The 1920s not without reason has been hailed as the "Golden Age of Sports." Such larger than life sports heroes such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Red Grange, Bobby Jones, and Jack Dempsey who graced the sports pages and the massive crowds that flocked to the sports stadiums of the day made America sports conscious like no other decade preceding it. High school baseball, which today is an also-ran for the attention of sports enthusiasts, was likewise in that golden era a beneficiary of America's fascination and interest in sports. Throughout the decade extensive columns of ink and inch-high headlines in Chicago newspapers were devoted to high school baseball games. Of particular public interest was the annual New York-Chicago intercity game held each year from 1920 to 1926. The existence of this intersectional series, unfortunately, has been lost in the mists of history, but for a few short years the annual contests between New York and Chicago high schools were one of the biggest stories in Illinois interscholastic sports, attracting crowds of in the tens of thousands.
The New York-Chicago baseball series began after a decade of fits and starts by Chicago high schools in arranging of intersectional games. As early as 1907, Seattle High School visited Chicago and during a four-day period in the middle of June played five games against the local schools, splitting a pair each with North Division and Phillips, and beating a combined Crane/McKinley team.
The New York public schools were far behind their Chicago counterparts as far as organized baseball activity was concerned. Whereas the Chicago schools were competing against each other in the early 1880s in an organized league, the New York did not even have public high schools, except in Brooklyn, which was a separate city then. The first New York public highs were established near the end of the 1890s, and the game established in the schools lived a hard-scrabble existence. As in Chicago, Gotham baseball was probably the most disreputable of the high school sports. In the two leagues that served the schoolboys in the late 1890s, the Metropolitan and the Long Island, the baseball teams included semi-truants who jumped from team to team, and games were frequently disrupted by fighting and bad sportsmanship. In this climate, educators in the city in the fall of 1903 formed the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) to clean up interscholastic sports and baseball in particular. Baseball competition was sponsored in the spring of 1904, but the first league high school championship was not held until the spring of 1907.
The New York-Chicago intercity series was sponsored in Chicago by the Chicago Tribune and in New York by the Public Schools Athletic League. The Tribune by its extensive coverage also served as the series biggest booster. The winner of each year's contest was presented the W. W. Cohen trophy, a silver cup donated by a member of the New York board of education.
Despite their late development in the game, the New York boys when they finally met the Chicago boys won the seven-year series, 4-3, but several of the games were close enough to have gone either way. In the first year of the intercity competition, 1920, Commerce High on Manhattan came to Chicago and played Lane Tech. The game attracted some 6,600 fans. The teams played in Cubs Park (the name for Wrigley Field then) and it was a blowout by the players of Commerce, who won 12-6. The high point of the game was the home run hit off Lane reliever Norris Ryrholm by 17-year-old Lou Gehrig of Commerce in the top of the ninth with two outs and the bases loaded. It was a mighty blast that flew over Cub Park's right field wall, and the sportswriters of the day rightly dubbed the young phenom "Babe Ruth Gehrig."
The spectators were treated to not only an exciting game of baseball, but also to all the bells and whistles of a championship event. The Tribune reported, "Before the contest began the Lane band in khaki suits marched across the field, followed by the ball players. In front of the flag the band and athletes halted, and the national anthem was rendered. All during the game Jack Bramhall's band reeled off jazz, and the three Lane cheer leaders were on the field continuously, doing stunts and leading the throng of students in the yells. Some song boosters sneaked in and megaphoned a couple of the latest to the crowd, and Frisco, the noted dancer, who came from New York on the same train with the team, took the field once and gave an exhibit of the latest moves of the 'shimmy.'"
The following year, Lane Tech, revenged the lost when it traveled to New York City and beat Washington High of Manhattan, 9-5. Lane Tech had beaten Austin High 10 to 9 for the Chicago Public League championship and the privilege of playing Washington. In 1922 the series returned to Cubs Park, where Washington prevailed over the Chicago representative, Austin, 3-2, in a game that went to eleven innings. Austin held a 2-0 lead until the bottom of the ninth inning, when its pitcher, Alexander Black, "blew up" according to the New York Times sportswriter and allowed two runs. Some 10,000 fans trooped to the park to witness the game, and the Tribune the next day reported on it with an inch-high banner headline across the top of the sports page, making it the feature story of the day.
The 1923 contest between Washington and Lindblom was held at Polo Grounds before 40,000 spectators, the largest crowd up to that time ever to see a high school baseball game. Lindblom, like Austin the previous year, made the game close, losing 4-3. An elaborate banquet at the Commodore Hotel was held for the visiting Lindblom squad attended by the New York mayor and other dignitaries.
In 1924, Schurz met a Bronx team, Evander Childs, for the championship in Cubs Park. The Tribune said of the New York players, "the boys all are husky, good sized chaps." But the Schurz team had a terrific pitching ace in Lamar Cripe, who the Tribune described as "a husky little right hander." Evander Childs had sophomore left hander pitcher Frank "Bots" Nekola, a future major league player. Schurz prevailed 4-3 is what was considered the best played game of the series up to that time. Chicago did not generate the fan support that New York did, and only 6,500 fans were in the stands.
Under coach Percy S. Moore, Lane Tech proved to be the dominant Public League baseball power in the 1920s, and in 1925 they won the first of three consecutive league championships. Before meeting the New York team, Lane had won 29 out of 30 games with both stingy pitching and heavy slugging. In the Public League title game Lane beat McKinley 16-1. The 1925 contest between Lane Tech and Flushing High of Queens before 57,178 spectators at Yankee Stadium was the largest crowd ever to see a high school baseball game. The crowd could have been even larger, but the stadium authorities not expecting the number of fans had the third deck closed, and some 5,000 boys and girls with tickets were turned away. The game was also broadcast over radio on station WNYC. Lane Tech won the contest 3-1.
Lane Tech won the 1926 Public League title beating Phillips, which because the school was an all-black team the local papers as was the custom of the day made a big deal of it. The Chicago Tribune noted that Phillips was "one of the biggest surprises of the season. The squad is composed entirely of colored boys and their coach, Ben Mosby, also is a Negro." The New York representative was again Evander Childs, whose team again featured pitcher Bots Nekola. Upon arriving in Chicago, the Evander Childs team was treated to a parade through the Loop to their near north hotel. The Evander Childs team easily prevailed the next day beating Lane Tech 10-2, and as usual was treated to a banquet in the evening, when they were presented with the W. W. Cohen trophy. Chicago got its biggest crowd of the series, when 18,000 fans attended the game. Among the spectators were Cubs President William L. Veeck and baseball commissioner, Kenesaw Mountain Landis.
The 1926 game was the last of the New York-Chicago Intercity series. The New York board of education canceled the 1927 game, and the Chicago Public League and Chicago Tribune tried to prevail on the New York authorities to relent and hold the game, but were repeatedly rebuffed. Offers for an intercity game were also made to Omaha and St. Louis, but both were rejected. The educators of the 1920s were beginning to have qualms about such extravaganzas as the New York-Chicago Intercity championship and were pulling back. In the next few years, national championships tournaments in track and field, swimming, and wrestling would all be shut down by education authorities.
In the 1990s even the most dedicated sports historians have little knowledge of the remarkable New York-Chicago intercity series. Some know of Lou Gehrig's blast over the Cubs Park wall in 1920, but only vaguely connect it with some sort of high school contest. Lane Tech proudly displays the W. W. Cohen Trophy it won in 1925 when it beat Flushing, but it is an award with no resonance. Except for a few oldtimers, it is just a lightly tarnished cup among many in the school's display case.
Winning Team Losing Team Stadium Crowd
1920 Commerce 12 Lane Tech 6 Cubs Park 6,600
1921 Lane Tech 9 Washington 5 South Field 5,000
1922 Washington 3 Austin 2 Cubs Park 10,000
1923 Washington 4 Lindblom 3 Polo Grounds 40,000
1924 Schurz 4 Evander Childs 3 Cubs Park 6,500
1925 Lane Tech 3 Flushing 1 Yankee Stadium 57,178
1926 Evander Childs 10 Lane Tech 2 Cubs Park 18,000
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the Illinois High School Association.