Minor Leaguer

A quick look at an old, old card

Minor Leaguer

For one reason or another, I found myself reading a few articles on the Trading Card Database about the old Zee-Nut baseball sets the other day. One thing led to another, and I wound up reading this post on the Pre-War Cards website.

The article in question is about an extremely poor condition Bill Hughes card from 1924. Among other things, the author did a little bit of research beyond the lack of information on Baseball Reference about the 1924 PCL. He came up with this:

Hughes was one of those career Minor League pitchers who had only a single appearance in the Major Leagues. That was a lot more common in the 1920s than it is today.

Anyway, the article itself is a little bit sparse, so I thought I would do some newspaper research. After all, I’ve got access to a lot of old newspapers, and it’s not really that hard to figure out what happened in the 1924 Pacific Coast League.

First of all, though, here’s a better scan of that 1924 Hughes card:

And, second, you should know that the 1924 Pacific Coast League was one of the most exciting seasons in league history. Here are the final standings as reported by the 1925 Spalding Guide:

Page 196

After 200 games, the Seattle Indians won the pennant by just a hair over Los Angeles and San Francisco. The parity in the league was great, and this would actually be an excellent season to replay.

Page 195

The attendance was good by minor league standards, but wasn’t great by major league standards. However, there was a lot of attention paid to baseball in those days, including in Sacramento:

The beginning of that article is actually a lot of fun:

Page 8 of that same edition of The Sacrament Union also includes the best oepning day article I’ve ever seen:

“Baseball 3, Education 2” really has a ring to it.

Anyway, the Sacramento Solons didn’t do very well in 1924. However, the end of the season was actually quite exciting.

The Seattle Indians clinched the Pacific Coast League on the final day of the season after beating the Portalnd Beavers 12-4 in the first game of a doubleheader.

Seattle had won 11 games in a row to clinch the pennant.

The big hype in the Seattle newspapers was all about the Little World Series, which was supposed to start that weekend.

That front page also featured this rousing editorial:

Seattle’s leading hitter that year was Brick Eldred:

And the pitching staff featured the likes of Carl Williams:

Anyway, in the end the postseason series against the St. Paul Saints didn’t happen. A week and a half of rain caused the teams to call the whole thing off:

From The Olympic-Tribune (Port Angeles, washington), October 31, 1924, page 1

And that was the end of that.

I don’t know of any games that really make it possible to complete a meaningful full project with the minor league teams of 1924. If there’s something out there, it might be fun to play the Pacific Coast League and American Association and see if you can come up with a real Little World Series at the end.