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!
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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.