SUNDAY MORNING BASEBALL

                      SUNDAY  MORNING  BASEBALL

 

                                 NORMAN  V.  KELLY

 

I really do not remember Peoria, Illinois without baseball games in the park.  Of course we played in our parks but we never played baseball there.  We went over on Sunday mornings with our bikes and goofed around down by the lake and ran around the pavilion circular porch and even went to the zoo. Once the game started we stayed around most of the game.    I took my daughter and son to the games but they would rather wander around than watch the game and the same was true with my two grand kids,  There was a time I knew some of the players and I remember slowly walking away when I saw the guy coming around for ‘donations’ in a cigar box. I may have had a quarter but they were hard to come back so I just drifted away to come back after he had passed by.  I made up for that with local charities but I feel a bit ashamed of that even today.

 

The league is said to be the “Oldest continuous amateur baseball league in the united States”. I wonder if you know the difference between continuous and continual.  Well…I guess you will have to look it up.

I often wondered why they had to put that word in there…now I know.  The league was put together here in Peoria by a handful of business men, six to be exact, because they wanted the men that worked for them to have a little athletic team to belong to.  It fostered camaraderie and of course the sponsors got some value out of it as well.  I remember some of those sponsors like GIPPS, and even E.N. Woodruff had a team.  South Side Bank was one I remember along with Illinois Valley Glass and Red Diamond Battery.  I think Letourneau had a team in it but it seems like they added Westinghouse to that as well.  So I vaguely remember Westinghouse buying out Letourneau.  In fact I wrote about R.G. LeTourneau and I think he sold his place here for twenty-five million bucks. I worked there myself when I got out of Woodruff High School in 1950.

 

Way back then the teams played at Woodruff Field, but I never saw them there.  I saw a lot of games at Bradley Park because that was closer to ElVista where I lived so it was a big deal going over to Glen Oak Park. They also played at Meinen Field but I don’t remember going there. Now I can tell you personally that I saw those games with a lot of people.  We virtually surrounded the ball diamonds and over at Glen Oak they had two games going on at the same time; maybe Bradley as well. I have heard figures between three and four thousand people were big fans and it was quite a gathering of folks from all over that gathered there.

 

There are some legendary names connected with the old Sunday league and as I mention some of them I really think that you should be hearing this from Bob Sulaski, not me.   It started out as The Sunday Commercial League in the spring of 1916 and later changed to Peoria Sunday Morning League. All writers and speech makers make a major mistake when they name names because invariably names are left out so why should I be any different.  But Ed Saurs is a name that was connected with the league in 1940 as president and so many other things that he did, and he was also a wonderful player. He played for the Peoria Pekin Railroad team but I never even heard about him until I had my own kids.

He was a manager too, I am guessing it was Cohen Furniture and there is quite a gaggle of men that won more than one hundred games, I know he was one of them.

 

Remember Lance Connors and Lefty Tyler? The league had some very colorful umpires but the truth is I forgot all of their names by now.  A few of them were ‘Part of The show,’ and the crowds loved to get on those guys.  I saw a fight or two, but mainly the players were pretty fair with each other and I know that some great friendships grew out of playing on those teams. There was some fierce trading and ‘showboating’ and believe me it was serious stuff when the season began to wind down. Charles Thome Sr. was a magnificent player and manager; I don’t need to mention his son, what a remarkable young man he was and is.

 

I remember now the team that Woodruff sponsored was called the Colts, and O’brien-Jobsts and so many other businesses got in on the act and believe me it paid off for them. Now I bet you are still figuring out that continuous thing, but I can tell you that for some reason I was not able to find out, but the teams did not play in 1930.  If you know the answer to that E- mail me and I’ll pass it along. Now there is only one year that I can tell you for a fact, after that I have no idea.  It was 1976 and in that book were the names and batting averages of 3,236 players.  Now can you imagine what it took to keep up all those stats? I suppose someone is still doing it to this very day. I have not seen a game in three decades but I was told by a guy that used to play that they are playing at places like Eastside Centre and ICC today.

 

I knew a few of the great players like Zach Monroe and Bill Tuttle but that is about all.  Sometimes I hear a name like Doc Halliday and some guy named ‘Wheels’ and my thoughts go back to the old ball park. You know I think someone wrote that in all forty-five guys that played in the Big Leagues played right here in Peoria with the old Sunday Morning League. Some of them went on to fame and of course Zack Monroe was on the 1958 Championship Yankee team and has that ring to show for it. I think Joe Girardi played a bit here as well. Anyway I don’t know anything about baseball and I hate to admit it but I was never really a fan of any team, I just like certain guys and frankly I do not care if the Cubs beat the cardinals or vise-versa but I sure like the history behind our own Sunday Morning League.

Editor’s Note:  Norm is a true-crime writer and Peoria Historian and author.             norman.kelly@sbcglobal.net