by Erin Eddins, Source Publications

Earlier this week I sat down at

Heritage

Park to watch the ballgames. Our little group of friends grilled out, we heckled other ballplayers and just had an all around good time. It made me smile as I remembered the few elementary years that my family lived across the street from the school playground. On the side closest to our house was a baseball diamond. Through the summers it was always overgrown and missing its white lines but that never stopped the neighborhood kids from setting out make-shift bases and starting a game.

I am not nearly old enough to claim to have played with a stick or a can; we always had a bat and ball from someone’s garage. But we would play for hours. I don’t remember ever keeping score but really that just tells me that my team usually lost.

As I watched the softball teams at Heritage

Park I wondered how many of them had been playing ball of some sort, somewhere in

St. Joseph for years and years. I also thought of the recent demise of the Blacksnakes and felt a pang of guilt and the fact that I never made it to a game. Boy, it sounded fun and we always meant to go. We just never did. I guess that is probably how many Joes feel now that the Blacksnakes are gone.

To clear my conscience I have to say I never saw the Saints play either. But my time here and their time here only overlapped by a small margin. I think I can be excused on that one. I wondered who else had played at Phil Welch of the years. This wondering sent me to the Downtown Library.

I always love my trips to the research desk. No matter who I find seated behind the metal desk, I am always greeted with a smile and eagerness to help me on my quest.

The day after my meandering thoughts at the ball fields I found myself with two large file folders laid out on the old wooden table I like to sit at. The thicker of the two was simply labeled “Baseball –St. Joseph.” I started reading.

A simple timeline informed me that the Blacksnakes occupied Phil Welch in 2006 and 2007. Prior to that, the Saints held the field from 1996 to 2005. The Cardinals were the local team from 1991 until 1995. In the decades between 1939 and 1954 there were a variety of Western League teams.

Phil Welch Stadium was actually built in 1939. I had no idea it was that old. And I like old. If anyone has some old photographs of the stadium, please share them with all of us Old Joes!

I read article after article; many of the copies were so old that the print was difficult to decipher. My favorite was from Robert Gregory’s book, “Dizzy Dean and Baseball During the Great Depression.” Wow, what a title! Below is an excerpt about Dizzy Dean and St. Joseph.

“St. Joseph, Missouri was founded about 1843 on the bluffs above the

Missouri River and things seemed to happen there in April. The town was the eastern terminus of the Pony Express and on April 3, 1860 a rider left from 914 Penn Street with saddlebags of the first overland mail to California. On the same day in 1882, Jesse James was shot and killed in a house at 12th and Penn Forty eight years later on April 20, 1930, Dizzy Dean pitched his first professional league game.”

I also found an article that mentioned another oddly named fellow: Dazzy Vance. On May 26, 1915 the local paper reported that the Topeka Savages fell victim to Dazzy Vance. The final score was 8-0.

The earliest record of our local baseball history was vague at best. Most of it was just tidbits of information like the ones mentioned above. Sometimes that’s all history can be. In fact rarely can we find the entire story when we look so far back, and that’s okay. The puzzle is half the fun. So how far back does

America’s favorite pastime seem to go here in St. Joe? It was repeatedly stated that the first organized professional baseball was in 1886. However, there was mention of semi-pro team at least one year earlier.

I guess my relaxing evening of watch the ballplayers at Heritage

Park is nothing new for St. Joe. Joes have been doing it right here at home for more than 100 years.

Posted by: admin on Thursday, July 10th, 2008
Filed under: Old Joe, General |