PCL Gets a Proper Hanging

“Williams is a very slow lad,” begins the typewritten letter displayed inside the glass case, “not a good outfielder and just an average arm. There is a big doubt whether Williams will ever be fast enough to get by in the majors as an outfielder. His best feature now is that he shows promise as a hitter, but good pitching so far has stopped him cold.”

The letter, a scouting report sent from New York Yankees scout Joe Devine to Yankees club secretary E.G. Barrow, is dated Sept. 26, 1937.

Subject: An 18-year-old outfielder for the San Diego Padres named Ted Williams.

“Runs, Hits and an Era” is the name of the Gene Autry Museum of Western Heritage’s current exhibit on the old Pacific Coast League, an exhibit that does not exclude the occasional glaring error. OK, so Devine punted on the Williams kid back in the ‘30s. It happens. In ‘35, Devine did have this to say about another young PCL outfielder playing for the San Francisco Seals:

“The only real standout player that I have seen all year is DiMaggio and I am sure that you can start DiMaggio right off next year and he will play the kind of ball you like to see played. DiMaggio should in two years be one of the stars of your Ball Club.”

And Devine, truthfully, did not have a thing to do with this headline that appeared in the July 27, 1933, edition of the San Francisco Chronicle: “OAKS STOP DEMAGGIO’S HITTING RECORD.” That would have been Joe DiMaggio’s 61-game hitting streak with the Seals, the longest in professional baseball to that point and a harbinger for the 56-game streak he would assemble with the Yankees in 1941.

There is no E in DiMaggio, as we all know today, although it took the Chronicle sports desk awhile to catch on. Two more Chronicle sports sections from 1933 trumpeting some feat or another by “DeMaggio” can also be found in this exhibit.

“Runs, Hits and an Era” covers the first 55 years of the PCL, from its inception as several West Coast tycoons’ money-making scheme in 1903 to the arrival of the big-league Dodgers and Giants to California in 1958, a development that forced the PCL’s Los Angeles Angels, Hollywood Stars, Oakland Oaks and San Francisco Seals to relocate--altering forever, for better or worse, the way the game was watched and followed in California.

In the PCL, fans mingled with players after games and during the off-season--and occasionally purchased cars and poultry from them. PCL players were neighbors and local businessmen who had to make a living year round. Game programs from the 1940s and ‘50s feature advertisements for Babe Herman’s “Blue Ribbon” turkeys, Mel Duezabou’s automobiles and Oakland Oaks’ infielder French Uhalt’s “Gay Club,” which carried a somewhat different connotation in 1953, billing itself as “the place to meet your friends before and after the ballgame.”

In the PCL, at San Francisco’s aptly named Recreation Park, fans had the option of throwing back shots of Scotch in the “Booze Cage” or laying bets on the outcome of individual pitches in the “Gambling Section”--both unofficially designated seating areas inside the ballpark. According to the inscription alongside the hand-painted model of Recreation Park, “along with the price of admission came either a shot of whiskey, two bottles of beer or a ham and cheese sandwich.”

“Needless to say,” the inscription continues, “fans were raucous and vocal in the ‘Booze Cage.’ ”

Sports talk radio, thankfully, was nonexistent then, so PCL fans sometimes resorted to written verse to make their point. From a fan’s “ode” to wild Hollywood Stars pitcher Roger Bowman:

He’s quite a boy this Bowman guy,

His curves are really great.

His pitches break like atom bombs,

But seldom hit the plate.

He fumbles bunts, throws over first,

To let him throw’s a sin.

As good Star fans, we’ll never know,

Why Bragan puts him in.

Bobby Bragan, the irascible manager of the Stars, gets his own display case, where we are reminded of such exploits as Bragan protesting an umpire’s call by removing all his clothes or the time he sent nine pinch-hitters to the plate during a single at-bat while trailing the hated cross-town Angels.

Included with the Bragan display is a letter of reprimand sent to him by Fresco Thompson in 1952: “Many of your game reports have been most annoying to all of us here in the office. . . . I do not know what the purpose of that batting order you used in the first game of June 18th was but to us here in the office, it only served to make you look ridiculous.”

Elsewhere throughout the exhibit, one can find:

--A 1956 “tale of the tape” between boxing champion Rocky Marciano and Angel slugger Steve Bilko. Weight: Bilko 230, Marciano 187. Chest: Bilko 48, Marciano 39. Thigh: Bilko 26, Marciano 22. Newspaper headline concludes: “Rock Just Small Boy Beside Bilko.”

--A bat used by Salt Lake City shortstop Tony Lazzeri during a 1925 season that produced PCL records of 60 home runs, 222 RBIs and 202 runs. Of course, there is a postscript: “Tony’s performance was aided by a 200-game PCL schedule.”

--A display lauding Padre Manager Lefty O’Doul as American baseball’s great “ambassador to the world” for coordinating off-season barnstorming tours to Japan. Complete with red bandanna “Lefty’s players used while touring Japan to harass the opposition and excite the fans, 1946-47.”

--Lester “Red” Holmes’ violin case. The versatile Holmes pitched for the 1926 PCL champion Angels and played for the Oakland Symphony.

--A photograph of several San Francisco Seals teammates (“c. 1935”) playfully mugging for the camera by crawling under a wire fence, in full uniform, and stealing chickens.

--A 1919 Vernon Tigers game program with a picture of team owner Fatty Arbuckle on the cover.

--A photograph of a certain Angel infielder so old (1954, to be exact) that Sparky Anderson has dark hair.

The exhibit, which runs through May 12, concludes with a short film chronicling the 55-year period, highlighted by a hilarious shot of Portland players climbing out of their dugout and waving handkerchiefs at Hollywood players clad in pinstriped short pants, a short-lived sartorial experiment.

It is an affectionate, and sometimes mischievous, look back at an era of West Coast baseball when Gilmore and Wrigley Fields were the places movie stars went to be seen, when Angels-Stars was a rivalry that divided families, when Steve Bilko and Jigger Statz were larger-than-life legends and when men were men.

Even while playing in short pants.