When They Lit Up Des Moines' Western League Ball Park

 

The Des Moines Register. May 2, 1930.

The Des Moines Register printed this picture showing readers what to expect at the first night time ballgame at the Western League Ball Park. The Des Moines Demons were playing the Wichita ball club in what the paper called a "night baseball experiment."

Pictured at the far right is L.E. Keyser, president. Club members shown (left to right) include: Cy Lingle, catcher; Bud Tinning, pitcher; Jim Oglesby, firstbase; Leo Norris, secondbase; Hughie Nielsen, shortstop; Breezie Windham, thirdbase; Fred berger, leftfield; and Francis Keyes, rightfield.

Fat Men's Baseball Club Waterloo Iowa 1909

 

Frank C. Kee of Waterloo, Iowa, traveled the United States in 1909 and 1910, putting together the fat men’s baseball club. When he finished, the team had a combined weight of 4,487 pounds (about twice the weight of a Clydesdale horse). 

Although the team members were big, the Des Moines Register told its readers, there was nothing funny about the way they played baseball. “Their lining up at the lunch counter when out on the road,” said the paper, “is the immediate signal for the proprietor to send out for additional supplies.” 

 “Baby” Bliss, the first baseman, weighed in at 650 pounds and was thought to be the heaviest man in the world. E. Holm, the pitcher, weighed 350 pounds. J. A. Brownwell, the second baseman, weighed 400 pounds; outfielder Harry Vorwold weighed 325 pounds; shortstop Ed J. Sheean weighed 390 pounds, and W. B. Hinds, the third baseman, tipped the scale at 400 pounds. And strange as it may seem, Oliver Kimball, the umpire, was a teensy guy who stood 4 feet tall and weighed 138 pounds. 

Elton (Sam) Langford Des Moines Demons Baseball

 

Des Moines Tribune. August 29, 1925

Elton (Sam) Langford, a center fielder for the Des Moines Demons, was scheduled to move up the ranks in the Western League at the start of the 1925 baseball season.

Langford, age 22, had a batting average of .350 and was the leading scorer in the league. The Des Moines Tribune said he was a long-distance hitter and averaged a home run in every games as well as several doubles and triples.

Davenport Baseball Team of 1889

 

The Davenport Democrat and Leader printed this picture of the 1889 Davenport baseball team on August 20, 1912.

Upper row: (left to right) Con Strothers; Whitaker; Routcliffe; and Henry Schuhknecht.

Middle row: (left to right) Joe Kappel; Sammy Nichols; Bob Allen, captain; Charles Gessinger; and Henry Kappel.

Bottom row: (left to right) jerry Harrington; Billy Rhines; Jack Fanning; Jack and Jacj Lauler.

Cy Slapnick Didn't Make It In The Majors But He Knew How To Pick Them

 

Cyril Charles Slapnicka was born in Cedar Rapids in 1886. Farm country. Immigrant parents. Baseball was the quickest way out of town and the surest way back in.

He pitched forever in the minors. Iowa. Illinois. Anywhere they’d pay him. In 1911 he won 26 games in Rockford and forced the Chicago Cubs to notice. September call-up. Big league clubhouse. A few appearances. Then, back on the train.

He resurfaced with Pittsburgh in 1918. Ten major league games total. Record: 1–6. He wasn’t a star. Not even close.

A lot of men would’ve faded right there.

Slapnicka didn’t.

In 1921, he signed on with Cleveland as a scout. That’s where the story actually starts. He had an eye, and knew what a big-league arm looked like before it knew itself. He drove Iowa’s back roads. Watched high school kids throw in half-empty parks. Talked to parents. Took notes. Made bets with other scouts and usually won.

In 1936, he found Bob Feller, an Iowa farm kid throwing gas past grown men. Slapnicka signed him. That changed Cleveland for a decade. Later came Bob Lemon and a pipeline of players who filled out rosters that could actually win.

For a stretch in the mid-1930s, he ran the club. General manager. Contracts, salaries, egos. No draft system back then. You wanted a player; you found him first and signed him fast. Slapnicka operated like a man who understood scarcity. Talent was gold. Hesitation was death.

He stayed with Cleveland over forty years, scouting into his seventies because he trusted his judgment more than anyone else’s reports.

He died in 1979 at 93, back in Cedar Rapids.

Here’s the clean version: He had a short, forgettable pitching career and a long, consequential second act.

He didn’t conquer the mound. He built the roster. And in baseball, that can matter more.

Capitol Park High School Baseball Team 1903

The Des Moines Register printed this picture of the Capitol Park High School baseball team on May 3, 1903. They didn't identifty the players in the picture, but they did list the team members and positions. 

Robert Gates, catcher; Andrew Chalmers, pitcher and team captain; Martin Peterson, first base; Fred Gates, second base; Walter Sargent, third base; Ray Prather, shortstop; Burt Sargent, left field; Ray Hampton, center field; John Dwight, right field; and Benjamin Franklin and Charlie Holmes, substitutes.

All Eyes Were On Babe Ruth In The 1916 World Series

 

In October 1916, every eye in Iowa was focused on the World Series and Babe Ruth. Farmers leaned on fence posts. Barbers argued over box scores.

Telegraph wires hummed like angry bees. Out there in Boston, a thick-armed kid with a mean fastball was turning October into his own private carnival.

Ruth wasn’t the Sultan of Swat yet. He was just a left-handed wrecking crew in wool flannel, chewing up the Brooklyn Robins. In Game 2, he worked fast, jaw set, eyes flat. Brooklyn hitters swung like men chopping at ghosts. Boston won. No fuss.

Game 5 was where things got strange. Fourteen innings. No lights. No mercy. The crowd sagged and swayed. Pitch after pitch, Ruth kept firing, as if he’d tapped into some private reservoir of stubborn American madness. When it ended—scoreless for Brooklyn—he’d stacked up nearly 30 straight World Series innings without allowing a run.

Iowans read the numbers in the morning papers and shook their heads. They didn’t know they were witnessing the early rumble of a coming storm that would blow the fences down and change the sport forever.

Babe Ruth would be an unstoppable force in the game.

Pitcher Ray Fisher Des Moines Federal League

Ray Fisher, 18, was the leading picture for the Des Moines Federal League in 1916. When he pitched for the MsCurmin Drug team, he won twelve straight games, averaged twelve strikeouts, and five hits per game.

He got his start in the West Des Moines Sunday School League, where he played for the South Des Moines Methodist team. In 1916, he was given a trial with the local Western League Club.

 

(Picture from the Des Moines Register. February 20, 1916)

Photo Ackley High School Baseball Team 1913

The Des Moines Register printed this picture of the Ackley High School baseball team. They won seven out of eight games played in the season. The only team that defeated them was Union high school.

Top row: Fakers, Snater, DeNul
Middle row: Reinhardt, Bolender, R. Leach, Bleeks.
Bottom row: Penning, G. Leach.

Hopkins Bros. Baseball Team Des Moines

 

Hopkins Bros. Baseball Team

Top of letter: “Smoke” Madigan, Thomas, Bowman, Parsons, Honska.
Bottom of letter: Franklin, Evans, Fahey (manager).
Left side: Crandall, Mendenhall.
Right side: Wilkinson (captain), Wasson.

(Des Moines Register. June 17, 1906.

Quaker Oats Baseball Team Cedar Rapids 1929

Quaker Oats baseball team champions of the M and J league.

Top row (left to right): S. Dale, manager, W. Heck, J. Bunting, M. Koch, Ed O’Connell, C. Prabel, G. Cronkite, and T. Hardiman.

Bottom row (left to right): F. Kerres, H. Gallagher, E. Bishop, H. Michaels, G. Garden, and E. Smith.

Cocker, the team mascot, in foreground.

Picture: Cedar Rapids Gazette. September 8, 1929.

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.