When Wall Street Occupied the Ballpark

From SABR member Tom Shieber at Baseball Researcher on October 9, 2011:

With the “Occupy Wall Street” movement sweeping the country, it may surprise the reader that there was a time when the stock brokers of Wall Street (and those of State Street in Boston) occupied the ball park.

On May 26, 1904, the Boston Globe announced that “a baseball nine composed of members of the New York stock exchange has challenged a nine of the Boston stock exchange and the challenge has been accepted. The game is to be played on the American league grounds, Huntington av, Thursday, June 2, at 3:30.”

The New Yorkers won the contest, 1-0, behind the stellar pitching of Gil Greenway, the former Yale pitcher who had purchased his seat on the New York Stock Exchange just months before. New York’s lone run was tallied by none other than Bob Wrenn (seen below). Wrenn was the captain of Harvard’s football team in the 1890s and was also the first left-hander to win the U.S. Open Singles Championships in tennis, capturing titles in 1893, ’94, ’96 and ’97. He was President of the United States Tennis Association from 1912 to 1915 and was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 1955.

Read the full article here: http://baseballresearcher.blogspot.com/2011/10/when-wall-street-occupied-ball-park.html



Originally published: October 12, 2011. Last Updated: October 12, 2011.