Seattle’s First Baseball Ambassadors
From SABR member David Eskenazi and Steve Rudman at Sportspress Northwest on October 18, 2011:
On June 14, 1907, the Seattle High School baseball team (later Broadway High School) departed town on the Northern Pacific Railroad, bound for an unprecedented tour of the East, Midwest and Southwest to help promote the upcoming (1909) Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exhibition, a world’s fair of sorts conceived to tout the economic opportunities in the Pacific Northwest and advertise Seattle as the “gateway to the wealth and luck of Alaska.”
By the time “the boys,” as local newspapers frequently called them, arrived at King Street Station two months later (Aug. 13), having more than exhausted the $3,600 that local businesses had anted up to fund their journey, they traveled 8,600 miles and played 31 games in 10 states and the District of Columbia against an assortment of high school and town teams, business college nines, and even professional clubs.
No other high school in America – nor college, for that matter – had ever undertaken such an ambitious junket, and the success that Seattle High had on the trip made them local celebrities.
Read the full article here: http://sportspressnw.com/2011/10/wayback-machine-seattles-first-athletic-ambassadors
Originally published: October 18, 2011. Last Updated: October 18, 2011.