Unions Start With a Victory

The Catholic Union youth baseball team of Saratoga Springs was “one of the fastest in the capital district” last year. Their 18-2 record included a victory over the reputed Northern New York champions, the Schenectady Foresters.

Manager William Hickey’s 1918 team takes the field for the first time this afternoon at the Rye Lot diamond, hosting the Ballston Spa Arcadian Club.

“The locals started off with a rush, scoring four runs in the first inning and three more in the third inning,” a Saratogian sportswriter reports. The Arcadians roar to life in a five-run sixth, sparked by a bases-clearing double. The Unions get what looks like an insurance run in their half of the inning, but three more Arcadian runs in the top of the seventh tie the game.

When exactly the Unions win the game is unclear. The sportswriter reports that the winning run comes across in the bottom of the eighth, but the box score shows it happening in the bottom of the seventh. In any event, second baseman Donohue starts the rally with a single and scores all the way from first when Arcadian center fielder Mann drops a fly ball from Union first baseman Rowland. Winning pitcher Ferguson strikes out fourteen in a complete game effort. The game is over in a brisk one hour and forty minutes.

“The Unions will play any team averaging seventeen and eighteen years,” the local paper notes. Any team that wants to take them on can mail a challenge to Hickey at the Saratoga National Bank.

— Kevin Gilbert