National Pastime Offers Enduring--and Evolving--Appeal

It’s 1909 in Tustin, population something under 900, and if you’re a boy who loves baseball, you have only primitive options.

The closest big-league teams are about 1,500 miles away in St. Louis, so distant they might as well be in China.

There is only one way to find out what’s happening: the newspaper. It reports that the great Ty Cobb and Honus Wagner are leading Detroit and Pittsburgh to the World Series, but you have never seen them except in stiff, posed portraits in magazines.

But you can play baseball--or something like it. There is no youth league or baseball field in town. In fact, there is no park, only a dirt tennis court surrounded by tufts of weeds on someone’s vacant lot.

“But who needs a park when you can play in the street?” said Carol Jordan, an authority on Tustin history. “The street was the smoothest place in town. It wasn’t even paved until 1914.”

The left photo shows boys doing just that--playing on Main Street just east of D Street (now El Camino Real). Main Street really was the town’s main street, but in 1909, traffic was no problem at all. Entire innings went by before a vehicle appeared, and in those slow, horse-drawn days, you got plenty of warning.

Almost a century later, youth baseball in Orange County looks like the major leagues of 1909. In the photo on the right, a Little Leaguer takes a strike at Youth Athletic Park in Mission Viejo, where 41 acres contain 13 Little League baseball fields, eight of them equipped with backstops, fences, dugouts, scoreboards, bleachers and concession stands. Three fields are lighted for night play.

Now there is so much Little League baseball you couldn’t fit it onto a freeway. Mission Viejo alone has four leagues. Orange County has an estimated 53 leagues with 2,054 teams and nearly 25,000 players, both boys and girls.

OC Then and Now calls, (714) 966-5973; e-mail, steve.emmons@latimes.com.