Motorsports, baseball claim early foothold

Six weeks or so after the Cochise County Fair featured horse racing and bronco riding, and while the first Arizona State Fair was festively honoring statehood and touting horseshoe contests, life was moving much faster not far away as the Arizona sports scene evolved 100 years ago.

In late October 1912, a dozen cars were involved in the fifth annual Los Angeles-to-phoenix road race to demonstrate the need for an improved highway between California and Arizo- na. While not exactly burning rubber on what passed for roads — sand drifts and raging torrents hampered efforts at various times, according to

account of the race — winning driver Ralph Hamlin, in an air-cooled Franklin, won the 511-mile event in18 hours,10 minutes and 22 seconds.

He averaged 26 mph, the fastest-ever for the race, in which only five cars finished. Here’s what the writer had to say about the conditions outside of Phoenix:

“… Roads that are usually considered fair, as country roads go, were made extremely difficult by the heavy rains of the preceding day and the two small streams that intersect the course near Hassayampa had become over night raging torrents that necessitated extreme care in fording, with consequent loss of time.”

The race almost turned into tragedy, as the

retold a couple of years ago.

The reported at the time that hundreds of spectators had assembled near Spadra, Calif. A car in the race and a Southern Pacific freight train were approaching from opposite directions.

To the rescue came Pomonan Frank Balfour, who was assigned to keep the crossing clear for the drivers. Standing on the tracks, Balfour frantically waved a red lantern; the engineer saw it and stopped only seconds before the car crossed the tracks. According to the

article: “The crowd stood transfixed with horror for it believed the occupants of the automobile would not see the train.”

Meanwhile, the sport of baseball, on its way to becoming the national pastime, was gaining a foothold in Arizona.

According to a comprehensive report by Jeb Stuart Rosebrook for the Sharlot Hall Museum in Prescott, the town of Douglas was lobbying for a professional team. That early dream was spoiled when promoters in New Mexico, which also joined the union in 1912, secured a franchise in the Class D Rocky Mountain League.

That helped lay the groundwork for the Rio Grande Association that would begin play three years later with teams in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.