Book Delves Into City’s Baseball History

By Kurt Helin
Editor

Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig came to Long Beach as part of a “barnstorming tour” in 1927, at the height of their fame as New York Yankees.

The game was to be played at Shell Field, a now-gone baseball diamond with grandstands near the corner of Redondo Avenue and Sterns Street. However, Ruth and Gehrig never came to the plate as the event was rained out.

That story — and photos of Ruth paying a fine at the Long Beach Police Department headquarters — is part of a new book, “Baseball in Long Beach,” by Tom Meigs.

He had started researching some of the barnstorming Negro League teams of the 1920s when the Millikan High School graduate started noticing a trend of those teams playing at Shell Field or Recreation Park, the two fields in Long Beach dedicated in the 1920s.

“I saw a lot of the appearances in the 1920s and ’30s, and that led me to wonder more about the history of baseball in Long Beach,” Meigs said.

He started researching and collecting photographs — most of the book is photos of historic places and players. He found that organized baseball in Long Beach dates back to 1910, when the Long Beach Clothiers of the Southern California Trolley League would play teams at stops along the Red Car line.

When in Long Beach, they played at places such as Shell Field, which for years was the premier baseball field in the city. It started as just a dirt field, where cars lined the foul lines and helped define the outfield wall, but grew into a more traditional ballpark.

“It was probably the first commercial ball field in Long Beach,” Meigs said. “It was paid for, of course, by Shell Oil, which had a professional team here.”

Meigs search for photos led him to some of the legendary figures of Long Beach baseball, such as Chuck Stevens.

“He was a tremendous help,” Meigs said. “He faced Satchel Paige, he played for the St. Louis Browns before they became the Baltimore Orioles, he played for the Hollywood Stars.”

Some of the older material came from former major leaguer Jack Graham, whose father “Peaches” Graham was a member of the Shell Team in Long Beach.

The book also features a tremendous collection of baseball cards from former Long Beach high school players who went on to the Major Leagues — from Jack Rothrock (he played eight seasons with the Boston Red Sox starting in 1925) through the big names such as Tony Gwynn and Jeff Burroughs, and on to today’s players.

“I have to thank Tom Patterson for that, he opened up his collection,” Meigs said of the cards.

Of course, there are a lot of the pictures of the legends of Long Beach, such as Bob Lemon. One of those photos shows him coming back to his alma mater Wilson High School in the 1950s to sign autographs.

“Baseball in Long Beach” is available at local retailers or through Arcadia Publishing at (888) 313-2665 or online at www.arcadiapublishing.com.