From Golden Gate Park to the Big Leagues

All-Star ball players are nothing new to the Bay Area. When the 5lst major league All-Star game was played at Candlestick Park July 10, 1984, San Francisco simply reasserted its rightful place as the brightest star in the baseball firmament.

“This city has been the nation’s most fertile source of big league ball players since Robert Blakiston left town to join the Philadelphia Athletics in 1882,” claims George Stanton, former president of the Old Time Base ball Players Association.

“More players went to the big leagues from Golden Gate Park, alone, than from any other park in the world. Last count was 34. From 1922 to 1924, the entire Cincinnati infield grew up in the park: Lew Fonseca at first, Sammy Bohne at second, Ike Caveney at short and Babe Pinelli at third. Pinelli later became an umpire. That team finished second to McGraw’s Giants two years in a row.”

The Bay Area’s elder native sons could field an all-star team that would outshine either side appearing at Candlestick Park that year. The line-up would include George “Highpockets” Kelly at first, Tony Lazzeri at second, Joe Cronin at shortstop, and Willie Kamm on third. Kelly and Kamm live in Millbrae. The outfield would be covered by the great trio of Lefty O’Doul, Joe DiMaggio and Harry Heilmann.

“The DiMaggios played ball in North Beach, but the rest were Golden Gate products,” Stanton says. “For some reason we didn’t develop many pitchers or catchers. We’d have to cross the Bay to pick up Ernie Lombardi as our catcher, and for pitchers, Lefty Gomez from Rodeo, George Pipgras and Dutch Ruether from Alameda, Jim Tobin from Oakland, and Duster Mails, who was born in San Quentin — outside the walls.

“For bench strength, how about Mark Koenig, Frank Crosetti, Ping Bodie, and Dom and Vince DiMaggio?

“Cronin, who managed at Washington and Boston and later became president of the American League, would be our manager.

“With five of them in the Hall of Fame and two others (Kamm and O’Doul) who belong there, no other city could match that line-up.”

What made San Francisco the leading training ground of the nation from 1900 to World War II?

Mark Koenig, who played on the 1926-28 New York Yankees powerhouse, grew up a block away from the park. “The City was full of baseball fields,” he recalls. “Golden Gate Park had ten diamonds back to back. A big wire fence separated them. There were ten pickup games going on at one time.

“One corner of the field, at Ninth and Lincoln, was reserved on Sunday for the Park Bums. They were the elite, the big time in the park ranks.

“It wasn’t organized into leagues or anything. We’d just choose up sides and play. But there were always scouts hanging around.”

Stanton recalls that “there was a lot of interest among businessmen. They’d sponsor teams, providing shirts and equipment. George Freund was one. He owned a string of drugstores around town.

“We had to sign up to use a diamond. They were city parks, but a man named Al Erle, who worked for A.G. Spalding, was in charge of scheduling the games. He was one of the founders of the old timers association. There’s a park in the city named for him.”

Stanton, who lives in Sonoma, hosted a St. Patrick’s Day feed for several years, at which Erle, Freund, former fire chief Bill Murray, Kelly, Koenig, and other old timers were regulars. “But everybody got too old to get around easily,” Stanton says.

Another factor in the city’s baseball boom was the San Francisco Seals, one of the most successful minor league operations in the history of the game. (For several years the city supported two teams in the Pacific Coast League, the Seals and the Missions.) At the old Seals Stadium, where Babe Ruth once hit a 700-foot home run in an exhibition game, Dr. Charles Strub and Charley Graham signed many a hometown boy and sold a steady supply to the major leagues: Heilmann, a .400 hitter; Kamm, who cost the White Sox a then-record $l00,000 and two players in 1922: O’Doul, Jimmy O’Connell, DiMaggio.

But not all Golden Gaters made the Hall of Fame or even the big leagues.

Like George Stanton. A funny thing happened to George on the way to the 1924 Olympics. Somebody tossed him a baseball.

”I’d won the 56-pound-weight throw in the 1921 national games. Finished second in the javelin. Somebody told me, ‘You can make the 1924 Olympic team. Go over to the park and work out to stay in shape. Shag flies.

“I was 21. I’d never touched a baseball. Lived out on 19th Avenue. We didn’t have a ball field near us. We spent our time chasing rabbits in the dunes and selling them. Two for a quarter.

“So I went over to the park, got into a game of catch, drew some attention, got invited to play for the Park Bums one Sunday. That was a big honor for a beginner.”

Standing six-foot-five, weighing 225, the young Stanton was touted as a lefthanded Walter Johnson. “They said I could throw as fast as Johnson, but I was wild. Couldn’t find home plate. Word got around there was a big fireballer in Golden Gate Park. Pretty soon I had five big league offers.

My father said New York was where the money was, so I signed with the Giants. Showed up at spring training in San Antonio, Texas, in 1922. It was the biggest ball park I ever saw.

“One day I’m pitching batting practice and the manager, John McGraw, steps into the box to take some swings. He was the greatest manager of them all. By this time he was a little heavy around the middle. I could throw lightning bolts, so I was scared to death of hitting him. I lobbed the first pitch up like a girl.

“McGraw started cursing — the air was usually blue around him anyhow.

“Put something on it,” he yelled. The coach standing behind me told me to throw as hard as I could. The catcher yelled the same thing.

“So I reared back and poured it on. McGraw never saw it. The ball plonked him in the ribs, almost knocked him down. He held himself up by leaning on the bat.

“He stood back in there and again they told me to cut loose. So I fired away. Hit him in the same spot. He went down like he’d been poleaxed. There was dead silence. Nobody moved. They didn’t dare try to help him up.

“After a few minutes he pulled himself up and staggered off. That was the last batting practice he ever took. And it was the closest I ever got to the big leagues.”

Stanton played in the minors until 1929 when he began a 31-year career on the San Francisco police force.

Another chapter-writer in the city’s baseball history is Joe Sprinz. Born in St. Louis, Sprinz caught for the Seals from 1938 to ’46. His contribution to the lore of the city came during the 1939 World’s Fair at Treasure Island.

“We’d read where Gabby Street, the Washington catcher, had caught a baseball dropped from the top of the Washington Monument,” Joe recalls. “So we thought we’d pull the same stunt at the fair.”

“Lefty O’Doul went up in the tower, about 400 feet up, and dropped a ball, and I caught it. I caught five in a row.”

“Well, we thought, this is too easy.” So Duster Mails says, “The Goodyear blimp is flying over the fairgrounds. Why not get those guys to throw a ball out?”

“We give the ball to the pilot and he takes off. He’s hovering about 1,200 feet up and he drops the ball. It comes down weaving around like a belly dancer. I get a bead on it, then wham — it hits me in the head. I wake up in the hospital with a broken jaw. It’s my birthday, August 3, 1939.”

The Old Time Baseball Players Association still celebrates San Francisco’s unique place in the world of baseball.