What's New

• 
• 

Details

Category: What's New

 

 

Welcome to Good Old Sandlot Days.

Scroll down to see our news feed

 

 

---

 

 

2019 Peninsula Sports Hall of Fame Inductees Named

Jan. 16, 2019

 

REDWOOD CITY _ Six individuals will be inducted into the Peninsula Sports Hall of Fame on the evening of April 25 at the San Mateo County History Museum.

The 2019 event, which will include a reception and light refreshments, is being presented by the San Mateo County Historical Association, headquartered in Redwood City.

The master of ceremonies will be KNBR-Radio baseball talk-show host Marty Lurie

The Hall of Fame was created in 1989. With this year’s group of inductees, the total number of honorees approaches 290. Hall of Fame plaques are located at the History Museum.

For more information on the April 25 affair (including ticket prices), please contact the Association at 650-299-0104.

 

Here are the new inductees:

Nicole Carroll/College of San Mateo

A world-class javelin thrower who starred at CSM and Fresno State, she was a two-time American champion and a member of the 1996 U.S. Olympic team.

Pat Lewis/Mills, Oceana, Jefferson highs

A productive track and field coach for 50 years on the Peninsula, he specialized in tutoring male and female athletes in throwing events (shot put and discus).

Gino Della Libera/San Mateo High

A football and track and field standout, he took his considerable skills to Arizona State University where was an integral part of an undefeated 1957 Sun Devil football team.

Eric Reveno/Menlo School

A basketball state champion at Menlo School, he later played at Stanford and became the head coach at Portland University, earning WCC Coach of the Year honors.

Tod Spieker/Menlo-Atherton High

An outstanding swimmer at Menlo-Atherton and UCLA, and later in masters’ age-group competition, he has had a major impact on aquatics locally and nationally.

John Ward/Carlmont High

An ex-San Mateo County supervisor, he has created and maintained a comprehensive website that charts the long history of Northern California semi-pro/amateur baseball.

 

---

 

 

January | 2018

Wiley B. Allen Co.

 

Wiley B. Allen Co.
Area: San Francisco
Year: circa 1902

 

---

 

August | 2017

Custom Brokers

 

Custom Brokers
Area: San Francisco
Year: 1911

Description: C.D. Bunker & Co. was the sponsor for the Custom Brokers baseball team. C.D Bunker was a customs broker and a ship's agent.

Back row (left to right): Chas. Schmitz, A. Benham, P. Craige, Clem Perkins, A. Buja, C.C. Westover, R. Shields, W.M. Miller, H. Ferviera

Middle row (left to right): George Shepston, Joe Bley, Willie Bolger

 

---

 

 

May | 2017

Gough & Market Merchants

 

Gough & Market Merchants
Area: San Francisco
Year: circa 1935

Back row (left to right): 2nd from left is Frank "Dink" O'Brien, 4th from left is Bob Kelley, 6th from left is Red Agaard, 7th from left is William "Bunk" O'Brien

Front row (left to right): far left is Ace Adams, far right is Harry Brown

 

---

 

 

April | 2017

 Marysville Mechants

 

Marysville Merchants
Area: Yuba (Marysville)
Year: 1921 (Aug. 7)

Description:  Marysville Merchants Baseball team takes flight as the first club to fly to an away game. The flight was 80 miles to Woodland Ca and took 43 minutes.

Marysville Merchants baseball team posing before the Friesley Falcon airliner, August 1921. The team posed with the crew in front of the large twin engine aircraft, they recorded the fact that they were the first ball team in history to travel by aircraft to play a baseball game and this is also recognized Baseball Hall of Fame.  They are from left to right: Clifford Gottwalls, Warren Eich, Roy Francis (pilot), Capt. B. M. Spencer (designer, builder and pilot), Grafton Reed (mechanic), Clyde Manwell, Louis Wilcoxen, Tyrell Brook, Bryden Kelly, Lou Anthony, unidentified, Allen Eich, Charles Brown, and Harvey D. Eich (manager). The bat boy standing in front is Wonton Eich. The man who funded the Friesley Falcon project was Harold Friesley (aka Friesleben). The Friesleben family had a farm on Highway 70 between Marysville and Oroville. The Airliner was partly constructed on the farm. Although this twelve passenger airliner was not a financial success, the Friesley Falcon was aerodynamically and technologically a success. The Friesley Aircraft Corp. went bankrupt in 1922 and it is believed that the aircraft was sold to China.

---

 

 

March | 2017

 

Langendorf Bread

 

Langendorf Royals
Area: San Francisco
Year: 1938-39 (Winter League)

Description: Noting patch on left sleeve advertising 1939 World's Fair.

Back row (left to right): Dick Hazelton (sponsor, owner of Langendorf Bakery), Ray Viani (ss), Rugger Ardizoia (p), Charlie Nelson (of), Joe Futernick (inf), Don McConnell (of), George McSorley (inf), Roy Wetmore (inf), Hank Imperial (inf), Norman McQueen (mgr.)

Front row (left to right): Tony Patch (c), Logan Hooper (of), Mario Vigo (p), Able (utl), Guido Francesconi (utl.)

 

---

 

December | 2016

 

San Mateo Amvets

 

San Mateo AmVets
Area: San Mateo
Year: 1954

Description: Photo taken at base hospital (Veterans Administration) off Willow Road in Menlo Park. 

Back row (left to right): two unidentified representatives of AmVets organization, Jim Kehoe (gen. mgr.) Frankie Hawkins (mgr.)

Middle row (left to right): Dick Simoni, Don Bourbin, Bill Kahler, Pete Pellizzer, Bucky Kahler, Tom Pellizzer, Hal Panattoni, unidentified.

Front row (left to right): Pat McGibbon (batboy), Ron Cecchi, Bob Jones, Gerald McGibbon, batboy.

 

---

 

 

 

 

---

 

 

August | 2016

 

Ben's Golden Glow

 

Ben's Golden Glow Tavern
Area: Alameda (Alameda)
Year: 1939

 

 

---

 

July | 2016

Alaska Packers

Winners of 1935-36 Alameda Winter League

 

 

---

 

 

June | 2016

San Quentin

 

San Quentin All-Stars
Area: Marin (San Quentin)
Year: circa 1950

Description: Picture was taken at San Quentin prison on day team played C & H Sugar. To view team picture of C & H sugar, please go to C & H Sugar under Crockett.

 

---

 

 

April | 2016

 

When baseball was bush league and hit home with everybody

It is spring, the skies are blue, and baseball is back. The Giants and the Dodgers open up the season this week, a good time to go over to the Double Play Bar and Grill for lunch the other day and soak up some of the flavor.

The Double Play is a San Francisco baseball shrine, right across the street from the old Seals Stadium, where the Giants and the Dodgers brought big-league baseball to the West Coast back in 1958.

We had lunch with John Ward, a walking encyclopedia of baseball. He didn’t want to talk about the big leagues and the season to come. He wanted to talk about small-time baseball and seasons long gone.

Baseball used to be part of everyone’s life in Northern California, he said. It still is, but he thinks there is a big difference. Now people watch baseball on television, or at the ballpark, sitting on their duffs, watching the game.

200 teams in S.F.

Back then, they played baseball on organized teams, in organized leagues. Hardball with wooden bats. The real game. Ward, who has developed a website all about these diamond days, says there were 1,600 teams in Northern California — 200 in San Francisco alone.

Ward’s website, a labor of electronic love, offers 7,000 photographs, rosters of teams, videos, box scores and thousands of names. The website is www.goodoldsandlotdays.com, and it is a celebration of what they used to call the bush leagues.

“Now calling something bush league is kind of an insult,” Ward said, but back then newspapers listed the schedule — “Where the Bushers Play Today” — every Sunday. On Monday morning, The Chronicle’s Sporting Green had almost a full page of bush-league box scores.

Everybody, it seems, had a team: bars, restaurants, breweries, labor unions, big companies with a lot of workers, sporting goods stores, auto dealers.

Bernstein’s Fish Grotto on Powell Street had a team. So did the Double Play. Horsetrader Ed, the famous used car showman on Van Ness Avenue, sponsored a team. Every small town had a team, and so did most city neighborhoods. There were ethnic teams: an African American league played in the East Bay and there were many Japanese teams. One of them, the San Jose Ashahi, was so good it barnstormed in Japan, playing college nines.

The Chronicle had a team that went 18-5 in the Class B National League, playing foes like the Marina Lions, the Columbia Park Boys Club, the San Quentin Prison All-Stars and Romey’s Market. Columnist Herb Caen played first base in 1940 and ’41. The only other big name was Ed Dougery, a former Cal player who covered Oakland cops for the paper.

Rising to big leagues

Ward, a one-time politician who served a dozen years on the San Mateo County Board of Supervisors, got hooked on baseball when he was a kid sportswriter, making 5 cents a column inch for stories in the old San Carlos Enquirer. Later, he managed a semipro club on the Peninsula.

Now he’s a property and political consultant, but he’s never lost his love for baseball.

He has a soft voice and a faraway look in his eyes when he talks about this nearly vanished world. It was a semipro game for the most part.

“Some of the players were paid, and some not,” he said. “The umpires got five bucks a game, and sometimes the sponsor would slip $5 to a pitcher. Or they’d pass the hat.”

The games were pretty good, and the big-league scouts would watch them closely. A few of the players became famous: the three DiMaggio boys out of San Francisco and dozens of others. San Francisco in particular was a hotbed of baseball.

Al Erle, who ran a San Francisco sporting goods store, was the de facto commissioner of semipro ball. He’d schedule hundreds of games a week and fill the newspapers with bush baseball lore.

His motto: “Now remember fellows, it’s all for one and one for all. Go out there and hustle.” Corny stuff, right out of the old ballpark.

Ward recalled famous road trips. “We loved to play the Tiburon Pelicans, a town team,” he said. “We changed in a saloon and went there for beer afterwards.

“A favorite trip was to Occidental, up in Sonoma County. The outfield ran uphill, so you didn’t have to chase the ball when it was hit up there. It would roll back down. After the game was a full dinner at Negri’s or the Union Hotel.”

His website covers 100 years of sandlot and semipro ball, ending in 1980. The peak? About 1947, Ward said, after the young men had come back from war.

Some teams remain

Changing times — and big-league ball — killed off small-time baseball, he thinks.

There are still a few teams. The San Francisco Demons of the Latin American League is one. Their home field is Crocker Amazon playground. There are others, including the Novato Knickerbockers of the Sacramento Rural league. But it’s not the same.

Will it ever come back? Ward shook his head, sadly. “No,” he said.

Carl Nolte is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column appears every Sunday. Email: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Twitter: @carlnoltesf

April 3, 2016

---

 

MARCH | 2016

 Vintage pictures

Vintage pictures of town teams throughout northern and central California from 1870 to 1910 can be found on website.

Please click the links below to view vintage team album.

A & K Leaders Fort Jones Marysville B.B.C. Sebastopol Albion Fortuna Mayfield Senators American Steel & Wire Co. Gold Ridge McAdam Creek Sheep Ranch team Anderson town team Goldstein Brothers Mendocino Sisson Angels Boosters Grass Valley Merced town team Snelling  Aptos Greenville Middletown Sonoma Cubs Arbuckle Grimes Monarch of the Oaks Soquel Arthur McAfee Guerneville Montague Suisun City Baron & Feit Hayward town team Monterey town team Sutter Big Bend Healdsburg Montgomeries Taylorsville Boulder Creek Saw Filers Hilmar Mount Shasta Tic Toc Broderick Hilt Mt. Tamalpais Military Academy Turlock Brooke Realties Hop Gold team Nevada City town team Ukiah Caliente Mineral Water Hopland New Almaden Vallejo town team Capital City Wheelmen Igo Oroville Visitacion Valley team Clio Independents Petaluma Alerts Wallace Crescent Mills Ivanhoe Hotel Piccheti Brothers Watsonville town team Crolona J.P Connors Pinole Weaverville Daly City town team Jamestown Quincy Weed town team Dan P. Carter's  Johnsville Redlicks West Sacramento Cubs Duncan Mills  Keswick Rio Vista Wieland's Brewery Etna L.L. Winters team Sacramento "All-Stars" Wiley B. Allen Co. Felton La Porte San Andreas Winters town team Ferndale Largo San Francisco Fire Department Woodland town team Fireman's Fund Insurance Co. Lodoga San Francisco Police Wright's Station Folsom Los Banos San Francisco Waverlys Yreka Forestville Loyal Order Of Moose Santa Rosa College Yuba Intrepids Fort Bragg M.J. Weber Santa Rosa town teams

 

 

---

 

 

FEBRUARY | 2016

 

---

 

JANUARY | 2016

 

Labor unions sponsored many semi-pro teams in the pre and post-World War II era. Please click below on teams.

 

• Bartenders Union

• Cannery Union

• Cooks Union

• Laundry Workers Union

• Longshoremen (ILWU)

• Operating Engineers Union

• Production Machinist Union

• Shipfitters Union

• Teamsters Union

• United Glass Workers Union

• Warehousemen Union

 

---

 

 

DECEMBER | 2015

Breweries were major sponsors of semi-pro teams throughout the bay area and elsewhere in northern and central California during the pre and post-World War II era. Featured on the website are the following (click the links):

• Falstaff Brewery

• Grace Brothers Beer

• Golden State Beer

• Mt. Whitney Brewery

• Muir Acme Beer

• Regal Amber Beer (San Francisco)

• Regal Amber Beer (Redwood City)

• Regal Pale

• Schlitz Beer

• Tacoma Beer

• Topaz Beer

• Wieland's Brewery

 

 

---

 

 

NOVEMBER | 2015

American Legion Junior Baseball

American Legion posts throughout the state sponsored junior legion teams as depicted on website. Click here to view American Legion teams.

---

 

OCTOBER | 2015

 

Talmage Sluggers (Mendocino State Hospital) - Mendocino

 

 

---

 

 

SEPTEMBER | 2015

 

Veteran's Home - Yountville

AUGUST | 2015

 

San Mateo Blues

 

 

JULY  | 2015

 

Vallejo Builders

 

Vallejo team was sponsored by the area’s building trades organization which represents union carpenters, plumbers, electricians and other crafts.

---

 

JUNE | 2015

 

Palo Alto Oaks

 

 

MAY | 2015

 

Ben's Golden Glow

 

 

Ben’s Tavern was owned by Ben Carimanti and located at 1600 Webster St. in Alameda.

---

 

APRIL | 2015

 

Gilt Edge Market

 

Gilt Edge Market
Area: San Francisco
Year: circa 1935

Left to right (Standing): Jackie Kane, Herman Anti, Babe Tognoli, Ernest "Lefty" Gammino, "Muddy" Johnson, Jack Anti, Max Schutte, John Molloy, Lefty "Ty" Wetmore, Bill Coulter, Gene Willig

Kneeling: Manager J.A. Armitage

---

 

MARCH 01, 2015

WEBSITE CONTINUES TO GROW

 

---

 

MARCH | 2015

 

 Nesbit Masonry

 

Nesbit Masonry
Area:Santa Clara (San Jose)
Year: 1959

Description: 1959 California State champions  - National Baseball Congress (N.B.C.) tournament played in Atwater

Back row (left to right): Ralph Romero (p), Bob Wuestoff (3b), Bob Bowles, John Oldham (p), Mel Stein (1b), Don Lopes (mgr/ss)

Front row (left to right): Kent Smith (of), Joe Winstead (c), Don Stiles (p), Tuck Halsey (of)

 

---

 

FEBRUARY | 2015

 

Kimball-Upson Co.

 

 

---

 

 

JANUARY | 2015

 

Sherry's Liquors

 

---

 

DECEMBER | 2014

 

Oakland Post 5 – Montgomery Ward

 

 

---

 

NOVEMBER | 2014

 

Caliente Mineral Water

 

Caliente Mineral Water
Area: Sonoma (Agua Caliente)
Year: circa 1910

---

 

OCTOBER | 2014

 

Oakland Casket Company

 

Oakland Casket Company
Area: Alameda (Oakland)
Year: 1938

Back row (left to right): Frank "Sparky" Corria (mgr, major league scout), Mitch Lisse (p, of), Andy Genovisino (1b), Al Lawrence, unidentified, Al Oliver, unidentified

Front row (left to right): unidentified, Ray Viani, Mel Goulart, unidentified, Pat Clifford (inf), Ike Vincent

Batboys (unidentified)

 

---

 

SEPTEMBER | 2014

 

Castro Natives

 

Castro Parlor No. 232, Native Sons of the Golden West (N.S.G.W.)
Area: San Francisco
Year: 1924 (Jan. 17)

Back row (left to right): Pasquet, Sillineri, Ernest Gammino, Bourne, George McSorley, J. Anti, Wigley

Front row (left to right): Hank Anti, Bonhage, Lou Tognoli, Dito (mgr.), DeFilipo, F. Dito, Jack Dito

 

---

 

AUGUST | 2014

 

1929 M.J.B. Coffee Company

M.J.B. Coffee Company
Area: San Francisco
Year: 1929

 

---

 

JULY | 2014

 

1930-31 Mario's Drugs

Mario's Drugs
Area: San Francisco
Year: 1930-31 (winter league)

Description: Spalding Class "A" Champions (won 11 | lost 3)

Picture was taken at James Rolph Playground in January 1931, located in outer Mission District on Potrero Avenue at corner of former Army Street (now Cesar Chavez Street).

Back row (left to right): Bauman (p), Long (cf), Dust (cf), Sulding (2b), Clekak (rf), Ward (rf), McSorley (ss)

Front row (left to right): Frickles (mascot), Riley (mgr.), Warnoke (p), Trowbridge (lf), Barry (c), Brundage (1b), Tejeda (3b)

 

---

 

May | 2014

 

  Rockport town team (circa 1920)

---

Shannon Rangers (circa 1938)

---

 

Bernstein's Fish Grotto (1930)

Bernstein's Fish Grotto was opened by Maurice Bernstein in 1912 at 123 Powell Street in San Francisco, near the end of the cable car line. It closed in 1981 and there is now a Walgreen's drugstore at the site. Bernstein's was a popular tourist attraction for many years.

 

...Featuring More Very Old Sandlot Teams

 

Reseda semi-pro team won the 1939-1940 winter league championship in Los Angeles city playgrounds.

Reseda is a neighborhood in the San Fernando Valley in Los Angeles, California.

 

---

 

April   |   2014

...Featuring More Very Old Sandlot Teams

 

PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric)
Area: San Francisco
Year: circa 1920

 

===============================================================================================

Palermo Orphans
Area: Butte (Palermo)
Year: 1921

Divisadero Street Merchants
Area: San Francisco
Year: 1920

Front row (left to right): Emil Ruggiero (third from left)

 

===============================================================================================

March   |   2014

 

Featuring Very Old Sandlot Teams from San Francisco

Shreve & Co.
Area:San Francisco
Year: 1911

Back row (left to right): Holden, Wilkinson.

Middle row (left to right): McFarland, Coldenwood, Brookover (mgr.) Garcia, Nagle.

Front row (left to right): Glaser, Harrison, Camozzi.

===============================================================================================

Schlitz Beer
Area: San Francisco
Year: circa 1915

Description: Picture taken at Recreation Park, located at 15th and Valencia in San Francisco.

===============================================================================================

 

===============================================================================================

===============================================================================================

Granat Brothers Jewelers
Area:San Francisco
Year: circa 1930

===============================================================================================

---

January   |   2014

 

 

- January 28, 2014