The 1926 World Series was one for the ages. It featured the Yankees’ fabled Murderers’ Row anchored by the great Babe Ruth and, the Pride of the Yankees, Lou Gehrig. As game six arrived, the stage was set for another Yankee championship.
Three days earlier, Ruth had promised to hit a home run for little Johnny Sylvester, sick in the hospital with slim chance of recovery. The Babe delivered on his promise, belting three homers that day.
Now the Yankees were ahead three games to two and, playing game six at Yankee Stadium, they looked unstoppable. Their opponent, National League champ St. Louis Cardinals, had little chance.
So it was that about 75 fans gathered on a dirt yard in Lamanda Park to “watch” game six of the series. It was a Saturday afternoon affair in New York. But, thanks to telegraph lines, a guy with a megaphone and this scoreboard the Lamanda Park faithful were able to “watch” the game literally pitch-by-pitch.
An upset was brewing and the mighty Yankees were going down. Game six and then the series belonged to the Cardinals. St. Louis brought their own high drama in the form of player/manager Rogers Hornsby and a 39 year old pitcher named Grover Cleveland Alexander, whose happy visage is shown above.
The story is told in a 1952 movie, The Winning Team, starring Doris Day and Ronald Reagan. Alexander overcomes a trio of obstacles — mysterious fainting spells, hearing loss suffered as an artillery sergeant in World War I, and then a bout with alcoholism — to emerge as the unlikely hero of the series. He pitches and wins games two and six for the Cardinals.
Then, in the deciding game seven, the Yankees have the bases loaded in the eighth inning and are poised to pull ahead for the win. Hornsby calls again on Alexander. “Old Pete,” as he was called, saunters in from the bullpen, promptly stops the Yankee rally and wins the game and series for St. Louis. ，
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Lets get back to Lamanda Park. Our local fans, many in overalls, are gathered on wood benches laid out in what appears to be a dirt materials yard. The scoreboard is made of lumber and wallboard supplied by Kerkhoff-Cuzner Lumber, which had a branch store in Lamanda Park. Design and graphics were supplied by local sign maker, Jack Rhodes. Flatbed trucks advertising plumbing and heating are in view as are an array of water pipes of differing diameter. Many of the crowd biked to the event and their bicycles have been dropped down on the dirt. A faint outline of the San Gabriel Mountains looms in the background.
Just a guess, but assuming the dirt yard is that of the Kerkhoff-Cuzner company, the yard would have been near the corner of present-day Walnut St. and N. Vinedo Ave.
In 1926, radio coverage was mainly local. Long distance live broadcasting was still a few months away. The first coast-to-coast live radio broadcast would take place in January 1927 originating from the Rose Bowl. That broadcast was a gargantuan effort with NBC renting 4,000 miles of telephone lines to link more than 50 radio stations.
So, telegraph was the best way to communicate pitch by pitch news about ball games. Parker’s photo nicely depicts how the game in New York was relayed almost real time to fans in Lamanda Park. One man reads the telegraphed message coming in from a telegraph operator who is at Yankee Stadium. Another man has a megaphone and announces to the crowd each ball, strike, hit or out. Two others then manually change the scoreboard to reflect the result. So fans both hear the report and, see it reflected on the scoreboard.
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Now, in the great City of Pasadena, the scene was quite different. Lamanda Park was rural — fans gathered in a dirt yard. By contrast, Pasadena fans went to the theater to “watch” the game in high style.
The Pasadena Evening Post invited all comers to the 1,800 seat Pasadena Theater (the Raymond?) to watch the game in “perfect comfort.” Constructed on stage was a Playograph. Similar to the rudimentary Lamanda Park scoreboard, Playograph was made by a company of the same name. The large mechanical devices recorded a baseball game’s progress and were visible at great distance.
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This is an interesting photo that I don’t want to leave. I am drawn to the rather rough-hewn Lamanda Park gathering, Wouldn’t it have been fun to be among that crowd “watching” the game? And I like the contrast between the rural Lamanda Park crowd and the theater-goers in Pasadena. The eminent photographer, Mr. Parker, had his office in downtown Pasadena. Why did he forego the theater for a dirt yard in Lamanda Park?
The photo also reminds that, while a baseball game is and was 9 innings long, the world in which these Lamanda Park fans lived was much different than our world today. Obviously technology has advanced far beyond the Playograph.
In 1926, baseball’s color barrier was firmly in place and would remain so for another two decades. While the Yankees were losing to the Cardinals, the 1926 Colored World Series was playing with the Chicago American Giants beating Atlantic City. The Chicago team was managed by Rube Foster, recognized as the Father of Black Baseball.
The Lamanda Park crowd lived in much closer proximity to war than we do. World War I had ended in 1918 and its impact lingered. Like Alexander, many players and probably more than a few Lamanda Park fans were WW I vets. Over in Pasadena the towering Goodhue Flagpole would be installed February 1927 to honor local soldiers killed in the Great War.
And, the west coast was still a relative backwater compared to northeastern part of the country. Likely few in the Lamanda Park crowd would ever see a real major league baseball game. It would be more than three decades before the Dodgers and Giants moved west to California.
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