We’ve always been big sports fans

Yesterday, we attended a program at the Lost Bridge Community Center which featured an entertaining piano player who was playing very old songs, some from the 1890s, and some from as late as the 1930s. One of his songs was “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” which, I think he said, was written back in 1902.

I think even today it is still played regularly at baseball parks that can do music, including our St. Louis Cardinals ballpark. Interestingly, the fellow who composed the music had never been to a ball game, and when, some years later, a friend took him to a game, he didn’t like it! I wonder about that?

Of course, people have very different tastes in entertainment, but I haven’t known very many people who don’t enjoy a good baseball game.

In the early 1900s, baseball was really America’s game! Football in those days had not come to the fore in popularity as it is today.

Baseball was the big deal. Lots of local and rural communities in those early days had baseball teams. Going to a local baseball game on the weekend was a popular form of family entertainment. These teams were made up of local guys who just wanted to compete for the fun of it, at least for now. Some might aspire to becoming a professional baseball player someday. Our own Clyde “Pea Ridge” Day grew up in such a community, went to school at Sassafras School northeast of Pea Ridge, and played in those local baseball games, along with his brother Lemmie Day, during their younger years.

He would later have an impressive career in the minor leagues, working as an outstanding pitcher with the Kansas City Blues and the Los Angeles Angels teams. In the late 1920s and early 1930s, he pitched in the major leagues for the St. Louis Cardinals, the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Robins (who later became the Dodgers).

My brothers and I, especially Ben and I, grew up listening to Harry Carey and the St. Louis Cardinals on the radio. We were big Cardinal fans even before television came in and made it possible to actually see the games, as well as to hear them. Of course, with a play-by-play broadcaster like Harry Carey, you didn’t really need television. Harry could make you see what was going on through his words and through his excitement “Musial swings! and it’s a high fly ball, deep into right field, way back, it might be, it could BE, IT IS a home run by Stan Musial! Holy Cow, what a hit by Stan the Man!”

I guess TV adds to the ballgame experience, but we didn’t miss not seeing the game, we just listened to Harry Carey and saw the game in our minds. Funny how radio in the old days was like that. There were many programs and commentators who could paint vivid word pictures and make your imagination come alive. I still remember one particular baseball game,with the Cardinals against the New York Giants (long before they moved to San Francisco), with Harry Carey doing the radio commentary.

The Giants were ahead 11-0 until late in the game, when the Cardinals’ bats came alive. The Cardinals batted around the lineup nearly four times, scoring runs all the way, and in the end our Cardinals won the game. Harry Carey was so excited that I still wonder if the game didn’t exhaust him so that he would have to take a rest day to recover.

I was a little disillusioned by Harry Carey’s changes through the years, although they were understandable. When we first started listening to ballgames with Harry doing the play by play, he was sponsored by Griesedick Brothers Beer, and of course that was the very best brand in the whole world. Then, shortly, he went over to Busch Brothers Beer, and suddenly Budweiser was the very best brand in the whole world. I thought, boy, that’s not very loyal!

Then, later, grief upon grief, he moved over from the St. Louis Cardinals to the Chicago Cubs franchise.He would even root for the Cubs against the Cardinals. Of course, we were still convinced that the Cardinals should win and that they were the greatest, and that they were OUR team!

In school at Pea Ridge, for high school sports we were mainly a basketball school. I always studied and tried to do well in school, but in much of my high school time I was mainly interested in Blackhawk basketball and how I was going to tame that blond haired guy on the Prairie Grove team (and also that long-armed guy on the Reed Springs team).

At recess time, we were into softball. Our softball fields were located in the area now occupied by the Intermediate School gym. There were no fences, except those at the right field, which ended at the Loyd Miller property line. We didn’t count home runs by how far we hit the ball, we called it a home run if you hit it so that the fielders couldn’t get the ball back in play before you made it around to home plate.

A few years our coach did put together a baseball team to play a few games with other schools, but we didn’t do too well during my years. We were better at basketball.

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Editor’s note: Jerry Nichols, a native of Pea Ridge, is an award-winning columnist, and a retired Methodist minister with a passion for history. He is vice president of the Pea Ridge Historical Society. The opinions expressed are those of the author. He can be contacted by e-mail at joe369@century tel.net, or call 621-1621.