George Van Derbeck founded three baseball teams, each of which introduced a now-familiar team-name into American sports: the Portland Webfooters (1890), a precursor of the Oregon Ducks name now associated with the University of Oregon; the Los Angeles Angels (1892), the first professional league baseball team in Los Angeles, a precursor to today's Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in the American League; and the Detroit Tigers (1894), who are still in business as the Detroit Tigers of the American League.
For more background on George Van Derbeck and a history of his three teams and team names, see my earlier post, Angels and Tigers and Ducks - a Baseball Biography of George A. Van Derbeck.
Coincidentally, all three of his baseball teams were involved in three of only a hand-full of early experiments in night baseball under the light.
In 1896, Van Derbeck's Detroit Tigers baseball team, then in the Western League, arranged what may be the earliest night game involving a major league team, an end-of-the-season exhibition meeting with the Cincinnati Reds of the National League.[i] Little is known about what happened at the game, the results were not published and the result of the game was not included in a summary of the four-game series played between the teams that week, in which Detroit bested the National Leaguers three games to one.[ii]
The game is not a major landmark in baseball history. It did not spark a trend of more night games, it was not the first game ever played under electric lights, and wasn’t even the first George Van Derbeck team to play a night game.
People had been dreaming about playing baseball at night from the moment Edison invented his light bulb.
The New Orleans Picayune has discovered that Edison has not
lived in vain – base ball can be played under his light.
The Brenham Weekly Banner (Brenham, Texas), December 27
1878.
The night may not be distant when a nine inning base ball game will be played under its rays.
Little Falls Transcript (Little Falls, Minnesota),
August 7, 1879, page 1 (reprint of New York Sun article).
Children in New York City’s City Hall Park played “tag and leap frog” under the “vivid rays” of an electric light mounted on the New York Sun Building in 1879, prompting one observer to imagine that, “the night may not be distant when a nine inning base ball game will be played under” electric light. [iii] Any children who might have played baseball under that same light would have been among the first people anywhere to play a night game of baseball under the lights. [iv]
Children in New York City’s City Hall Park played “tag and leap frog” under the “vivid rays” of an electric light mounted on the New York Sun Building in 1879, prompting one observer to imagine that, “the night may not be distant when a nine inning base ball game will be played under” electric light. [iii] Any children who might have played baseball under that same light would have been among the first people anywhere to play a night game of baseball under the lights. [iv]
Employees of two Boston mail-order retailers, R. H. White & Co. and Jordan, March & Co., played what is believed to be the first game of night baseball at the Sea Foam House in Hull, Massachusetts on September 2, 1880. [v]
The National League’s Indianapolis
team scheduled a night game against Fort Wayne of the Northwestern League in
1883, which would have been the first all-professional night game if it had
actually taken place. The game was
initially postponed due to weather, and later cancelled after an exhibition
game on the same field, between a minor-league team from Quincy, Illinois and a
college team from Fort Wayne, demonstrated the inadequacy of the light for
satisfactory fielding.[vi]
In 1888, Indianapolis and Detroit
scheduled what would have been the night game between two major league teams, this
time under gaslight instead of electric lights.
Tests with two lights seemed promising, but when they added more lights,
the light from each became dimmer. The team
owner eventually scrapped the idea.[vii]
In 1890, Hartford hosted Baltimore in
a nighttime exhibition game played under eight arc lights one evening after a
regular-season, Atlantic Association matchup.[viii] To lessen the dangers of playing in relative
darkness they played with a softened ball and pitched under-handed. The game lasted only a few innings.
The Electric Light Picnic.
Twenty-five hundred persons gathered at the ball grounds
tonight, expecting to see a base-ball game by electric light. The game was a
farce. Only a few innings were played,
and nobody knows the score, although Hartford is believed to have won. Score cards were sold, but they could not be
used, as, in the absence of a sufficient number of policemen, the crowd rushed
upon the field. Eight arc lights were
used – three at first base, three near third, two in centre field and one on
the grand-stand, but the number proved inadequate. A twenty-cent ball was used, and it was
softened by being pounded with the bat.
Daniels and Valentine tried to do the umpiring. Kid and O-Rourke were the pitchers and tossed
the ball to the batter in the old-fashioned style.
The Baltimore Sun, July 24, 1890, page 6.
With night games so few and far
between at the time, it is interesting to note that the Detroit Tigers were not
George Van Derbeck’s first team to play at night; they were his third team to
experience night baseball.
George Van Derbeck brought
professional baseball to Portland, Oregon with his first professional baseball team,
the Portland Webfooters (the team’s nickname a precursor to the now-well known Oregon
Ducks).[ix]
In August of 1891, the Webfooters played
a three-inning, nighttime exhibition game at Spokane following an official
Northwestern League matchup in the afternoon.
A NIGHT OF
SPORT
Baseball by
Electric Light Next Sunday Evening.
Next Sunday evening a unique entertainment will be given at
the ball park at Twickenham under the auspices of the Spokane Athletic
Club. Fifty arc lights will be placed on
the grounds, and a game of ball will be played between the Spokane and Portland
teams. Each player will appear in a
grotesquely ridiculous suit of his own selection, and a prize will be given to
the player appearing in the funniest make-up.
The Spokane Review, August 2, 1891, page 8.
 |
| Spokane Chronicle, August 8, 1891, page 5. |
The Webfooters took the daytime game
by a score of 8-6[x]
and prevailed in the abbreviated night game 4-3.
SPORT BY
ELECTRIC LIGHT.
A Large
Attendance and Interesting Contests Indulged In.
Spokane, Aug. 9. – [Special.] – Five thousand people saw the
ball game and other sports by electric light tonight. The ball grounds were
brilliantly illuminated by seventy-five arc lights. Three innings were played, Portland winning
by 4 to 3. The Spokane players wore
ridiculous costumes. Manager Barnes was
umpire, and enforced his decisions with a revolver and blank cartridges. Tom Parrott won the 100-yard dash, with
Stenzel second. Parrott also won the
ball for throwing a distance of 370 feet.
Flaherty was second, 363 feet.
Other events made up a ninteresting programme, and the novelty of the
sports by electric light was an unqualified success.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer, August 10, 1891, page 3.
Van Derbeck founded his second team
in Los Angeles in 1892. In 1893, his team,
the original Los Angeles Angels (a century before they were “of Anaheim”),
staged a “Burlesque” game of night baseball before a capacity crowd following
an official, California League day-game against Stockton. Van Derbeck himself had been forced out of
the league before the start of the season, so he was not personally involved in
the game. He moved to Detroit to start
the Tigers before the end of the year.[xi]
The Angels took the day-game by a
score of 7-3. The home team was also won
the nightcap 5-2, but the score was meaningless in a game played entirely for
comedic effect. The game featured a
bulldog, an Angel dressed as the Devil, reverse base-running, and a potato
race.
Some twenty arc lights were hung over the diamond, and a
search light was manipulated from over the grand stand so as to strike any
desired spot on the grounds.
Soon after 8 o’clock there was music by the band, and the
procession approached the diamond. Manager Lindley came first, wearing a hat
nearly as tall as himself, and trailing behind were the respective members of
the two teams accompanied by the musicians.
After marching two or three times around the grounds there was a neat little introductory speech by Manager Lindley, after which the players took their positions. Umpire Brink stood just behind the pitcher and held a rope in his hand. There was a bull dog on the other end of the rope.
The various players then took turns in going to bat. Some of didn’t go to bat, but used an old
broom or umbrella instead. It was a
play-as-you-please game, and they were not over particular about the
rules. One of the batters even ran to
third base instead of to first. Hits
became fouls and fouls were decided to be strikes, which caused the crowd to
yell. This nettled the bull dog, and he
caught a fly on his own account.
A committee was appointed to get the ball again without
getting a bit, and, after this had been done, there was some more sorrowful
batting. Sometimes the ball would drop
to the ground close to the batter, and he would make a home run before the
sphere was picked up. There was more
agony drawn out to some length, during which the bull dog got weary and was
retired from the field.
The game was finally awarded to the home team by a score of 5
to 2, and then the Angels with one fell swoop of their wings polished the
Stockton chaps off the diamond.
A song rendered by “Buck” Hughes was liberally encored, and a
potato race by four nimble colored individuals concluded the evening’s
entertainment.
The Los Angeles Times, July 3, 1893, page 2.
[i]
For more information, see,“The First Night Game at Michigan & Trumbull was
Played in 1896,” Richard Bak, VintageDetroit.com, August 31, 2011. https://www.vintagedetroit.com/blog/2011/08/31/the-first-night-game-at-michigan-trumbull-was-played-in-1896/
[ii]
See my earlier post, “Angels
and Tigers and Ducks – a Baseball Biography of George A. Van Derbeck.”
[iii] Little
Falls Transcript (Little Falls, Minnesota), August 7, 1879, page 1 (reprinted
from the New York Sun.).
[viii]
“Night Baseball in the 19th Century,” Eric Miklich, 19cbaseball.com.
http://www.19cbaseball.com/field-10.html
[x] Seattle
Post-Intelligencer, August 10, 1891, page 3.