The Old-Timers’ Game

Through the haze of six decades and hundreds of baseball diamonds and baseball towns, ballplayers recall the orange blossoms of Anaheim.

They see the towering palm trees surrounding their park and remember the tidy little baseball field inside, the short walk from downtown, then only a few blocks long. In the evenings, they stopped at wooden fruit stands and filled paper sacks, then raised their hotel windows and ate as March breezes rolled over their aching bodies.

They lived and played on the fringes of World War II, and many of them played and then fought, or fought and then played. Between, there were spring baseball and orange blossoms.

Just as major league baseball gathers annually for spring training in Florida and Arizona, teams once employed Southern California--and Anaheim--for the purpose of limbering up for their seasons.

Twenty-six years before Gene Autry brought major league baseball to Anaheim, the Philadelphia Athletics held three spring trainings at La Palma Park, beginning in 1940. The St. Louis Browns came for spring training in 1946 but stayed only one season.

They remain the only major league organizations that made their preseason camps in Orange County. The park and its diamond, now known as Glover Field, is home to many amateur athletic events, including high school baseball and football. The history, however, comes in large part from the A’s and the Browns, from the woolen uniforms that once hung in the stuffy locker rooms, to the men who played on a field that has changed little in half a century.

“It has that old-time backdrop of the bricks, and the facade on the outside,” Anaheim High baseball coach Dave Torres said. “The locker rooms are so small, but you can imagine what it must have been like then.”

Aaron Castaneda, 16, was raised on Dickel Street, two blocks from La Palma Park. His father, Frank, played on the field 25 years ago, as a center fielder for Anaheim High. Aaron is Katella High’s catcher.

“My dad told me all the time what a thrill it was to play there, and I agree with him,” Aaron said. “I think it’s an honor for high school kids to step on the field, knowing who’s come before us there. It makes it more exciting to know they were here.”

The old pros, many of whom are into their 80s and have not returned to Anaheim since they played there, recall some grand experiences.

“It was the land of opportunity,” said Babe Martin, a catcher for the Browns. “That whole area was. If a guy had any foresight--or any money--he could have been another Bill Gates.”

Bud Mahoney, then 17, was among Anaheim’s 10,000 or so residents when manager Connie Mack arrived with his A’s in 1940.

Mahoney, the student body president at Anaheim High and a player on its two-time Sunset League champion baseball team, watched Vic Rudy exhaustively groom the La Palma Park field in preparation for the A’s. Barely two years before, a flood had nearly destroyed the complex.

Soon the players, rising around dawn, were trudging through the hallways of the Hotel Angelina, a three-story, red-brick building on East Center Street with a communal bath on each floor. Their days were spent a mile up Lemon Street, along the rows of Spanish-style bungalows, 20 minutes from their lobby to the La Palma Park clubhouse, built from cement by a Depression-era work force.

Known primarily from Jack Benny’s signature radio call of “ . . . Anaheim, Azusa and Coo-caa-monga,” for its seemingly endless orange groves, and as a cluster of homes along three-laned Manchester Boulevard, Anaheim, thanks in part to the A’s, was becoming known as a town with big-league potential.

Players strolled downtown streets, browsing through Weber’s Book & Music Store, lining up to see the late show at the California Theatre, and attending assemblies in their honor at the local high school. “They were very much a part of the community,” Mahoney said. “Those were some good days, let me tell you.”

The A’s and their traveling party arrived by passenger train, a five-day journey in the dead of winter from North Philadelphia, Pa., to the Coast. Red Smith, then a reporter for the Philadelphia Record, was among them. Mack, manager, part owner and already in the Hall of Fame, would address fans at nearly every stop from the rear platform. His shirt collar typically high and stiff, Mack would preach the gospel of baseball and his A’s.

“A real decent gentleman,” said Crash Davis, an occasional second baseman for the A’s. “I always remember him being dressed up.”

Mack’s rules could be as unyielding as his collar. “He was a great man,” said Sam Chapman, an A’s outfielder, “but he was very strict. A lot of the boys didn’t like him. He didn’t like them going out and drinking beer or anything.”

Time passed so slowly on the trip west, Davis said he both took up and quit playing cards between Philadelphia and the Coast.

“We came off the desert, into the mountains and hit snow,” he recalled. “Then we came down the mountains and were into the green and the water, and it was so warm.”

In 1946, with the war over and the travel restrictions of the previous three years lifted, the Browns arrived at La Palma Park from St. Louis. Catcher Frank Mancuso took a train through Texarkana, Ark., and El Paso, Texas, three full days to Anaheim.

“I was excited,” said Mancuso, who went on to serve 30 years on the Houston City Council, “because that was such a fine place.”

He moved in with a family that lived near the park. Most of his teammates were spread among the Angelina and Pickwick hotels, at about $2.50 a night. They too made their way through town and back every day, often stopping at the Elks Club for their meals.

“There weren’t many ways to get into trouble in Anaheim in those days,” said Eddie Collins Jr., an A’s outfielder in 1941-42 and the son of the Hall of Fame second baseman.

But just because they spent their days training in Anaheim didn’t necessarily mean the players spent their nights there too. Catching a bus out of the Pickwick or hitching a ride with an established player with a rental car, they often journeyed to Hollywood to mingle with celebrities. Manchester Boulevard, with one lane in each direction and a center passing lane, was the prime route.

One problem: Mr. MacBeth, the manager of the Angelina, locked the doors at 11 p.m.

Collins and shortstop Al Brancato returned one night from the Brown Derby to find they were locked out.

“You know, young people wanted to see something,” Brancato, 80, said by telephone from his home in Upper Darby, Pa. “It wasn’t like we were drinking or out trying to get girls or anything. We just wanted to eat there. But we got delayed.”

They discovered a ladder in the alley, hoisted it against the bricks and climbed through a second-story window, discovering what was apparently a well-worn path.

Brancato met actor George Raft and the Three Stooges when the A’s played the Pacific Coast League’s Hollywood Stars. Collins met Roy Rodgers and Gail Patrick, the wife of Brown Derby proprietor Bob Cobb. Crash Davis mingled with Betty Grable and Barbara Stanwyck, part owner in the Hollywood Stars.

“I remember [Stanwyck] cursed,” Davis said, chuckling. “I didn’t realize women did that. Women, if they cursed, were a little more secretive. A Southern lady didn’t do that. I was very naive.”

Mancuso was the last one out of the visitors’ clubhouse one afternoon, and happened into one of Hollywood’s best-known entertainers.

“I was bent over, tying my shoes,” he said. “I saw these two feet in front of me. I looked up and it was Bing Crosby.”

In the film “Going My Way,” Crosby played a priest whose favorite team was the Browns.

“So,” Mancuso said, “we had a connection there. I’ve got the baseball in my collection right here today that I had him sign.”

*

Early in the spring of 1946, the Sporting News reported: “All hands in camp agreed that Connie Mack must have believed he was about to strike oil at some other spot when he gave up Anaheim. La Palma Stadium, large and with a fine playing surface, is rated by the players the best on which they have ever trained. They scamper about without any fear of stepping on a bad spot in the infield or outfield. Clubhouse facilities are strictly big league in every way.”

Jack Dutton, who would become an Anaheim councilman and mayor pro tem, recalls meeting Mack on the street and finding him engaging. Mahoney eagerly attended exhibition games at La Palma Park. Norbert Faessel, who lived in the area at the time, often recounted stories of old-time baseball for his sons, Steve and John Faessel, tales that pleased John in particular.

“In those days,” John Faessel said, “there was no other game. You might have played basketball or football, but it had no relevance. When a major league team came to Anaheim, it was a big thing for the community and the county.”

Before the A’s and the Browns barnstormed back to the East with the Chicago Cubs, who trained on Santa Catalina Island, or the Pittsburgh Pirates, whose camp was in San Bernardino, they made themselves at home. They shopped in the shops and dined in the diners. They met the people, then became them.

“In those days, the United States was a mighty big place, hours and hours between everywhere,” John Faessel said. “This was very important for the community. I was in awe, having been told for years about these men.”

For the players too, there are fond memories.

“They were everywhere,” Crash Davis said of the orange blossoms. “It was beautiful.”