Pirates break 100-year-old record in 20-0 defeat
Did You Know? Did you know that as the Pittsburgh Pirates were approaching that dubious milestone a couple of weeks ago (being shutout by the worst score in their 124-year history), they were actually breaking a record that had been previously set a hundred years ago?
When the Pirates gave up their 18th run to the Milwaukee Brewers, the game’s announcer kept saying that score matched the 18-0 defeat the team suffered on July 11, 1910.
Here’s where I get so much pleasure researching history. It only took me two minutes to confirm that fact.
From the July 12, 1910, edition of the Titusville (Pa) Herald: “Pirates shut-out in most one-sided game,” was the headline above the curiously short account of the game. That game wasn’t considered as history making as the one a couple of weeks ago, I suppose.
Philadelphia had beaten Pittsburg (minus the “h,” because that wouldn’t be officially added until July 19th a year later) by a score of 18-0 that day, when the Pirates failed to even get a player to third base.
Locally, back in 1910, there was a constant rivalry between Uniontown and Connellsville. The Uniontown Morning Herald and the Connellsville Daily Courier occasionally made disparaging remarks about each other and the cities where they were published.
In the April 7, 1910, edition of the Daily Courier, for instance, an editorial issued a warning directed at Uniontown by stating, “When she gets big enough Connellsville will annex her, take charge of the court house and the jail, and run it just fine.”
I haven’t really checked lately, but I really don’t think that happened.
That editorial was really aimed at the Herald, because the editorial writer of the Daily Courier was admonishing it to mind its own business and not worry about Connellsville’s progress. The editorial suggested that it would be better if the Herald urged Uniontown’s business owners to form a Board of Trade, or a Chamber of Commerce.
Uniontown did the latter. In fact, 25 years later, in 1935, the Uniontown Chamber of Commerce was about to experience one of its finest hours.
On April 15, during the regular monthly meeting of the Board of Directors of the Uniontown Chamber, it was decided that it would endorse the upcoming May Day Americanism parade (I’ll get to that monumental event shortly), and that the junior U.S. senator from Missouri, Judge Harry S. Truman, would be the guest speaker at the chamber’s annual meeting on April 26.
Ironically, nobody could have predicted that nearly 10 years to the day of that meeting (April 12, 1945), the junior U.S. senator from Missouri would become President of the United States.
Nor, could anybody in Fayette County have predicted that the parade the Chamber endorsed would become the massive display of Americanism that would gain nationwide attention.
It was announced in early March of that year that parade preparations for the second annual event were under way. As the weeks progressed, with each addition to the parade’s lineup, there would be front-page updates.
“Letters are soon to be placed in the malls inviting all civic, patriotic, fraternal, church and school organizations throughout the county to participate,” said an article that appeared in the March 20 edition of the Morning Herald.
On April 11 it was reported that LaFayette Post No. 51 of the American Legion was a predicting that between 25,000 and 30,000 people would take part in the elaborate display of Americanism that would take place on May 1.
The parade itself would begin promptly at 7 o’clock and would culminate with a speaking program at Hustead Field (currently Bill Power Memorial Stadium).
The clear purpose of the parade was encapsulated in an April 23 editorial in the Morning Herald: “It is Fayette County’s answer to those who would swing America from its moorings. It is Fayette County’s answer to those who would sabotage in no matter what fashion American institutions, government and fundamentals,” it said.
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette echoed the Morning Herald’s sentiments, by writing that, “The parade and exercises will be strictly patriotic and loyal. Could there be a better civic refreshment than a show of positive, self-assertive Americanism, right now?”
On May 1, on the morning of the big event, the Tyrone (Pa.) Daily Herald ran a story about Adolph Hitler taking part in Germany’s May Day festivities. He had addressed 250,000 “enthusiastic youths.”
On the same page, and right beside the article about Germany’s May Day celebration, the Tyrone newspaper reported on a number of the largest May Day events in the region.
“Of principal interest was the gigantic celebration planned for Uniontown,” it said. “A parade and mass meeting will follow an aerial show in which nine army pursuit planes from Langley Field (Va.) will take part,” it proclaimed.
By then (and perhaps for just one day) the Connellsville Daily Courier put aside all of those notions of an inter-city rivalry.
“Greatest patriotism demonstration in the history of the region,” appeared at the top of the Daily Courier’s May 2 coverage of the parade.
The Uniontown Morning Herald that day reported that an “Estimated 75,000 Marchers and Visitors Mark Americanism Day.”
There had been 25,000 participants and 50,000 spectators in an event the Morning Herald called, “A model for the nation to follow.”
While Uniontown’s May Day parade had been wildly successful and the source of its worthy notoriety, the week had not ended before it gained even more coverage across the country.
It seems, according to Denton (Texas) Record-Chronicle, that a 15-year-old and his 11-year-old sister (both Fayette County residents) “went a-visiting to the neighbors, but wish they hadn’t.”
While they were playing with their young friends, a health officer put a measles quarantine sign on their neighbor’s house. The article (which appeared in newspapers around the country) said the two kids’ mother was seeking a court order to get them out.
Edward A. Owens can be reached by e-mail at freedoms@bellatlantic.net