The Arizona State League of 1929

The Arizona State League, a Class D minor league, was entering its second year when it expanded from four to six teams in the winter of 1929. The year before, promoters of baseball in Phoenix likened Opening Day of the Arizona State League to the chaos and excitement of warfare, ‘”War in China, Revolution in Nicaragua, bandits in Mexico. gang war in Chicago-mere firecrackers in the jaws of the mighty cannon that will sound throughout Arizona today.” Indeed, two new teams for the Arizona State League meant increased baseball competition. The addition of the Globe Bears and the Mesa Jewels to the existing teams of the Bisbee Bees, the Miami Miners, the Phoenix Senators, and the Tucson Cowboys, ensured that the league would have enough teams to crown both first- and second-half champions, and hold a post-season playoff.

An outgrowth of Arizona’s semi-pro and outlaw leagues of the late teens and early twenties, the Arizona State League had successfully met the requirements of the National Association of Baseball Leagues and had financially succeeded in 1928, where the 1915 Class D circuit, the Rio Grande Association, had failed. As a Class D league, it had the lowest classification in the National Association. Each club was required to post a $3,000 bond to assure players’ salaries, team debts, league dues. and obligations to the National Association. The teams had a salary cap of $2,500 (exclusive of the manager), and there was a limit of 14 players per team. To avoid late-season roster “stacking,” clubs were forbidden from adding any new players within 30 days of the end of the season without permission from the league president. Head umpires were paid $1O a game while the base umpires earned $7.50.

After the six Arizona State League teams posted their bonds and local organizers assured stockholders that teams would be organized, the clubs began to construct their squads. The Bisbee Bees retained manager Roy “Hardrock” Johnson, while the Miami Miners got a new manager in Drap Hayes. Phoenix picked up Ross Lyall to manage the Senators and Tucson’s manager became Tom Holley in 1929, when the Tucson club also changed their name to “Cowboys” from the “Waddies,” a less common nickname for cowpunchers. The new Globe club hired pitcher George “Mickey” Shader as a player-manager, while the Mesa Jewels hired Bill Whitaker.

The six ballparks in the Arizona State League had “grandstands made of wood, each with a capacity of a couple thousand fans, with box seats selling for fifty cents, general admission a quarter, and on Friday nights at the Phoenix Senators games, ladies were [admitted] free.” Tucson’s Randolph Park, now known as Hi Corbett Field, had the only grass field in the league. The other teams played on “scratch” diamonds of gravel and sand, which the players had to rake and groom themselves. At School Hill Park in Globe, the players were kept so busy at hauling rocks off the field, they sponsored a local day for fans to help out.

The story of the Globe Bears is particularly interesting. The team was named for an orphan bear cub someone gave to Manager Shader before the beginning of the season. But unofficially, the Bears called themselves the “League of Nations” because after Shader was hired, he began to assemble a team from the rich baseball fields of California.

The ethnicity of the players on this one team was expansive: Irish, Italian, French, German, Mexican, English, Hawaiian and Native American backgrounds were represented by players. The roster included left-handed pitcher Thornton Lee, a 22-year-old from Sonoma; Eulagio “Speed” Lugue, a White Sox prospect; Arthur Garibaldi from San Mateo’s club; Thomas Sullivan from Napa; and James McEacher, a Santa Cruz outfielder. Later, Shader signed future big leaguer Tony Freitas, PCL great Henry Oana, nicknamed “Prince” for his Hawaiian heritage, and others, including Angelo Grilli, Jack Costa, Bill Farrell, John Bordes, and Jimmy O’Connell. Most of these players were first-generation Americans.

Former Arizona Governor Rose Mofford, herself a native of Globe, believes that baseball played a strong role in bringing together these diverse ethnic populations. She has strong memories of “the games starting in time for shift changes at the mine, and the miners, still carrying their lunch buckets, coming straight from their shift to the game.” With their tickets to the game, those hard-working miners helped support the teams.

Despite the salary cap, the players themselves earned extra money. Recruited from the San Francisco Seals training camp in California by Globe manager Mickey Shader, the late Thornton Lee (in an interview conducted in the spring of 1989) related that his salary was augmented by the booming local mining company from $250 to $350, as copper mill owners were eager to pay extra for quality players.

Players also earned extra money for driving the team’s road car. The Globe team had a Cadillac, with the baseball gear strapped to the side and a canvas top that flapped in the wind. Traveling the graded, oiled highways of 1929 Arizona, Lee said, “you were really skipping the dew” when you hit 35 or 40 miles per hour. When the car would blow a tire or get stuck in the mud of an arroyo, the team members would pull out .22 rifles and pick a target in the desert to bet money on who could get closest to the center of the target. The winner got the jackpot. Home runs could also earn players some extra cash when they collected tips from the appreciative audience who had also been gambling amongst themselves.

The diversity of weather conditions often made Arizona State League games interesting. Night baseball was not possible until lights were installed in Phoenix in 1931. During twilight double-headers at Riverside Park, then located near the bottom of the Salt River in central Phoenix, pitchers changed their flannel jerseys every inning, hanging one to dry while wearing the other in stifling triple-digit heat. Once, when the temperature in Phoenix hit 118 degrees, Freitas and Lee pitched a double-header that went 13 innings. Sometimes it was not the heat that affected the game, but the desert wildlife. During one game in Tucson, outfielder Tony Borajo had to kill a rattlesnake in left field with a fungo bat.

The 1929 Arizona State League season began on April 11 and ended on September 8. The six-team circuit enjoyed a great deal of support around the state and competition was fierce for the first-half title. The split-season, a 1928 innovation, gave the teams the ability to play throughout the summer and to allow for “pennant races” to entice interest on the part of the fans.

In the first half, the Miami Miners took the flag and opened the door to a consequence-filled second half that left only five teams in the league. On the 24th of July, the Mesa Jewels, with a 20-38 record, reported to the league president that the club was insolvent and was unable to complete the season. The Jewels, who had been financially supported by the Junior Chamber of Commerce, had the most trouble raising the money for their initial bond. They were now failing at the box office. The town’s economy was agricultural, and in contrast to the mining towns, there was a lack of fan support. In addition, the summer heat caused a slump in ticket sales. With debts totaling close to $2,000 and assets of only $600, the league president accepted the return of the franchise charter.

This caused the remaining five teams to undergo a scheduling change-for the rest of the season, one team per week would remain idle. In addition, the five teams were awarded three victories and a single loss for each series the Jewels had scheduled.

In the last two weeks of the season, the Globe Bears lost the second half title to the Bisbee Bees. The Bees and the Miners then met in the first Arizona State League Championship, a series that would be both memorable and bizarre. The first six games were hard-fought battles, with each team winning three a piece, which set up a deciding game at Miami’s Association Park.

During the championship game, the score seesawed back and forth through eight innings, with Miami leading 13-6. As darkness fell, Bisbee brought the score to 13-12. Held scoreless in the bottom of the eighth, the umpires allowed the game to continue, even though it was too dark to play. The yelling from the stands had begun in the seventh inning—the miners of Miami began to call for an end on account of darkness. In the top of the ninth, when the Bees hit back-to-back home runs in the dark to take the lead, the miners sent seat cushions raining down on the field, inciting a riot.

Thus, the first championship game of the Arizona State League was never completed. Both teams claimed the crown, and appealed to league president Fred Joyce. Joyce ruled “no contest,” which on further review by the National Association, remained the final ruling.

Despite Globe’s third-place finish in 1929, four members of the club—Lee, Freitas, Garibaldi and Oana—went on to play in the big leagues. Thornton Lee had the best career of them all, pitching 16 years in the majors for the Cleveland Indians, Chicago White Sox and New York Giants.

But Lee never forgot his baseball roots in Globe. He married a local woman and lived in Phoenix during the off-season. His son Don starred as a pitcher at the University of Arizona and later went on to a major league career himself.

As we reflect on this long-forgotten team playing America’s game in the mining towns and desert cities of Arizona seventy years ago, the reality and primitive conditions are unimaginable for most of us. However, a look back provides us with a window into a time when the professional game was still played for pride and for community. Compared to today’s players’ salaries and modem ball parks, the Class D appears to be in the Dark Ages.

In reality, the squads of the Arizona State League paved the way for the professional game of baseball in Arizona and throughout the West. Old time players would hardly recognize today’s professional game, especially the modem stadiums like Bank One Ballpark, with its rock music, air conditioning, swimming pool, brewery, retractable roof. interactive game sites, video monitors, luxury suites, electronic scoreboards and grass field. A grass field, oh what the “League of Nations” team would have given for a grass field in School Hill Park in 1929.