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July 24, 2010

HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: Fox hunting and horse racing may have preceded baseball as the first organized sports in pioneer Vigo County.

Mike McCormick Special to the Tribune-Star

TERRE HAUTE — Fox hunting and horse racing may have preceded baseball as the first organized sports in pioneer Vigo County.

But, even prior to the Civil War, the sport of “rounders,” a primitive form of baseball, was a common accompaniment to barn-raisings.

The first organized baseball team in Terre Haute about which much is known was the Prairie City Baseball Club, founded June 1, 1867 by auctioneer Ed Marvin.

Prairie City played most of its games in the commons adjoining the campus of St. Agnes Hall, which was encompassed by College Ave., Farrington St., Fourth St. and Sixth St. The campus was created in 1858 for the Terre Haute Female College by the Reverend John Covert.

St. Agnes Hall — a young women’s finishing school — closed after the 1866-67 academic year. The buildings and grounds were maintained until they were acquired by Herman Hulman in 1883 to establish St. Anthony’s Hospital. The Mohawks and the Sphinks, baseball clubs composed mostly of college-age players, used the commons, too.

The Prairie City Baseball Club grew. Some of its members left to form similar clubs. The Terre Haute Resolutes played games in a field near the Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis Railroad roundhouse on N. Ninth St. between Locust St. and Fourth Ave.

The Phoenix Baseball Club secured grounds near Ohio St., east of 13th St. By 1870, the Vigos, The Independents, Eurekas, Crescents, Sycamores and the Rough and Readys were playing weekly games against other area teams.

The competitive environment brought early renown as an amateur baseball hotbed to the Wabash Valley.

That heritage persists. Indiana State and Rose-Hulman consistently produce entertaining and well-coached teams. Youth baseball at all levels from age 8 to the American Legion is highly competitive. Terre Haute’s Babe Ruth League team won the world title in 1955. State and regional crowns are not uncommon.

The Terre Haute Rex and the Prospect League have added a new dimension to the scene this summer.

The current exhibit at the Vigo County Historical Society Museum, “Batter Up,” celebrates the area’s 140-year old summer ritual, covering the amateur, semi-pro and proessional levels.

The semipro Terre Haute Browns played several major league teams in exhibition games in 1877. That summer the Browns, one of the first local teams to distribute a fraction of the gate proceeds to the players, defeated the Cincinnati Red Stockings of the National League, 5-4.

Six years later, at least nine area teams were using paid players. The northside Terre Haute Awkwards imported talent and built the city’s first enclosed baseball amphitheater on Wabash Ave. between 17th and 19th streets. On June 22, the Awkwards beat the St. Louis team of the American Association, then a major league, 3-2.

On June 30, 1883, the Awkwards merged with the southside Terre Haute Blues. The consolidated unit was known as “The Terre Hautes.” The team included future major leaguers Al Buckenberger, Charles Krehmeyer, Billy Nelson, Albert “Cod” Myers and James “Deacon” McGuire. A resident of Albion, Mich., McGuire played 26 years in the major leagues before his final retirement in 1912.

In 1884, Terre Haute was invited to join the 12-team Northwestern League, arguably a predecessor of the modern American League. It included teams in Minneapolis, St. Paul, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Peoria and Fort Wayne.

Edward Ellis, owner of Wabash Woolen Mills. and the ultimate local baseball pioneer, was the first president of the Terre Haute Baseball Association. Buckenberger, who later managed several major league teams, was the first field manager.

A recitation of Terre Haute’s first season in organized professional baseball was published in four installments in this space last summer. With exceptions due to war or depression, the city was a part of organized pro baseball from 1884 to 1956.

An enterprising newspaper reporter referred to the team as the “Hottentots” and the name stuck, joining a number of other unusual pioneer baseball nicknames like the Evansville River Rats, Springfield Foot Trackers, Lincoln Treeplanters, Canton Chinamen, Wheeling Stogies and the Des Moines Undertakers

Between 1888 and 1900, Terre Haute fielded teams in nine different pro leagues: Central Interstate, Illinois-Indiana, Western Interstate, Northwestern (again), Illinois-Iowa, Indiana State, Indiana-Illinois and the Central.

Before the turn of the century, Asa “Ace” Stewart joined Billy Nelson and Cod Myers as another Terre Haute athlete who made it to the major leagues. Among the early players who wore a Terre Haute uniform were John “Bud” Fowler, the first black to play white organized professional baseball, and Moses Fleetwood Walker, the first African-American to play major league baseball (preceding Jackie Robinson by 63 years).

In 1895, jeweler Henry F. Schmidt, perhaps Terre Haute’s first “Mr. Baseball,” built Sportsman Park on the south side of Wabash at 27th Street. It soon was renamed “Athletic Park..” Hall of Famer Cy Young of the Cleveland Spiders pitched against Terre Haute in the first exhibition game played in the new facility.

The National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues was formed in 1901. Michael H. Sexton, first president of the Indiana, Illinois and Iowa League, was one of the seven founders. Terre Haute was invited to join the Class B league and won the inaugural crown largely because of a pitcher named Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown.

On Oct. 21, 1908, Brown and the world champion Chicago Cubs beat the American League champion Detroit Tigers at Athletic Park in an unprecedented post-World Series exhibition game, 7-1, before a large crowd.

Baseball commissioner Kenesaw M. Landis dedicated 16,000-seat Memorial Stadium on May 4, 1925.

Nearly 300 future major league players wore a Terre Haute uniform over the years and thousands more played for opposing teams. Nearly every year, at least one major league team came to the city for an exhibition game. Terre Haute hosted major league spring training camps in 1944 and 1945.

Between 1903 and 1917, Terre Haute played in the Class A Central League. After World War I, Terre Haute rejoined the Three-I League and won titles in 1922, 1924, 1928, 1932, 1950, 1951 and 1953. The team folded July 3, 1956.

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