By Emmett O’Connell
It is one of those summer-time inquiries that isn’t too uncommon around here. Why doesn’t Olympia (like a handful of other similar sized cities in the Northwest) have a minor league baseball team?
Both Boise and Salem (our sibling Northwest state capitals) have teams in a lower level minor league. And Aberdeen, Bellingham and Yakima have each had their own recent histories with minor league baseball.
So, it would seem that Olympia is a perfect fit for some sort of summer baseball. And, in fact, if you go back far enough, we did have a minor league baseball team here. Between 1903 and 1906 an Olympia baseball team competed in the Southwest Washington League.
So, here are five things you didn’t know about our history with minor league baseball:
1. It was actually a sometimes newspaper reporter, but oftentimes sports promoter that brought baseball to Olympia originally.
John P. Fink rode the wave of interest in minor league baseball in the region, following the success of the Pacific Coast League. While the PCL at the time was a “renegade league,” operating outside the lines of organized baseball, the SW Washington League played inside the rules.
In the four years of its existence, the SW Washington League included entrants from Aberdeen, Hoquiam, Centralia, Chehalis and Montesano, in addition to Olympia.
Probably the most interesting about the league were the names, which included the Aberdeen Pippins, the Olympia Maroons, the Hoquiam Perfect Gentlemen (named ironically) and the Montesano Farmers.
2. Athletic Stadium was Olympia’s first real sporting venue, the site of which is now a residential neighborhood.
What is now known as the Carlyon neighborhood (just east and north of the Tumwater Safeway) was not yet a neighborhood in 1903. At the time Fred Carlyon was attempting to make the area a sort of entertainment mecca of the region. He had tried to promote a velodrome (bicycle racing facility) at the area. But, in 1903 baseball promoters adapted his grandstand for their sport’s use.
Known as Electric Field in 1903 (because of its proximity and association with the Olympia Power & Light Company’s streetcar), it was known simply as Athletic Park until 1920. In the 1920s, the field and grandstand had deteriorated to the point that local civic leaders lobbied for a new facility, which turned out to be Stevens Field, just south of Lincoln Options Elementary School.
3. By the end of the 1906 season, the SW Washington League was no more.
Olympia in particular found that being able to compete was too expensive. In later years when there was a movement afoot to create a new league out of the ashes of the old, Olympia supporters requested that teams only play on weekends. This was an effort to limit the costs of travel and paying players. If players could work during the week, they could earn less money through baseball.
The other cities eventually organized the Washington State League without Olympia, but that league only lasted three summers itself.
4. But, baseball in Olympia did not go away.
While actual minor league baseball was no more, Olympia did find a venue that combined baseball that a typical fan would want to go watch and weekend only games. The Timber League was a local semi-pro circuit that the Olympia Senators (and other Olympia teams) competed in through at least the early 1960s.
The Timber League itself is an interesting construction. Described most accurately as a “town ball league,” it was amatuer at its roots and included a combination of community-based and company teams. But, the baseball played was a high enough level to warrant coverage by urban daily newspapers and attract regular fans.
5. While we may pine for a return of minor league baseball, it will likely never happen.
And, that is because of the rules of baseball. The same system of “organized baseball” that Fink joined in 1903 is also the system that prevents Olympia from ever having a minor league team. The system was established in the early 1900s to normalize the signing of players, preventing rebel leagues from stealing players. But, now these rules of organized baseball set out how the entire baseball system operates, from the majors down to the minors.
One of the regulations governs where teams can locate. Generally, the rules go like this: Each minor league team has a home territory. In our case, the closest team is the Tacoma Rainiers, whose home territory is Pierce County. On top of that home territory, each team is given a 15 mile buffer zone.
It is that buffer zone that complicates things, because within 15 miles of Pierce County is most of urban Thurston County, where one would logically locate a minor league baseball team.
