1. Welcome to SportsJournalists.com, a friendly forum for discussing all things sports and journalism.

    Your voice is missing! You will need to register for a free account to get access to the following site features:
    • Reply to discussions and create your own threads.
    • Access to private conversations with other members.
    • Fewer ads.

    We hope to see you as a part of our community soon!

1946 PCL baseball promotional film

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by micropolitan guy, Jul 15, 2012.

  1. micropolitan guy

    micropolitan guy Well-Known Member

    I found this on Baseball Digest yesterday. It's long (26 minutes) but pretty interesting. Some nice shots of old Wrigley Field in Los Angeles and some talk about making the PCL the third major league.



     
  2. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    Cool stuff! Portland's spring training appears to be from Municipal Stadium in San Jose, which is still used by the Cal League's San Jose Giants as well as San Jose State.

    Can anyone think of a reason why Lefty O'Doul isn't in Cooperstown, not only as a player, but for helping introduce the game to Japan?
     
  3. Baron Scicluna

    Baron Scicluna Well-Known Member

    He barely scratched out 11 seasons in the big leagues and of those 11, only four of them were really spectacular seasons with two others that were pretty good.

    He had four other excellent years in the Coast League in the 1920s but that's not considered by the Hall voters to be a major league, even though, up until the mid-1950s, it could have been semi-considered to be one.

    The attendance and the salaries were similiar. Lore has it some players supposedly had offers to go up to the majors and refused because they would have taken a paycut. And there were a lot of players who would go to the Coast League once the majors were done with them to squeeze out a few more years at near-major-caliber play and pay.
     
  4. jr/shotglass

    jr/shotglass Well-Known Member

    I love this sort of stuff. Thanks.
     
  5. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Many books and articles from the 1930s-50s reference the possibility/ambition of the PCL becoming the third major league. It wasn't really until the Dodgers/Giants made the dual leap in 1957 that possibility was shut down.

    Had the PCL gone full-bore independent right after WWII -- beat the NL/AL to the punch in signing African-American (and then Latino) players, used Hollywood connections to set up TV coverage, aggressively expanded into Texas, Arizona and Denver, it probably could have quickly become at least a third equal league if not the dominant major league.
     
  6. crimsonace

    crimsonace Well-Known Member

    As a sucker for old baseball/sports info, this is awesome. Great find.
     
  7. jr/shotglass

    jr/shotglass Well-Known Member

    With the exception of Casey, who of course went on to bigger things, that bunch of managers looked like a group prototype for Jimmy Dugan in "League Of Their Own."
     
  8. buckweaver

    buckweaver Active Member

    Baron covered it well: O'Doul isn't remotely qualified as a player. As an ambassador, he's a perfect candidate for the Buck O'Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, IMO.

    As for Japan, he did help organize its first professional league in 1936 and legend has it the Tokyo/Yomiuri Giants were named in part to honor O'Doul's major league team. But he didn't introduce Japan to baseball; they were playing ball before O'Doul was even born.

    From Rob Fitts' article on Eiji Sawamura (Japan's Cy Young Award is the Sawamura Award) in the spring "Baseball Research Journal". As a 17-year-old in 1934, Sawamura held the great All-American team with Ruth, Gehrig, Foxx and Gehringer hitless into the 4th inning and scoreless into the 7th in a 1-0 loss — the only run being a Gehrig homer:

     
  9. HanSenSE

    HanSenSE Well-Known Member

    Works for me.
     
  10. Gehrig

    Gehrig Active Member

    I go back and forth on O'Doul. He clearly had a high peak value, but he would be an exceptionally short career honored by the HOF. Plus, he's from an era whose players are over-honored.

    Two of O'Doul's best years came at the Baker Bowl, which was not quite the Coors Field of its day, but it was very much a hitter's paradise.

    I won't object to his being in the HOF. O'Doul was a great player, if only for a short time. He had a long minor league career at a time when the PCL was a more independent minor league, and O'Doul was a celebrity in San Francisco, so he may have lost some years due to being owned by a minor league team. But he's a marginal HOFer at best. Al Rosen and Hal Trosky have better cases.
     
  11. crimsonace

    crimsonace Well-Known Member

    O'Doul = not a HOFer as a player.

    The Hockey Hall of Fame has a "builders" category for front-office people and those who really helped build the game. He would most certainly be a pretty good candidate as a "builder" given his contributions to international baseball.
     
  12. SoCalDude

    SoCalDude Active Member

    O'Douls is a great bar in San Francisco, one block from the Hilton, where a lot of teams stay. Been there a bunch of times.
    One time when I was working desk, our writer filed the wrong story and a numbnuts phone guy didn't realize it. In the days before cellphones, I was able to track down our writer at O'Douls in time for him to send the correct story.
     
Draft saved Draft deleted

Share This Page