Dog Days at the Baseball Park
It's another picture day, this time with dogs!
First of all, I’d like to say Hi! to all the new subscribers from the PNW SABR meeting a couple weeks ago. I had a fun time meeting you all!
I’ve got a few different stories in progress, but they all are either asking for more research or more thinking before I can write them. In the meantime, I have some fun pictures to share.
The Mariners are hosting another Bark at the Park Night tonight, so to celebrate, here’s a collection of baseball team pictures I’ve found that feature dogs. I admit that I question the whole point of Bark at the Park Nights. Do dogs actually want to go to baseball games? Does it enhance their lives to walk around the bases after the game? I can’t read dog minds, so there’s no way to know for sure.
We had a family dog growing up, a 100-pound Golden Retriever-Black Lab-German Shepherd mix. At some point my brother and I decided that his favorite Mariner was Jay Buhner. (Buhner’s nickname was The Bone and dogs like bones. It makes sense.) We’d tell the dog that Jay Buhner was batting in that overly exaggerated way people talk to dogs. He’d respond by getting really excited and jumping around even though he had absolutely no idea what was going on. It makes me think that maybe dogs do make good baseball fans; they get really excited to see their favorite player, then go back to sleep. Seems like a healthy way to deal with the ups and downs of fandom.
So maybe the dogs in the following pictures were their teams’ biggest fans.
First up, is one of my favorite team pictures I’ve found. This is the Emerson School baseball team in Ballard ca. 1910. They have the quilted pants you’ll remember from our previous picture day post, and a dog with a brown patch over its eye that brings The Little Rascals to mind. Those kids are ready to go cause havoc on the sandlots of Seattle:
Speaking of the last picture day post, you remember the Snohomish Baseball Team of 1904 and the small dog being held in the back right. An incredible picture all around, and the dog brings it to another level:
Next up, is a team from Hoquiam in 1910. This one first stuck out to me because the front row players aren’t artfully arranged on the ground, they are casually lounging in chairs. And a springer spaniel lounges on the ground in front of them:
I love the baseball sweaters. And the guy in the back row on the far left, did anyone else immediately think that was Christy Mathewson? (It looks kind of like the main picture on his Wikipedia page!)
Also circa 1910, we have the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, Local 81. A player in the front row is holding a dog. I wonder if the dogs got scraps from the butchers:
In 1911, the Waterville (Douglas County) High School baseball team let a dog take a nap on their bats:
We jump ahead a couple decades to 1938, where a group of students at the Stanley School in Tacoma pose with baseball accruements and a dog in the front row:
Also in 1938, we have a Fort Lewis softball team. The dog in this picture gets to wear a hat:
Sometime between 1941 and 1945, a team from Boeing poses with a small black dog in front of the bats and balls:
The title of the above picture was listed as “Boeing Girls Baseball Team”. Skating past calling them girls, you must know I was so excited to see that. A WWII-era women’s baseball team in Seattle?! Alas, from what I could uncover in the newspapers it was actually a softball team. At least they didn’t have to wear skirts while they were playing.
It’s an Olympic Year!
And that means you’re going to hear about gymnastics here…maybe I should change the name of this newsletter to NW Baseball History & Gymnastics?
Anyway, the two Classics meets are over, Nationals is this weekend, and Olympic Trials are at the end of June. Everything counts now! There’s a lot I could chatter about regarding Classics, but I’m not really turning this into a gymnastics newsletter, so I just want to point out a gymnast you should all watch: Seattle native Shilese Jones.
She trains at a gym in Auburn and has been a rising star for years. This Olympic cycle, she has shined. At Classics a few weeks ago she finished second in the All-Around behind Simone Biles, who is on an entirely new level. No one is a lock for the Olympic team and a lot can happen and all that, but barring injury, Shilese Jones is going to be an Olympian.
Her bar routine in particular was spectacular:
The first release move she does is a layout Jaeger, called the Cappuccitti, named after Canadian gymnast Stephanie Cappuccitti. You don’t see a ton of these; it’s incredibly difficult to get the swing to perform it and regrasp the bar, and to hold the shape throughout the skill. It carries a high risk of form deductions for piking (bending at the waist) and for devaluation to a piked Jaeger. But Shilese does not seem to have any of those problems. This is truly spectacular and possibly the best one I’ve ever seen.
I’m going to the August Bark in the Park with my friend and her dog (human tickets: $15. Dog tickets: $20) we’ll see how it goes 😰