport.

It all began when a certain Mr. Kidder, a surveyor from Santa Fe, came to Silver City to lay out the official boundaries for the town. Silver City Mining Life reported:

"Mr. Kidder brought with him from Santa Fe the necessary collaterals for this bone-breaking, joint dislocating sport, and on Thursday evening a goodly number of boys were out practicing. Only one of these was laid out for the evening, which argues well for the proficiency of all concerned."

The 1870s saw baseball contests springing up all over Grant County, and games between Silver City and neighboring Army posts and mining communities soon became regular events. The outcomes of many of these games often carried mutually agreed upon wagers, as gambling of all sorts was a commonplace condition of frontier life. Even many of the most isolated and dangerous military outposts got involved, with teams from Fort Cummings and Fort Huachuca playing Grant County teams.

A word must be said here about the rugged men who played the fledgling sport of baseball in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were hard men. They were miners and laborers. They were grizzled veterans of the Indian Wars. So, when phrases like "bone-breaking" and "joint dislocating" popped up in the media of the day, reporters were not exaggerating for effect.

In addition to providing men with a recreational way to ease the hardships of day-to-day life in territorial America, baseball also contributed a new dimension of community and a new opportunity for hospitality in the developing Southwest. When the team from Fort Bayard Troop H, 14th Cavalry came to play the home team at Silver City in 1892, picnics and parties, many involving area saloons, were organized and hosted by the home team.

Along with the expansion of the railroad in the Southwest came an opportunity for teams and their families and fans to travel greater distances for games, and tournaments involving a number of teams. Towns became less and less isolated, and even contests between Territorial American and Mexican teams developed.

Because baseball fields in the American Southwest were often rough patches of land, rather than dedicated sports parks, some of the better-attended games well into the 20th century were played south of the Mexican border. There, in more of a stadium environment, up to 10,000 spectators could watch the contests.

The youth of Silver City continued to embrace the new sport, and by the 1880s had taken to practicing in the streets, resulting in increased incidents of broken windows about town. By 1882, the Silver City baseball team could be seen sporting smart uniforms, with an "SC" logo on the bibs of their shirts, and jaunty bowler-style hats and bow ties. A new sense of community pride was developing.

It was at this point in the evolution of baseball in Grant County — and in the entire Southwest, for that matter — that some of the older professional baseball players from the big eastern teams made their first appearances in the region. Throughout the 1890s, experienced individual players began to play for a paycheck alongside local regulars. The term "semi-pro" found its way into the baseball lexicon of the Southwest.

One 1896 contest between Silver City and Deming prompted this report in the Southwest Sentinel:

"The boys are still sore over their defeat by a picked semi-professional nine in Deming last Tuesday. They say they were invited to play a strictly local nine but the fact developed soon after their arrival that six of the Deming players were non-residents and crack players. Of course our school boys stood no show against them. The score was 8 to 1 in favor of Deming."

Baseball in the Southwest had developed as a common ground where Anglo and Hispanic cultures could come together, but the start of the Spanish-American War in 1898 had a local impact on the game in Grant County. Most of the semi-pro players in the area had been drafted, and so the game now fell back to the locals.

In 1899 the locals had a chance to find out what they were really made of. A.G. Spalding, owner of the Chicago White Stockings (sometimes referred to as the "Nationals"), brought his big-league team to his recently refurbished Hudson (now Faywood) Hot Springs resort facility, formerly a stage stop between Deming and Silver City. It was spring training, and the team, including famous outfielder William Alexander Lang, enjoyed the new facility, apparently engaging in more leisurely pursuits than in baseball practice. Two practice games had been arranged between the White Stockings and a team of players from the Silver City, Central and Pinos Altos teams. Predictably, the locals were soundly defeated, but the Chicago players complimented the pick-up team for their efforts. One of the Chicago players also commented that the locals lacked team practice. The Silver City Enterprise responded that it was no wonder, since the team of locals had never played together in any game before meeting the White Stockings.

After the end of the Spanish-American War, in 1899, Fort Bayard was shut down as an Army base, and rededicated as a tuberculosis sanatorium for military patients, using the already established military hospital. This transformation had a curious effect on the Grant County baseball scene.

Before the change in Fort Bayard's mission, baseball teams were made up for the most part of soldiers serving their duty at the fort. After the changeover, some patients at the convalescent hospital also played on the team. In 1912, however, the Fort Bayard pitcher was felled by a hemorrhage during a game with Deming, and died. As a result, patients were forbidden from engaging in the sport, and four of the fort's best players were barred from further competition.

The early 20th century also saw the growth of the Santa Rita and Tyrone mines, as well as the establishment of the town of Hurley as the smelting center for copper ore. Rivalries soon developed between the new company towns, and baseball played an important role in the social life of the miners and their families.

Mine owners encouraged employees to take their aggressions out on the ball field. Owners welcomed this channel to let off steam, which employees might otherwise direct at protesting pay and/or working conditions at the mines.

Silver City was also undergoing a form of baseball renaissance. In 1912 the Silver City Baseball Association was formed, and organizers sold stock in the "league" for one dollar per share. This effort gave birth to the era of the Copper Leagues.

Adventures in Portly Sports

While Grant County baseball players in 19th century territorial New Mexico sported some of the finest manly physiques on the frontier, some denizens of the Southwest were not so "buff." The big men of Silver City established a league of their own in 1887, when some of the town's more corpulent residents got together with some of the more skeletal specimens and "Burlesque Baseball" was born.

Now this wasn't the kind of "burlesque" where dancers dressed in baseball uniforms doffed their duds to the beat of racy music. In 1887, "burlesque" meant any kind of novelty version of an established tradition. Burlesque Baseball was an immediate hit with Grant County fans.

This was well before the age of social delicacy and political correctness, so when the two teams got together, the names they chose minced few words. Their first contest was billed as "The Fat Fellows vs. The Slim Jims."

The Silver City Enterprise reported the burlesque games just as seriously as it did the traditional games of the period — well, almost as seriously:

"The citizens, thin and portly, who played a game of ball last Sunday had much sport. The thin fellows wore white suits. On the front of the shirt was a skull and cross bones, and on the back a porous plaster advertisement; each carried a dudish cane. The fat fellows' suits bore decorative beer mugs, and instead of canes base ball bats were carried."

Not only did the players wear whimsical costumes, but the whole spirit of the game was one of whimsy and good fun. A donated keg of beer was positioned at third base. Any player who was fortunate enough to reach the "keystone corner," as it was called, was rewarded with a mug of suds. A silver cup was donated for the winner of the game. The beer was kept in an ice wagon rigged up as an "ambulance," and was dispensed by a man dressed in the costume of a Dutch peasant, right down to the wooden shoes.

The umpire wore a big revolver. The Enterprise reported that his decisions were not disputed.

The thin men's strategy was to wear the fat men out, but even their best efforts weren't enough. The fat men won that first contest by a score of 20 to 6, thanks in part to the batting prowess of their 400-plus-pound catcher.

The Burlesque Baseball games continued to be among the most popular social events in the county for the next 10 years.

— James Kelly

These leagues were formed in much the fashion of today's leagues, with elected officials, mutually agreed-upon schedules composed of a specific number of games, exclusive player contracts, and umpires with absolute authority to discipline, fine and eject players for conduct on the field of play. The league's winning team was presented a commemorative pennant, which would fly over their grandstand all through the following season.

That first league was made up of teams from El Paso, Silver City, Hurley and Santa Rita. The Silver City and El Paso franchises soon ran into funding problems, but Hurley and Santa Rita were well financed by the mining companies. These two "company teams" were able to actually hire some of the more promising players of the day. Sometimes these players were former big leaguers and sometimes they were talent on the way up. Hurley and Santa Rita became the powerhouses of the league.

With the increased rivalry between the two mining company teams came the contest for the MacNeill Cup, a prize established by Chino Mines president Charles MacNeill. The two teams agreed that should one of the teams win this series cup three years in a row, they would get to keep it in perpetuity.

The first year, the Santa Rita team won. The second year, the Hurley team won. In years three, four and five the Santa Rita teams won, and the cup was theirs to keep.

The MacNeill Cup itself dropped out of sight for many years, until a former worker from the mines spotted it in an antique sale in Tucson, with a price tag of $10,000.

With America's entry into World War I, some Copper League players joined the service and others were drafted, once again depleting the ranks of available players.

The World War I era also saw one of the most infamous episodes in baseball history, the "Black Sox" scandal of 1919. Nine players of the Chicago White Sox had been accused of throwing the World Series, and though they were found not guilty at trial, baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis permanently banned them from professional baseball.

A number of the disgraced players subsequently found their way to the Copper League during the 1925-1927 seasons. "Shoeless Joe" Jackson, the most famous of the outlawed players, reportedly sought a place on the El Paso team, but because he was seeking the princely salary of $500 per month, no contract was ever signed.

While the era of the "outlaw players," as it has come to be known, raised the caliber of local baseball to new heights, it also prefaced an end to the competitive prospects of small-town teams. During the last half of the 1920s, teams from Fort Bayard, El Paso, Juarez, Mexico, Bisbee and Douglas, Ariz., and a Chino Mines combined team of players from both Santa Rita and Hurley formed the last of the Copper Leagues. The "outlaw players" moved from team to team.

While the Copper Leagues faded financially in the years that followed, it was still a genuine golden era for baseball in the Southwest.

After that historic period, baseball continued in Grant County on a smaller scale, with community teams once again taking the place of their historic predecessors.

Today, some of the sensory pangs of the old game have faded, as well. The crack of the bat has turned into more of a "bonk," with the advent of the aluminum bat. Uniforms have become less formal, with logo-bearing T-shirts and billed caps replacing bowlers and bow ties, and there's a lot less "bone-breaking" than there was in the 19th century.

Still, the game remains "The National Pastime," and much of what brought fans to the ballparks back then continues to delights crowds.

And let's not forget the father of the game (along with Abner Doubleday), Alexander Cartwright. It is perhaps even more fitting today, in an age of sports scandals and tarnished heroes, that his middle name "Joy" is still what the spirit of the sport of baseball brings to its many fans.

Special thanks to all the staff at the Silver City Museum, and to Museum Director Susan Berry in particular. Thanks also to Lynn Bevill for his excellent thesis on the "outlaw players" of the 1920s. And a very special thanks to the men of historic Grant County baseball, and to the reporters who followed the sport and left such a grand record for our enjoyment.

James Kelly is a retired journalist from California,
recently relocated to Silver City.