The year 1923 was a big year for professional baseball in Williamsport. In that year, the Williamsport team became a charter member of the newly formed New York-Pennsylvania League, later to become the Eastern League.
Williamsport fielded a very good team in the new league that year and captured the league’s first championship.
The team had no formal nickname, although local sports scribes referred to them variously as the “Billies, the “Bald Eagles,” and the “Hinchmanites,” a nod to manager Harry Hinchman.
They would not be known as the “Grays” until the following season, as a tribute to Sheriff Thomas Gray, who was the team’s president at the time of his death in 1923.
That newly won pennant would be hanging from the flagpole at the Williamsport High School Athletic Field when the exhibition game with Babe and his all-stars came to play.
If the championship was the ice cream sundae treat for Williamsport baseball fans, then the appearance of the Babe Ruth All-Stars on October 31, 1923, was the cherry on top of that sundae.
As was the custom in those days, big-name baseball players would bring groups of players, often peppered with first-rank major leaguers on these teams, to play local nines throughout various parts of the country. These were opportunities for these players to make a little extra money and provide fans out in the hinterlands the opportunity to see real live major leaguers in action.
In late October 1923, the legendary and immortal Babe Ruth took a group of players, which were dubbed the “Babe Ruth All-Stars,” into the coal region of Northeastern Pennsylvania, as well as some other communities such as Oil City and Williamsport.
The Babe Ruth All-Stars played in Williamsport after playing games the previous several days in places such as Mahanoy City, Wilkes-Barre, Oil City, and Shamokin.
Several days before that game, Ruth had stopped in Williamsport on his way to Oil City and, while here, was invited to the home of a prominent local attorney, Frank Cummings, who, like Ruth, was active in the Knights of Columbus.
Cummings invited him back to his house at 705 Fifth Avenue.
Soon, the word got out, and there was an army of boys there seeking to meet the great Babe Ruth. Among the youngsters that gathered to see him that day was a 13-year-old Carl Stotz, who would go on to gain his own fame as the founder of Little League Baseball.
Ruth signed many items for the boys, but among the most unusual was a Bible belonging to young Billy Nau.
The game itself was played several days later at the former Williamsport High School Athletic Field, where the Williamsport team played their NYP championship season. It would later be the home of Tom Vargo’s great Williamsport High School football teams of the 1950s, nicknamed the “Vargo Express.”
One of the enduring features in the area of the athletic field was the Culler Furniture Factory, which had a single chair sitting on top of it more than 450 feet away from home plate. Local and opposing sluggers took it as a personal challenge to knock the old apple up on that roof, and none did, at least until Babe Ruth did so that October day. It happened during batting practice. Ruth was swatting out many prodigious shots that were wowing the crowd, but their reaction paled in comparison until Ruth hit his gargantuan “Ruthian” blow over the chair. He hit the ball over the chair twice. It was a sight that all who attended the game would always recall with awe and fondness. During that batting practice, Ruth blasted out seven circuit clouts.
The team that Ruth assembled was a pretty good one sprinkled with a number of good major leaguers, including Joe Scott, who had pitched for the New York Giants, a team that Ruth’s Yankees had just vanquished in the 1923 World Series and Dutch Reuther, who pitched with Cincinnati, Brooklyn and the Yankees. He played in the outfield against the Williamsport Nine. Four members of Ruth’s All Stars that day were members of Williamsport’s Pennsylvania Railroad League championship team.
The Williamsport team was made up mostly of members of their 1923 NYP championship as well as some standout local players that included Dave Kramer, one of the best players to ever come out of Newberry.
The Babe Ruth All-Stars defeated the locals 8-5, highlighted by the “Sultan of Swat’s” three-run homer during the contest.
This game was one of the most storied and famous sporting events in Williamsport and Lycoming County’s long and interesting sports history.
If you would like to learn in more detail about this historic baseball day. It will be the subject of a presentation by Brian Fagnano at the next meeting of the local chapter of the Society of American Research to be held in the Lowry Room on the third floor of the Children’s Wing of the James V. Brown Library at 11 a.m. on Saturday, December 2. The public is welcome.
