Riverview Stadium Clinton Iowa

The baseball stadium on Clinton’s riverfront from a 1940s postcard. The WPA finished building it in 1937. The Clinton Owls were the first team to play there.

Clyde Sukeforth, the man who would later scout Jackie Robinson, managed the team. His star player was Sam Nahem—an Arab-Jewish boy from Brooklyn. The reporters couldn’t figure him out. One of them said, “Nahem wears spectacles and talks less like a ballplayer than any diamond star this reporter knows.”

The Owls tore through the Three-I League that summer. Clinton beat Peoria, Springfield, and Davenport. Seventy-five wins. Thirty-six losses. It was a record that made old men start believing in luck again.

Clinton baseball fans wouldn’t soon forget that magic season in 1937.