Early High School Baseball in Illinois
By ROBERT PRUTER
Baseball among Illinois high schoolers did not begin in the schools, but rather in the amateur-team system of organization that prevailed in baseball in the mid-19th century. Every city and town across the country and Illinois had amateur baseball teams, and the game flourished at age levels from kids in knee-pants to balding adults. There were even rare instances of women playing the game. Chicago and its suburbs in particular were rich with amateur club teams. Stephen Freedman, in his exploration of early amateur baseball in Chicago called "The Baseball Fad in Chicago, 1865-1870," reported on a virtual explosion of amateur club activity in the immediate post-Civil War years. The flowering of baseball in Chicago, according to Freedman, "represented but a single expression of a sudden nation-wide interest in the sport, which was manifested to the greatest extent in America's urban centers."
In these early decades, most schoolboys did not play baseball in the high schools but instead formed outside club teams, and it is to these amateur clubs from which we derive an understanding on how early high school students organized themselves to play the game. In the 1860s and 1870s, they usually organized themselves into amateur clubs called "junior" teams, but many of the first and second year students probably participated in "junior pony," or simply "pony," teams. Nineteenth-century terminology in other parts of the nation referred to all teams under the age of 21 as "junior" teams, but in Chicago the age for junior teams was under 18 years of age, beginning formally with the 1867 season. In December of 1866 the delegates to the Northwestern Association of Base Ball Players had unanimously adopted a resolution to make junior clubs consist "wholly of members under eighteen years of age." The pony clubs in Chicago were limited to all junior players at age 14 and under. Both pony and junior clubs held regular competition from May through September.
Junior teams were often the younger less experienced auxiliary teams of the leading amateur teams in the city. So there were the Aetna Juniors, Athletic Juniors, Atlantic Juniors, Eureka Juniors, Excelsior Juniors, and Resolute Juniors, among others. (Most Chicago amateur clubs took their names from famed clubs on the East Coast, especially the baseball hotbed of Brooklyn where the clubs seem to favor names with the vowels "a" and "e.") Other junior-level clubs that were not auxiliary to senior clubs were the Ortives, Actives, and Olympics. Junior clubs played not only each other but also college, senior, and pony teams. During the summer and fall there would be tournaments that would draw junior teams all over the state and even the whole Midwest.
Notable pony teams were the Baltics, Gazelles, Buckeyes, Emmetts, and Pontiacs. In 1869, for example, the Baltics beat the Pontiacs for the championship of the city and beat the Gazelles from Evanston for the championship of the state, or so the claim went. It is most evident that even though high schoolers may not have been competing on school teams they were competing most actively and aggressively on amateur teams.
The post-Civil War baseball fever that gripped the nation would obviously at some point bring secondary schools together in competition. But in the 1860s and 1870s secondary school students were still years away in developing the extracurriculum, and the movement towards the creation of baseball teams as representative of the schools was a long one that developed in fits and starts over two decades. Baseball historian Harold Seymour gave a flavor of the earliest era high school ball by relating the adventures of high school teams as presented in two dime novels written by William Everett, Changing Base (1868) and Double Play (1870). In the former, in a school modeled after Boston Latin, the students form a team to play against pugnacious Irish nine, and in the latter, a high school team is challenged by an amateur team in a nearby town, the Wide Awakes.
Throughout New England, and especially in the famed boarding schools of the era, baseball teams were being formed during the early 1860s. Phillips Exeter in New Hampshire formed its first team in 1859, Williston Seminary (Williston Northhampton Academy) in Massachusetts in 1860, and Phillips Andover in Massachusetts in 1865. In 1866 saw the first outside competition for the academies, when Andover played two games, against Tufts College and an amateur team, Lowell Club. Williston the same year competed against several amateur clubs around Springfield. Elsewhere, in 1866 Wallkill Academy in upstate New York began playing amateur teams, and the following year, Virginia Military Institute began playing other outside teams.
Worcester High School in Massachusetts has been traditionally recognized as the first secondary institution to form a team that competed against teams outside of the school. The year was 1859. The amateur baseball club was so preeminently the model for forming a baseball team that many early high schools patterned their baseball club after that of the amateur club. High schoolers thought they were forming just another amateur team in the town rather than a scholastic team for competition against other high schools. Thus Worcester High formed the "Worcester High School Baseball Club," a team that included two players who were not enrolled in the school. Their first opponent was a community club called the Eaglets, which they beat 48 to 42 on October 12, 1859.
Among the nation's public schools, Philadelphia Central appears to have been another pioneer, forming a team as early as 1863, and playing local amateur teams, namely the Olympics and the Minervas. But again the model for the team was the amateur club, in which the high schoolers formed the Active Club within the school to play other amateur clubs. Central later found competition against local academies in the 1870s but competition against other public schools did not emerge in the city until the founding of Central Manual Training in 1883. In Buffalo, New York, both Central High and Heathcote School had baseball teams as early as 1868. In the Midwest, Ann Arbor High reportedly was playing the University of Michigan as early as 1864. By 1870, Boston public schools were playing the game, with English High competing against its long-time rival, Latin High.
Illinois Secondary Schools Take Up Baseball
In Illinois almost all the earliest high schools were established in the 1850s, and the number of high schools rose steadily during the following decades. There was only one public high school in the city during these formative years, Chicago High School (founded in 1856), and in the surrounding suburbs there was only Hyde Park (founded in 1869). Other public high schools in the Chicago area did not come on the scene until the mid-1870s. There is no evidence of interscholastic baseball activity by public schools during the 1860s and 1870s.
Chicago during this era, however, also boasted of several private academies, which were day schools and served as preparatory schools for college. Local academies that fielded baseball teams, and sometimes played each other as well as other teams, were Chicago Academy, Dyhrenfurth's Educational and High School, and Beleke's Academy. The earliest such interscholastic contest in Chicago dates back to mid-October of 1868, when Chicago Academy beat the Beleke Academy, 18 to 7, in a season ending game. Chicago Academy boasted the most active baseball nine among the city's secondary schools, frequently playing contests against various teams from Chicago University.
The earliest reference to Chicago High School playing baseball dates back to only May of 1870, when the Chicago Times reported: "a match game of base ball was played on yesterday afternoon at the corner of May and Lake streets between the junior A and junior B classes of the Chicago High School." In the fall there was another report on an interclass game: "a match game was played yesterday between a nine of Mr. Howland's room (Seniors) and Mr. Wells' room (First Middles), of the Chicago High School, in which the former were victorious, by a score of 27 to 23." The following summer Chicago High School competed against the freshmen class team of Chicago University.
During 1873 and 1874 there were various reports of Chicago High playing amateur teams in the city, notably the McVickers (a team drawn from the employees at the McVickers Theater), the Eagles, Leavitt Street Nine, and the Highlanders (from the far northern suburb of Highland Park). The pattern of adoption of baseball in Chicago High School shows that the game began as an intramural activity, where it proved to be a popular interclass contest. Eventually, there came a point where the schoolboys looked at the amateur club, private school, and university in their community as a possible opponent and a challenge was issued. This pattern can be extrapolated to apply to the experiences of many other secondary schools.
The Chicago Tribune also reported a game that strongly suggested baseball activity by high schoolers in Wheaton, a rural town in the next county west of Chicago. Said the paper, "a base ball match, the first of a home and home game, between the Eagle[s] of Batavia, and the School Boys of Wheaton, came off on Saturday last, at the latter place." This report suggests either that the team, while it may have been drawn from the high school, was an amateur nine that adopted a name to indicate its origin, or in fact that the team was representing Wheaton High. In any case, the ambiguity of the report is indicative how the concept of schoolboys playing under the banner of their high schools was not firmly established.
Baseball as it was played at Evanston illustrates how the model for organization was the amateur club. In 1878, for example, the Evanston High boys formed a team called the Resolutes. There was no conception of "school colors" and there was no strong sense that the team was representing the school primarily. The Resolutes began the season playing a practice game with the high school freshmen, followed by a game against the Northwestern freshmen, and then a schedule that included such amateur teams as the Pastimes of Chicago, Aetnas of Chicago, Wilmettes, and Rogers Parkers. The Resolutes wore uniforms. A report in the Evanston Index said, "noting the continued success of the Resolutes, the Northwestern University nine has adopted the same uniform, and appears in brown trimmed suits and brown stockings."
The Resolutes were not the only amateur team formed by Evanston high schoolers. Another team was the Oneidas, and like the Resolutes they played other area amateur teams. Other Evanston High teams formed around this time were the Stars and the Mohawks. That a school, which had only 23 graduates in 1878, would form so many teams is indicative that these teams did not consider that they were primarily representing the high school itself. These teams were formed in April and reorganized in June for summer play upon the loss of members due to graduation. At the same time, the Evanston Index considered them to be "village clubs," understanding them to be local amateur teams representing the community. There were no reports of the Resolutes, Oneidas, or Stars playing any other high school team. By 1880, all the other teams at Evanston High had disappeared, and only the Stars remained.
These Evanston High teams could afford to invest in school uniforms, being of upper middle and upper class background. Of team members who have been identified, two members of the Resolutes went to college and became lawyers, one of whom ran for office as U.S. Senator from Illinois. The Oneidas, perhaps lower on the social scale, represented the entrepreneurial merchant class, in which one became director of wholesale grocery sales, another became an owner of a wholesale dry goods business, another a merchant, and another a degreed person who became an office manager at Northwestern University.
The question might arise whether or not such teams as the Resolutes and Oneidas were truly high school teams. Most all the reports in the Evanston Index on these teams were in the column devoted to high school news, and occasional references to the players would often give their year of graduation, indicating the players were students. These teams were formed in April and were forced to reorganize in June for summer play upon the loss of members due to graduation. At the same time the Evanston Index considered them to be "village clubs."
For most young baseball players of the 1860s and 1870s to actually get their baseball experience in high school was probably rare, even if they were attending school. The experience of Hall of Famer Albert Spalding is instructive. He attended Rockford High, and did not belong to a school team but rather a pony-level team called the Pioneers that played against amateur teams at all levels throughout the city. His pitching ability was soon discovered by the best baseball experts in Rockford and at the age of 15 in 1865 he became a key member of a newly formed citywide club, Forest City. Instead of going to school to play baseball, he had to leave school to play. His mother related in her reminiscences:
"Albert was very fond of playing baseball, and when the club wanted to win a game they had him excused from school. That disturbed me very much, and I went to see the Principal, Mr. Blodgett, too, and asked him to intercede. I said to Mr. Blodgett, "I Don't want Albert leave school to play ball." He replied, "Now, Mrs. Spalding, I want to tell you that Albert is a studious boy and gets his lessons, and his going at 2 o'clock in the afternoon to play ball once in a while will do no harm."
After his junior year, young Spalding dropped out Rockford High to work in a newspaper, but mostly to play with the Forest City club. In the following years, with Spalding pitching, the Forest City team emerged as one of the top amateur teams in the nation.
The common experience of high school boys playing on their high school teams has to wait until the development of the extracurriculum, which in Chicago high schools has been placed in the 1880s. In the first years of the decade the extracurriculum began with the founding of school newspapers and the development of interscholastic athletic competition in football and baseball, and later expanded to include other sports competition, yearbooks, glee clubs, student government, debating societies, and fraternities and sororities.
The extracurriculum in Chicago public schools, and by extension the development of interscholastic baseball competition, only began in the 1880s. In 1875 Chicago High was limited to junior and senior classes, and three feeder two-year institutions were created-North Division, West Division, and South Division. Then during 1880-82 Chicago High was closed and the three Division schools were changed to four-year institutions. One can imagine a considerable change in student atmosphere once the schools expanded to include junior and senior classes. There must have been increased identification by the students with those schools and that in turn probably engendered the desire to have athletic teams to represent their schools. Suburban schools in the area were growing in population from a couple of dozen of students to a couple hundred or more-figures high enough to provide nine good men throughout the season. Because high schools at this time were considered to be largely teacher training centers for women the student population was about two-thirds women, and the dropout rates were high, particularly that of the men.
Most of the teams probably were not wearing uniforms. An Oak Park High graduate from 1884 recalled, "we had no baseball uniforms. We made one effort at it by the girls starting to make us caps, but after four were finished the attempt died." Some of the high school teams in the 1880s were still nothing more than sandlot endeavors. An Evanston writer in 1933 said that the baseball team in the 1880s played in vacant lots, and another said that "high school athletics was no more than sandlot baseball." The predominant baseball activity in the schools was still intramural contests.
An early mention of Lake View playing baseball dates back to 1883, when its team played Northwestern University in a season opening game, in which they lost 26 to 6. Perhaps Lake View was playing other high schools at the time but records are unavailable.
Oak Park in 1884 had a team that compiled an 11-2 record, but probably most of the contests were pickup games with church, business, and other amateur teams. The real action was taking place in Chicago and its immediate suburbs of Lake View and Hyde Park. The schools of Hyde Park, Lake View, and North Division formed a league playing a double round-robin schedule during May and June of 1884. The winner of the league would receive a pennant emblematic of the "championship of the high schools of Cook County," according to the Hyde Park Herald. The opening game of the schedule on May 14 brought 300 spectators to Lincoln Park to watch Hyde Park beat North Division 15-7. Hyde Park went through the schedule undefeated to take the pennant. In the fall of the same year, North Division, Lake View, and Evanston competed in the sport, but no formal league was organized.
In the winter of 1885, the Herald reported that "the Hyde Park baseball club has been in existence for several years," indicating that competition by the high school in baseball may well have existed for several years even if a league did not exist. The league of the previous spring had been such a success that North Division, Lake View, and Hyde Park again formed a league in May. Manual Training helped in the formation, but dropped out before playing a single game. One game that season between Hyde Park and North Division at the "Kenwood grounds," Drexel and 49th, was witnessed by some 500 fans. Hyde Park as in most of its games that year swamped its opponent, defeating North Division 42 to 7, and won the league pennant by the end of May.
In the fall of 1885, Evanston played North Division and Northwestern University, along with some "prep schools," but no league was formed. In a letter to the Chicago schools' student newspaper, High School Journal, dated December 20, 1885, a student complained, "for several years past there has been so-called 'baseball leagues' among our high schools, but very few schools participated. Let 1886 be different from this." But the record of baseball activity among the Cook County schools is meager during 1886-87. It appears that a league existed in the spring of 1886 and that North Division won the championship, and in the fall of 1887 Hyde Park, Manual Training, Lake View, and Evanston all had teams. That fall West Division suggested forming a league, without any evidence that the other schools took up the west side on the idea.
The year 1888 gives the first evidence that high school baseball in Chicago had finally taken hold. While the big city majors ignored the activity, local newspapers, such as the Evanston Index, gives evidence of a remarkable resurgence at Evanston High, with considerable reporting by high school correspondents on games with Lake View High, Northwestern University, Lake Forest University, and West Division. The fall of 1888 again saw scattered competition; the Chicago Tribune reported on a game between two prep schools, Lake Forest Academy and Northwestern Military Academy (in Highland Park, not to be confused with Northwestern Academy in Evanston).
In the spring of 1889 interscholastic baseball rapidly picked up steam as there was a plethora of games reported in the large Chicago newspapers, involving North Division, West Division, Manual Training, Hyde Park, and Northwest Division teams. Competing against them were a number of prep schools, notably Harvard School, University School, and Brown School.
What happened at Evanston High during these years is probably indicative of how baseball emerged from being a sandlot activity among the high schools to a full-fledged interscholastic sport. For example, when the 1888 team got uniforms, apparently for the first time in years, it became something of an event, with members of the team showing up in class in their uniforms to preen before their classmates. One girl classmate after seeing a game with the players in their "striped blue and black" outfits gushed that the uniforms were "just too lovely for words." Evanston reported the following year that they had "secured a lot and fixed it up for a ball ground. Located two blocks west of the school, [it] has a backstop, and will have a shanty and a grandstand."
Cook County League
A permanent baseball league of Cook County high schools was finally formed in 1890, and the person credited as being most instrumental in launching of it is Henry L. Boltwood, principal and baseball coach at Evanston High. He was an early advocate of athletic competition for schoolboys, as part of his role in attending games, he said "a teacher can make every such contest an occasion for emphatic lessons in conduct, and do much to educate his boys to despise any and all unfair conduct, to avoid profanity, and betting, and to play like gentlemen." The subsequent history of the sport as it was played in the Cook County League would belie Boltwood's aspirations for high school competition.
The 1890 league consisted of Evanston, Englewood, Hyde Park, South Division, West Division, Manual Training, and Harvard School. Schoolboy representatives of the league met on February 7 and formed the conference. The schools drew up a constitution, one of the provisions being that no college player would be allowed to play, a clear indication that ringers were a problem. During the spring the Tribune reported on many games and made mention once of the "Cook County High School Baseball League." Evanston was the league's first champion. Interestingly, the first year a private school, Harvard School, was a member of the league. All the accoutrements of an organized high school baseball that are seen today were coming into place at this time.
Englewood baseball team, 1892. Standing at the far left is Harold Ickes,
a future President Franklin D. Roosevelt cabinet member.
On January 26, 1891, schoolboys of seven Cook County high schools again got together and formed a baseball league. Several weeks later a letter writer to the High School Journal addressed the persistent problem of ringers: "'Outsiders' have always been the bug-bear and bane of the High School leagues." (Note the plural, indicating the writer was aware of leagues in earlier years.) The writer asked that to prevent future abuses that each school should submit a list of their players to their respective principals to certify that all are students in good standing. The writer noted that in the previous football season Manual Training was the only "square team of the lot." Evanston for the second year in a row won the championship and a cash prize of $25. The school dominated competition in the league's early years, taking four out of the first five conference titles.
Throughout the 1890s the league continued to grow, and by 1896, when Hyde Park won its second consecutive title, the league boasted ten members. By 1897, membership was up to 12 members. During the 1903 and 1904 seasons, the ever-burgeoning league, now up to 16 members, chose to divide itself into major and minor divisions. The Hyde Park 1901 championship team was one of the great aggregations, boasting the talents of future major league pro Fred Beebe (pitcher), Walter Eckersall (shortstop), and Sam Ransom (catcher). In 1903, the Hyde Park team went undefeated against high school opponents, and again featured Eckersall and Ransom (perhaps the only black team captain of a mostly white team in the country).
Hyde Park baseball team, 1895
Besides Fred Beebe, the Cook County League produced a number of major league players in its early years, notably Herb Juul (West Division), John Kane (South Division), and George Halas (Crane), the latter very briefly. These players got their playing experience not only on their high school teams but also on amateur (or not so amateur) club teams. Of all the sports competition in the high schools baseball was by far the most corrupt. The reason is because during the first decades of interscholastic competition it had to compete against the lure of extensive amateur and semi-pro competition that existed. There were church leagues, club leagues, industrial leagues, and a plethora of other leagues. The constant problem was that talented high school boys naturally gravitated towards these other leagues.
In 1908, Phillips was expelled from the league, because its star pitcher, G. Lindquist, was also playing for the famed semi-pro team, the Gunthers. He did not keep it a secret, and while playing for the Gunthers garnered headlines just as he did for Phillips. In the 1911 league season proved to be a disaster, when seven of the eight teams in the major division of the league were disqualified for "violations for using 'pros'." Lake View, which had taken last place, was deemed the only "clean team." Nice guys do finish last, apparently. The league found that on the team of the putative champion, Phillips, five players were involved in playing for outside teams. No flag was awarded that year. "Pros" in the newspaper lingo of the day meant the amateur and semi-amateur teams where the players may have been paid or not. Regarding the continuing scandals, the Tribune said, "Frequently pupils who have graduated from Chicago high schools have been thrown out of athletics in the University of Illinois because of their professionalism while taking part in Chicago high school sports."
For the most part, the league was limited to public schools. The exceptions were the first year when Harvard School and University School were members, in the mid-1890s when Manual Training was a member, in the last decade of the league when University High was a member, and in 1912 when a Roman Catholic school, St. Philip, was a member. Regarding St. Philip, the school must have known that it had an exceptionally good team, because it won the conference championship in its only year of participation. The following year, St. Philip joined the newly formed Catholic League.
The league's last championship, in 1913, was won by Phillips, which was coached by future football hall of famer, Hugh "Shorty" Ray. They beat an Oak Park team, whose left fielder was another future football hall of famer, Bart Macomber. The Chicago Record-Herald reported, "The championship is doubly prized by the Phillips boys, for it is the last banner put up by the Cook County High School Athletic League, and marks the passing of that organization."
COOK COUNTY HIGH BASEBALL TITLES
| Year | Major Division | Minor Division |
| 1884 | Hyde Park | |
| 1885 | Hyde Park | |
| 1886 | North Division | |
| 1887 | * | |
| 1888 | ||
| 1889 | * | |
| 1890 | Evanston | |
| 1891 | Evanston | |
| 1892 | Englewood | |
| 1893 | Evanston | |
| 1894 | Evanston | |
| 1895 | Hyde Park | |
| 1896 | Hyde Park | |
| 1897 | Austin | |
| 1898 | Englewood | |
| 1899 | Englewood | |
| 1900 | Austin | |
| 1901 | Hyde Park | |
| 1902 | South Division | * |
| 1903 | Hyde Park | Medill |
| 1904 | Oak Park | Austin |
| 1905 | Austin | * |
| 1906 | Hyde Park | |
| 1907 | McKinley | |
| 1908 | Crane Tech | |
| 1909 | Crane Tech | |
| 1910 | Phillips | |
| 1911 | -no champ- | * |
| 1912 | St. Philip | Oak Park |
| 1913 | Phillips | * |
Published with permission. All rights are reserved by the author.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Illinois High School Association.