Volume 15 , Issue 9

NW Okie's Corner

[Those listed in the 1909 Guthrie Senators, Upper L-R: Herman Leuttke, Clare Patterson, Bill McGill, Norman Rice, Clyde Geist, Tom Reed. Middle L-R: Red Davis, Tony Anderson, Howard Price, Ted Waring, Milton Pokorney. Seated L-R: floyd Willis, Jesse Clifton, Clarence Nelson.]

I received a surprise in the mail this Monday, 4 March 2013. It was an autographed copy of the Red Dirt Baseball - The First Decades: Small Town Professional Baseball In Oklahoma 1904-1919, by Peter G. Pierce. I had forgotten that I had given permission for Mr. Pierce to use a couple of baseball photos of Grandpa during his Guthrie baseball days.

[This is a 1909 photo of the baseball grandstand at Electric Park in Guthrie, Oklahoma, that was printed on a postcard that my grandpa sent to my grandmother while they were courting in 1909.]

You can find the photos on page 114 and 116 of this paperback book, there is mention of my grandpa, Will "Parsons" McGill, and his baseball days in Guthrie, Oklahoma and the his stint with the St. Louis Browns of Missouri and the Austin Senators of Austin, Texas. Will (a.k.a. Bill McGill), nicknamed "Parsons," (1880-1959) made his debut with Minneapolis of the Kansas State League in 1905. Thirty-two wins for Austin in 1906 and 1907 earned him a cup of coffee with the St. Louis Browns at the end of 1907, winning his only decisions; he was zero for nine in the batting department. He was back at Austin in 1908 but following a a 0-3 start was released. He won eight and lost thirteen for Enid's 1908 Western Association runner ups. Howard Price brought him along when he moved south to Guthrie for 1909. The State Capital, where he won twelve of twenty-one decisions, was his last stop in professional baseball. he returned to his home in Alva where he remained the next forty years.

There is some interesting bit of Oklahoma early baseball in this book. Do you know that in 1909, after two seasons playing as an independent, with the intervention of Enid owner J. H. Shaw, Guthrie returned to the ranks of organized baseball? The Western Association, had abandoned Guthrie in 1906, had to fill gaps left when Topeka and Wichita moved up to the Western League and archival Oklahoma City joined the Texas League. There was no franchise to move, though, and manager Howard Price, had to create a team from scratch. When the season opened he was ready, they opened in May, 1909, there was a crowd of 5,000 at Electric Park, the incumbent State Governor, Charles Haskell of Muskogee, and popular former US Marshal and Territorial Governor, Cassius Barnes, formed the battery for the first pitch with District Judge A. H. Huston at the plate connecting for a solid line drive.

It was Price and Captain Tony Anderson that named a mix of rookies and veterans to play between the lines that day. After an embarrassing nineteen to ten loss on May 2, 1909, Guthrie took the rubber game from the Navigators and found themselves in first place. That was the only time in 1909. After that things went badly downhill. Thirty-eight errors were committed in the first ten games. The Senators lost all but six games between May 4 and May 31, 1909.

New players replaced the ones who took the field in May. One of those was my grandpa, Will "Parsons" McGill, a major leaguer from Alva, who filled out the twirlers. On June 1, 1909, with new players the Senators had found the right chemistry taking a ten to six win in an "uninteresting" game at Joplin. Having won only eight of thirty at that point, the Senators were on top in sixty-two of the next ninety-four outings to climb from the cellar to third place in the final standing, battling Muskogee for second. Guthrie was the only team to sweep a series from champion Enid.

If you are interested in this book, you can do a search for it online. I found the book on Amazon.com for $14.95, but it is temporarily out of stock. It was published 11 February 2013, through the "Oklahoma Heritage Association," with the following book description: "Professional baseball came to the Twin Territories in 1904 with Oklahoma City, Guthrie, Enid, Chickasha, and Shawnee appearing in the Southwestern League and Ardmore, I.T. making a brief appearance in the Texas League. Twenty-eight Oklahoma cities and towns fielded teams in eleven different leagues between 1904 and 1919. Dozens of past and future Major Leaguers toiled in the bushes of the Sooner State. This book tells the story of those leagues and scores of ball clubs from Altus to Vinita along with hundreds of photos of towns, teams, and players."

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