History Snoopin': The Girls of Summer

The Girls of Summer

---

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, June 8th 2020

It simply couldn’t be true. The Girls weren’t coming. They had turned around.

The male population was justifiably heartbroken. What would have been a “fine exhibition of lower limbs,” was now just a pipedream. Something had to be done!

Early the next morning, on the southbound train to Redding, two of Medford’s best talkers prepared to negotiate. Their wives had laughed at them and called their “mission” ridiculous, but male friends had not so jokingly warned them, “Don’t come home without the Girls!”

The Girls were the Boston Bloomer Girls, a barnstorming bunch of baseball exhibitionists who claimed to be “World Champions of the National Pastime.” Since women of the Victorian Era seldom played baseball in public, the scandalous thought of females in uniforms challenging the men of America was incredibly exotic.

The uniform was much like a baggy softball suit of today. There were no bloomers, but the calf-high trousers they wore were just as controversial. To see a woman’s ankle in 1897, even covered by stockings, was unheard of.

Newspapers, anxious to see the women perform, assured readers there was nothing to fear. “The Girls not only play exceptional baseball,” they said, but were also “blessed with ladylike behavior.”

Perhaps not all of the Girls were women. Losing teams often said some of the Girls were actually men in disguise.

Medford was desperate for a major attraction, and sending their frantic negotiators to meet the Girls in person seemed to be their last chance for success. When the men returned with contract in hand, the male population of the valley went bonkers.

Every evening for the next two months, on the town’s dusty ball field, balding businessmen slid in the dirt, perfecting their baseball technique. 

With temperatures in the 90s, everyone from middle-aged bankers to youthful laborers struggled to make the team. Overweight husbands ran themselves to exhaustion, fragrant cigars still clutched in their teeth.

Amused wives shook their heads in disbelief, but secretly enjoyed watching their “old fools” pretend to be 16 again. Inevitably, it was the town’s younger men and boys who would challenge the Girls.

The Girls arrived in style aboard their personal and private Pullman “Palace” car, a symbol of prosperity. They brought with them everything necessary for a first-class and profitable exhibition — a portable 2,000-seat grandstand and a seven-foot-high canvas wall that surrounded the game and kept freeloaders out.

In October 1897, the Girls stepped off the train, elegantly dressed in long skirts and double-breasted blazers. With simple hats on their heads and soft scarves tied at their necks, no one would have believed that they were talented athletes.

The crowd gladly paid 25¢ to see Medford’s “Boys” beat the “Girls” in a slow game, 17-16.

The next day, the Bloomer Girls traveled to Ashland to face the town’s semipro team. It was a closely contested game until the second inning, when the local boys “chivalrously fell all to pieces,” allowing the “cultivated ladies to take the game 11-8.”

While Medford’s citizens loved every minute of their rival’s pain, the humiliated Ashlanders were furious with their team.

The Bloomer Girls could care less. Winning was the last thing on their mind. They hopped aboard their “Palace” car and headed to California — world championship intact — and nearly $200 richer.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of five books, including“History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.

History Snoopin': Once There Was a Ballpark

There used to be a ballpark

---

by Bill Miller for the Mail Tribune

Monday, October 28th 2019

 

“There used to be a ballpark where the field was warm and green

And the people played their crazy game with a joy I’d never seen.”

Frank Sinatra recorded those lyrics in the summer of 1973. Written by Joe Raposo, famous for giving the Muppets happy songs to sing, this plaintive tune seems to mourn the passing of a baseball park; yet, Sinatra’s style somehow gives the song a wistful sense of a love affair gone astray.

 

Mile Field, Medford, Oregon - Abandoned 2003

Baseball fans in our valley once had their own love affair with a now-vanished ballpark. The 2004 leveling of Miles Field in south Medford to make way for a new Walmart saddened local baseball fans. Lifetimes had smelled its grass and tasted hotdogs in the stands, but few remembered the beginning.

Claude Miles was born in 1887 and spent most of his life in Medford. There he found his passion for sports, especially baseball, a game played in the valley since at least the 1860s. Most of the serious games were played on a dusty diamond in Fordyce Grove, not far from today’s Central Medford High School.

In the spring of 1904, wealthy investors set up the Rogue River Baseball League with teams in Medford, Ashland, Gold Hill and Jacksonville. They signed quality out-of-town players, but also signed local talent. Claude Miles, youngest player in the league, got a contract to play second base with the Medford Grays.

 

Medford Grays - Baseball 1904 - Shorty Miles bottom right

They built a new ballpark north of town and built a covered grandstand and laid out a field surrounded by a wooden fence.

Because he was the shortest player on the town’s baseball team, Claude Miles earned his lifelong nickname, Shorty. He pitched a few games, but usually he played infield.

When the old ballpark was sold and the field covered over by today’s McLoughlin Middle School, Medford’s ballclub needed a place to play.

In March 1926, what would become Miles Field opened at the new county fairgrounds just south of town. Home plate sat 45 feet from the grandstands in the middle of a half-mile auto racetrack.

Local schools didn’t play baseball there; so various semi-pro leagues came and went as Medford struggled to keep a team on the field. When the Depression hit, the ballpark began to fall apart and soon the city’s only baseball field was called “the worst in Southern Oregon.”

Hope returned after WWII when the field was modernized. Baseball fans discovered a refreshment stand, modern restrooms, repainted fences and an electric scoreboard.

 

Miles Field, Medford, Oregon

Medford’s joy lasted until the summer of 1951 when a midnight fire of suspicious origin leaped through the wooden grandstands. Flames, fed by team uniforms and equipment, ate through the clubhouse and ignited the fence. The scoreboard, the hotdog stands — everything vanished in a soggy pile of charcoal.

Claude Miles believed that baseball kept young boys out of trouble. “Youth baseball needs a decent place to play,” he said. He badgered everyone for donations, including himself, and a new and better ballpark rose on the same site.

When he died, Oct. 22, 1968, Claude “Shorty” Miles was Medford’s “Mr. Baseball.” A year later, it just made sense to call “his” ballpark Miles Field.

The new Walmart opened in 2012. A memorial plaque out front of the store is dedicated to Shorty and his ballpark.

Writer Bill Miller is the author of “History Snoopin’,” a collection of his previous history columns and stories. Reach him at newsmiller@live.com.