The California League In Professional Baseball

The Class A California League is in its 55th season, but professional baseball in California and on the Pacific Coast dates to 1878 when the Pacific League was organized in San Francisco. The first California League made its debut a year later; its 1880 constitution and by-laws refer to the league as “The California Base Ball League of Professional Ball Players.”

Both the California and Pacific Leagues comprised four clubs playing weekends only in the city of San Francisco. The Pacific League folded in July.

The first in a long line of California League players to graduate to the majors were Jerry Denny and “Grasshopper Jim” Whitney. Whitney, who pitched the Knickerbocker team to the championship, had a 23-6 record with a 1.49 ERA. Denny, with the runner-up Athletic club, hit only .209, but that was fifth-best in the league. Whitney won 31 games for Boston in 1881 and pitched the club to the National League pennant in 1883 with a 38-22 record. He pitched in the majors for 10 years, dying of consumption in 1891 at age 33.

Denny moved up to Providence in 1881 and played in the National League for 13 years. He is considered the best-fielding third baseman of his time and still holds the major league record for most chances per game among players with 1,000 or more games at that position. In 1884, he hit the first World Series home run.

The California League remained a four-team, San Francisco, weekends-only organization until 1886. That season, teams from Sacramento and Oakland replaced two of the San Francisco clubs, but the schedule remained at 30-35 games. In 1887 the schedule was 46 games and the following year it increased to seven games. In 1888 Stockton replaced Sacramento. Stockton, reputedly the site of the famous “Casey at the Bat” game, won the pennant. Among the Stockton star players was catcher George Stallings who, 26 years later, managed the “Miracle Braves” to the 1914 World Series championship.

Perhaps the most important figure in the California League in the 1880s was Walter Wallace, manager of Haverly’s Theater in San Francisco. He entered the Haverlys into the league in 1883 and they won the pennant the next four seasons. (Wallace’s daughter, Edna, later married DeWolf Hopper, whose dramatic recitation made “Casey at the Bat” famous.)

During the late 1880s baseball flourished in the area and crowds of 15,000-20,000 on a Sunday were common. In 1889, the Haverlys, now owned by Henry Harris, bought the Pioneers, thus forming the first “San Francisco” team. Sacramento replaced the Pioneers and the schedule increased to 94 games. In 1890, the same four teams—San Francisco, Sacramento, Stockton and Oakland—played a 139-game schedule, the longest in professional baseball up to that time.

In 1891 the schedule increased again, to 147 games. San Jose won the pennant behind the amazing pitching of George Harper and Nick Lookabaugh, who together pitched every inning of the 147 games! Harper had a record of 47-32, pitching 79 complete games, 704.l innings. Lookabaugh was 43-25, pitching 577 innings. George Stallings was their catcher.

After the season, San Jose challenged Portland, Pacific Northwest League winners, to a best-of-19 series for the championship of the Pacific Coast. It began on Thanksgiving Day and ended in a dispute on January 10, 1892. With the series tied at nine wins apiece, the score of the final game was tied 3-3 in the eighth. With San Jose runners on second and third, the Portland manager protested a decision at second. While Portland argued, the runner on third stole home and was called safe. The Portland manager took his team off the field, the umpires forfeited the game, and San Jose was the Pacific Coast champion.

The 1891 season also saw what may have been baseball’s first woman owner. In the latter stages of the season, Mrs. Laura Vice furnished the funds to keep the financially distressed Sacramento club afloat and eventually took over the franchise. In 1892 the California League expanded the schedule once more, this time to 177 games and, for the first time, went beyond Northern California, with Los Angeles replacing Sacramento. The greatest distance in the league had been the 110 miles between San Jose and Sacramento. Now it was 400 miles to Los Angeles, a city that was growing rapidly, but still had one-sixth the population of San Francisco and only a few more people than Oakland.

Attendance declined and Los Angeles owner G.A. Vanderbeek persuaded the other owners to split the schedule. San Jose won the first half by one percentage point over Los Angeles, .576 to .575. Los Angeles won the second half by three games over Oakland as San Jose slumped to last place. Los Angeles won the postseason playoff, five games to two with one tie, but a dispute over the playoff caused the league directors to declare the two teams co-champions.

Harper and Lookabaugh continued their remarkable feats of endurance, although they didn’t pitch every game. Harper, 37-38, pitched “only” 697 innings. Lookabaugh set professional baseball records which, it is safe to say, will never be matched. He pitched 803 innings in 91 games with 90 starts, 89 complete games and 88 decisions (45-43).

San Jose owner Mike Finn had lost money in 1892 and moved his team to Stockton for the 1893 season, the only change in the league’s makeup. However, things did not go well for the league from the outset. The entire country was in the grip of a depression and attendance kept falling. Oakland was in deep financial trouble with the players complaining they were not being paid, and the club was sold on Mav 19. Finn was having personnel problems in Stockton and he sold the team to John Moore on May 27. John J. Mone, the San Francisco attorney who had been president of the league since 1882, was fired by the directors on June 5, with only San Francisco’s Henry Harris supporting him.

San Francisco businessman Bob Weiland replaced Mone. Once again the league voted to split the season, at least in part to help Stockton which was far behind third-place San Francisco. The second half began July 5, with Moore having moved the Stockton club to Sacramento. On August 9 Sacramento declined to travel to Los Angeles unless that club guaranteed them more money. Los Angeles owner Al Lindley refused and on the 14th both clubs disbanded, killing the league.

There were two interesting sidelights to the 1893 season. One was the appearance in the California League with its first future Hall of Famer, Clark Griffith, who posted a 30-17, 2.20 ERA record for Oakland. The next year he moved up to Chicago.

The second event was the playing of the first night game on the Pacific Coast on July 2, 1893, at Athletic Park in Los Angeles with the Angels beating Stockton, 5-2. It was an exhibition that did not count in the standings. The Los Angeles Times called it “burlesque baseball.” There were 20 arc lights strung around the field between four tall posts, and a moveable searchlight on top of the grandstand. The stands were full, but there was no accurate count of the crowd.

John Spalding, in his excellent book Always on Sunday, The California Baseball League, 1886-1915, says, “Everyone expected the California League would rise again in 1894. But, it did not and would not be resurrected for the next four years. Big time professional baseball was dead in Northern California, victim of the severe economic downturn that gripped the country in the early 1890s, growing interest in other sports … plus greed and rank mismanagement within the league.

The California League returned in 1898, going back to a 48-game weekend schedule. The only operator from previous years was Henry Harris of San Francisco. There were eight teams: Oakland, Sacramento, San Francisco, San Jose, Santa Cruz, Stockton, Athletics (San Francisco), and Fresno, which was replaced by Watsonville in August. In 1899 the league dropped the Athletics and Stockton, and went to a 92-game schedule. In both years the smaller cities suffered financial problems. In 1899 San Jose disbanded on August 28 and the league dropped Watsonville for scheduling purposes.

In 1900 the league played a 92-game schedule with Stockton replacing Santa Cruz. The San Francisco Chronicle reported that the season was the most successful since 1889 and that only Stockton failed to show a profit. Los Angeles, whose population had doubled in 10 years, was back in the league in 1901, replacing Stockton. The league played a varying number of games, from Sacramento’s 144 to champion San Francisco’s 162.

The same four cities returned for the final year of the first incarnation of the California League, playing from 168 to 186 games with Oakland winning the pennant.

Following the 1902 season, which ended December 8, the California League voted to add Portland and Seattle and change the name to the Pacific Coast League. The PCL still flourishes 95 years later.

In February 1903, the California State League was organized with teams in Stockton, San Jose, Petaluma, Vallejo, San Francisco, and two teams in Oakland. The league played a weekend schedule, much like the California League of the 1880s. (Although the league was officially the California State League 1903-1915, some people called it the California League and it was popularly known as just the State League.)

Other towns drifted in and out of the California State League for the rest of the decade: Fresno, Lodi, Santa Cruz, Alameda and even a U.S. Army team from the Presidio of San Francisco. Clubs called Oakland and San Francisco were primarily traveling teams, providing opponents for the stalwarts such as Stockton, San Jose and Sacramento who played the vast majority of their games at home.

Stockton was the dominant team of that period, winning pennants in 1903, ’05, ’06, ’07, and ’08.

The league operated outside the structure of the National Association and was called an Outlaw League because they refused to honor the reserve clause or contracts signed by players with other leagues. When the California State League increased its schedule to 56 games in 1907 and 78 games in 1908, they became a real thorn in the side of the Pacific Coast League.

By 1909 there was an all-out war between the two leagues. Stockton manager Cy Moreing built a new park in Oakland and took some of his better players there. He nicknamed his team the Invaders. Negotiations began between PCL President J. Cal Ewing and CSL President Frank Herman, a San Francisco sportswriter, to end the war between the leagues.

They reached an agreement on October 3 to bring the outlaw league into Organized Baseball. The CSL halted play immediately although there were seven weeks remaining on the schedule. Stockton, winners of the first half, and Oakland, leading the second half, had a playoff for the championship with Oakland winning, 4 games to 3.

The California State League entered Organized Baseball in 1910 as a Class B league. Class A was the highest level at that time and there were five Class A leagues, including the PCL. There were six teams in the league, Fresno, San Jose, Stockton and three clubs operated by PCL teams: Oakland, San Francisco and Sacramento. The latter three played in the PCL parks when the Class A teams were on the road. Only Stockton escaped financial problems. Sacramento and San Francisco folded May 31. The league dropped to Class D, the lowest rung on the National Association ladder, on June 6. The next day Oakland moved to Merced. When Fresno closed up shop on June 25 because it was unable to pay its players, the league disbanded.

Aside from the PCL, there was no professional baseball in the area for the next two years. In 1913 some PCL clubs started a reorganized California League, dropping the word “State”, believing that to be a jinx. Teams were placed in Fresno, San Jose, Stockton and Vallejo. PCL proxy Allan Baum was the league president. Vallejo moved to Watsonville on July 6 but the league played its full 123-game schedule with Stockton again winning the pennant.

The four-team league started the 1914 season with Modesto replacing Watsonville, but it lasted only until June 1. Only San Jose was in the black, but apart from financial woes, Sporting Life reported an odd twist to the demise of the Modesto club. At a meeting to see what could be done to boost attendance, “The citizens declared themselves. They had had an independent team known as the Modesto Reds which wore red uniforms. They put it into the State League and the uniforms were changed in color. If the league backers would consent to Modesto’s wearing red uniforms again, they would back the team. if not, they wouldn’t. The other teams wouldn’t agree and the league was buried.”

The California State League was revived for 1915, with Modesto back in the fold, but the league died once and for all on June 2.

That was the end of professional baseball in the smaller cities of Northern and Central California for the next 25 years. Almost every year, newspaper stories would appear saying that Pacific Coast League owners were contemplating or planning to organize a California League to use as a feeder or farm league, but with one exception nothing ever happened.

In 1929 PCL clubs did back a four-team Class D California State League, but it was in Southern California with Bakersfield the northernmost city. It collapsed on June 17 after playing 60 games.

Finally, in August 1940, the present-day California League was organized with eight teams, all owned by or having working agreements with major league or PCL clubs. The Class C league began its first season with teams in Anaheim, Bakersfield, Fresno, Merced, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Barbara and Stockton. San Jose was to have been in the league, but their new all-concrete stadium was not finished and they were replaced by Merced. Riverside, owned by Cincinnati, and San Bernardino, operated by Hollywood, dropped out on June 29.

Following the United States entry into World War II in December 1941, only four teams started in 1942: Fresno, owned by the Cardinals; Santa Barbara, owned by the Dodgers; and independents Bakersfield and San Jose. Restrictions on night games near the coast hurt attendance, but it was gas rationing that caused the league to suspend operations for the duration of the war on June 29 San Jose owner Bob Ripley had tried a unique travel arrangement. When the Owls went to other cities, he gave each player a Greyhound schedule and a bus ticket. It was up to the player to get himself and his uniform to the right place at the right time. The player with the lowest batting average had to carry the bats and the pitcher with the worst ERA was responsible for the bag of practice balls.

The California League resumed play in 1946 with six teams and has been going ever since. The six were Bakersfield, Fresno, Modesto, Santa Barbara, Stockton and Visalia. San Jose and Ventura were added in 1947 Bill Schroeder, who was instrumental in organizing the league, was president 1941-47. In 1947, six of the franchises were major-league owned and two, Stockton and Modesto, were independent.

Attendance mushroomed after the war, reaching a peak of 789,940 in 1949 under the leadership of former PCL outfielder Jerry Donovan, who was president 1949-55. In the 1950s attendance throughout the minors began to drop, due principally to the advent of television as a rival entertainment and exacerbated in many areas by the arrival of home air conditioning.

The California League maintained its eight-team structure until 1959 when it dropped to six clubs for three years. Except for 1965 and 1976, the league has had a minimum of eight teams since then. Ex-major league infielder Eddie Mulligan became league president in 1956 and served until he retired after the 1975 season.

Attendance reached a low point in 1965 when the six-team league drew only 128,836 for the entire season, an average of 21,743 per club or 333 per opening San Jose led at the gate with 34,517. Minor league attendance improved slowly from that point and grew steadily through the 1970s. During the presidency of Bill Wickert (1976-81), financial stability was the goal. In 1979 the California League operated with 1O teams for the first time.

Joe Gagliardi became league president in 1982 and under his leadership the California League has prospered. In 1997 the league set a new attendance record for the seventh time in eight years with a total of 2,061,689, an average of 2,988 per opening. Last July 5, Lake Elsinore set a new record for single game paid attendance with 8,357. Rancho Cucamonga holds the record for the best attendance for a season, 446,146, set in 1995. On the last day of the 1997 season, Rancho Cucamonga became the first Class A team in history to sell two million tickets in a five-year span.

All 10 California League teams have full Player Development Contracts with major league clubs. The Brooklyn-Los Angeles Dodgers have owned or been affiliated with a California League team in every one of the league’s 56 seasons.

This year Bakersfield, Lake Elsinore, Rancho Cucamonga, San Bernardino and Visalia make up the league’s Freeway Division. High Desert, Lancaster, Modesto, San Jose and Stockton form the Valley Division. Modesto, now in its 52nd season, has been in the California League the longest. Bakersfield is in its 5lst year, Stockton its 49th, San Jose its 47th, and Visalia its 46th.

All the southern teams are playing in facilities built in the 1990s. High Desert opened its park in 1991, Rancho Cucamonga in 1993, Lake Elsinore in 1994 and Lancaster and San Bernardino in 1996. Modesto’s park underwent a $3,000,000 renovation in 1997.

The California League is justifiably proud of its part in developing major league players. In the modern era, the California League has produced five Hall of Famers: Don Drysdale (Bakersfield), Rollie Fingers (Modesto), Reggie Jackson (Modesto), Joe Morgan (Modesto), and Don Sutton (Santa Barbara). Recently retired players who should make the Hall include George Brett (San Jose) and Kirby Puckett (Visalia).

Surveys taken annually for the past 27 years show that at least 25% of all major league players on opening day rosters have played in the California League. Among current stars are Mark McGwire, Ken Griffey Jr., Shawn Estes, John Wetteland, Roberto Alomar, Rickey Henderson, Chuck Knoblauch, Dennis Eckersley, Pedro Martinez, Mike Piazza, Raul Mondesi, Eric Karros, Rod Beck, Mike Bordick, Denny Neagle, Will Clark, and Jim Edmonds.