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As It Was: Happy Camp, Calif., Grange Forms Baseball Teams

The Grange in Happy Camp, Calif., formed two youth baseball teams in 1924 that played against teams from other towns.  A local poet named “Rex” described their enthusiasm:

Let us view the contest right

       Every sport enjoys the fight

Our banners high we have unfurled

      It’s Happy Camp against the world.

The girls’ team nearly always won.  The Sedros sisters played catcher, pitcher and second base with the High sisters in the outfield.  They and their girlfriends traveled to other towns, even challenging boys’ teams and winning them, too.

Poet “Rex” describes a local game:

The rooters’ howls they rent the heavens

        The scorecard read just 3 to 7

And now that Ranger band are good and sore

       Next Sunday’s game will be for gore

They swear to even up the score

When Gerad Gosell was manager of the boys’ team, he bet against Billy Storrs, manager of the girls team.  The girls won and Gosell and his boys had to don female bloomer uniforms to the great delight of the crowd.

 

Source: Davis, Hazel "The Old Ball Game." The Siskiyou Pioneer in folklore, fact and fiction, vol. 4, no. 5, 1972, pp. 97-98.

Alice Mullaly is a graduate of Oregon State and Stanford University, and taught mathematics for 42 years in high schools in Nyack, New York; Mill Valley, California; and Hedrick Junior High School in Medford. Alice has been an Southern Oregon Historical Society volunteer for nearly 30 years, the source of many of her “As It Was” stories.