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| Pasadena Evening Post 3/9/22 |
It's not something that fans will likely ever see again, but up until the last couple of decades, exhibition games between major league and minor league teams were a yearly occurrence for many, many, years. Each spring, fans at ballparks across the country were treated to friendly (and sometimes not so friendly) matchups as their local teams, and the visiting pros, started getting back into shape for their respective upcoming seasons.
Being in the Coast League, the Portland Beavers saw plenty of action against pro teams over the years, with the Chicago Cubs being one of their most frequent opponents. As one who finds old accounts of these exhibitions to be endlessly fascinating, I thought it might be fun to take a look at a few from time to time.
In this first installment, we'll be covering the 1922 game between the Beavers and Cubs. Taking place on Friday, March the 10th, this would be both teams first game of spring training that year. The game took place at Paddock Field, which was located within the confines of Tournament Park in Pasadena, CA.
Paddock Field was the Beavers "home field" during spring training for many years. And though they were now coming over from their first year on Catalina Island (1922-42), the visiting Cubs were quite familiar with Tournament Park, as it had just been their home for the previous three years.
Game time was slated for 3pm (PST), and even though I can't find any mention of the exact temperature, it was said to be unseasonably cold that day, which resulted in a lot of empty seats. It started drizzling during the later innings, sending much of the already sparse crowd, home early. The few who did show up that day, and the even fewer who were able to stick it out for the full nine innings, were treated to, by all accounts, quite a game.
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| The Oregon Daily Journal 3/11/22 |
Additional notes:
- The Beavers would finish the season with a record of 87-112 in 1922, finishing 7th in the PCL.
- The Cubs finished 80-74 that year, good for 5th in the NL.
- Jim Thorpe had just recently signed with Portland, and was with the team in Pasadena, but for reasons unknown, did not suit up for this game.
- 1922 would be Jigger Statz' first full season in the bigs, and this was his first game as a Cub. Jigger was one of all-time great minor leaguers, and certainly one of the best to ever come out of the PCL.
- Of the pitchers used in this game for Portland, Harry Biemiller went 6-10 in his only season with the Beavers, Roy Crumpler went 13-17 in his only decision earning season with the team (he went decisionless in 1919), and Harvey Freeman, also in his only season with the team, accrued a record of 1-3 in relief work. For the Cubs, Percy Jones went 8-9 in 1922, and Tony Kaufmann wound up with a tally of 7-13 in relief.
I've compiled quite a few stats and clippings in the last couple of months from Portland's many exhibition games over the years, and am now thinking that I'm going to start covering one of those games each month on here. This, along with one player profile/biography, will probably be the extent of this blog's monthly content going forward.
Nice! I've really gotten into the semi-pros over the last year, and it's very interesting to see how they did in exhibition games against major and minor league teams. Some teams, like the 1919 Klein Chocolate team, were actually at around .500 for the year against major league teams.
ReplyDeleteI too have been reading a lot more stuff about semi-pro ball, with a healthy dose of amateur play mixed in too. I find it to be quite interesting as well. It's not always easy trying to find information on a lot of these old teams, but I guess that's part of the fun(?) of doing research. Klein Chocolate Team? That's a new one to me. I guess I've got some reading to do :)
DeleteGreat job digging up these articles and box scores. I wonder how Thorpe faired with the Beavers that season. I feel like back in the 80's, I'd see some MLB teams play minor league teams (or maybe they were collegiate teams) during Spring Training, but not 100% sure.
ReplyDeleteI've got a lot of great stuff on Jim Thorpe's short stay in Portland (and just afterwards), but just need to get my desired card of him to do the post. And I don't know exactly when they stopped, but I want to say that these exhibitions ended sometime in the mid 80's. That's just a guess though, as Google is proving to be most unhelpful in this matter.
DeleteI thought maybe actor Dick Sargent played minor league ball, but I guess this guy "Joe Sargent" was someone different.
ReplyDeleteI don't think most MLB teams took those exhibitions too seriously, but George Steinbrenner would get mad if the Yankees lost to a minor league team. (College teams, too, in the '70s and maybe '80s.)
I haven't checked, so maybe he did play some ball at some point.
DeleteI think you might be underestimating how competitive a lot of players were the earlier part of the century. Playing poorly against somebody who might be in a position to take your spot in the near future was not a thing to be taken lightly. And I don't have examples involving the Beavers, but there are stories of other exhibitions where tempers flared and things became a lot less friendly. Oh, I had never heard that about Steinbrenner before, but it doesn't surprise me in the least.
To be fair to you, it's not really something that's generally known... even to those from/living in Portland.
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