Looking for info on Hawaii USA baseball team photo...
Elemenopeo
Posts: 2,577 ✭✭
My wife picked up this photo for me at some art auction a few years ago. It's a cool photo, but I've never been able to track down any information about it all or the team shown. There's no writing on the back to speak of. Anyway, I figured, what the heck - I'll post it here and see if anyone knows anything about this team, what league they played in, when, etc...
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Email the scan and somebody will, eventually, get back to you.
There is lots of stuff on google, but it will take forever to match
the picture without the right software and lots of luck.
In the top left of the shot, there is a "shield/chevron" set atop
the building. Can you blow that up and tell us what it says.
I should recognize "ACH," but I do not, this morning. (ACH
is a bogus search term, becuse of the "Automated Clearing House"
acro.)
I will ask a neighbor, and get back to you if he recognizes it.
The boys at knucklecurve.com, will also help you identify old shots.
("hawaii baseball" is the search term, there.)
The author of:
http://www.pomona.edu/Magazine/PCMwin05/FShawaiianbaseball.shtml
will also know the answer immediately.
A breweriana guy can date the shot from the BUD sign.
The gloves are not SUPER old, but the shoes might be a clue.
The absence of a skyline is throwing me off.
It looks like the old field in McCully. (Honolulu). But, the buildings
are not just right.
Might be a Hilo team, but could be a Filipino league from Waipahu, Oahu.
If it is a pineapple-worker team, that would account for the haole
guys in the shot. The caucasian foremen often played on and
managed the teams.
The "U.S.A. Hawaii" could mean post-statehood, but probably
territorial, based on gloves and shoes.
Pacific Coast League was later than the photo, I think.
An old sports writer at westhawaiitoday.com, could have a
matching shot.
If alohaet stops by, he may know the correct answer.
Sorry. The correct answer just does not jump out at me this
morning.
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(This article may have skyline ID-photos.)
Ardolino, Frank R. 1941- "Missionaries, Cartwright, and Spalding: The Development of Baseball in Nineteenth-Century Hawaii"
NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture - Volume 10, Number 2, Spring 2002, pp. 27-45
University of Nebraska Press
Excerpt
The most extensive and reliable records available for the study of the development of baseball in nineteenth-century Hawaii are the contemporary accounts of games played between 1867 and 1890 as recorded in the local newspapers and Punahou School's newspapers and tally book. These records provide the dates and scores of the games; the names of the teams, players, and fields; and, occasionally, descriptions of the size of the crowds and the social events accompanying the games. In addition to these factual records, there is a short memoir written by W.R. Castle in 1924, which, while furnishing useful information about the early form of the game and its participants, is not as reliable. Finally, there are a number of modern journalistic articles on nineteenth-century baseball in Hawaii that, because they lack historical support for many of their "facts," often perpetuate myths, misconceptions, and misinformation.
What exists then is a crazy quilt of bits and pieces of factual information coupled with a fallible memoir and journalistic nostalgia. This essay will attempt to provide a cohesive treatment of the development of baseball in nineteenth-century Hawaii that will transcend the limitations of the records. However, it must be recognized from the outset that I will remain conjectural in those areas where gaps, ambiguities, inconsistencies, and improbabilities in the records prove insoluble.
To write this type of essay requires relating the records, such as they are, to the history of the period. With this method, it is possible to posit three influences on the development of baseball in Hawaii: (1) the coming of the Congregational missionaries in 1820 and their establishment of Punahou School, which became the center for the teaching and playing of baseball; (2) the arrival of New York baseball pioneer Alexander Cartwright in 1849 and his role as promoter of the game in the schools and community; and...
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storm
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I do not recognize it, but cannot see it well at all.
It looks like some OIC patch. Which it is not.
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These are not the Islanders, in the subject photo.
The Solons ? Doubt it.
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It does not look like HS.
(More like a field used by UH.)
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Honolulu Stadium opened in 1926, a place not just for
sporting events, but for pa'u riders and concerts.
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Honolulu Stadium:
Hawaii’s field of dreams
By Tim Ryan
Star-Bulletin
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BABE Ruth played there, Jessie Owens ran there, Elvis sang there. There were polo games, barefoot football games, minor league baseball games. And rodeos, spiritual crusades, hula festivals.
Honolulu Stadium wasn't just an arena, a place where events took place. Ask those who played there, coached there, worked there, gathered there during its nearly 50 years of existence. They speak of the former wooden structure at the corners of King and Isenberg in reverential tones, referring to it as an old friend, some even, as a family member.
"It creaked, actually creaked, like it was alive; (it was) kinda spooky," says Larry Price, KSSK radio personality, who worked the stadium as a player and coach.
"It was a place for Hawaii to play," says producer-director Scott Culbertson, who has just completed the one-hour "Honolulu Stadium: Where Hawaii Play-ed" for Hawaii Public Television's "Spectrum" program airing Wednesday and Dec. 1.
Culbertson combined vintage still photographs from the stadium's heyday with current footage and narrative from locals, like Price, who knew the stadium well.
Honolulu Stadium was built in 1926 when Oahu's population was less than 200,000. Wallace Farrington was mayor, some Japanese women walked the streets in kimonos and Oahu's tallest structure was Aloha Tower.
Later the stadium would be dubbed the "Termite Palace" for its pest-infestation, but while it shined, the stadium was home to high school football games, winter league baseball, polo matches, stock car racing. It also saw its share of legendary performers: Irving Berlin in 1945, Presley in 1957, and Billy Graham in 1958.
The park was demolished in 1976 after Aloha Stadium was completed. On the two-acre site today is Stadium Park.
People were still lining up for tickets in 1975.
A year later, the stadium was no more.
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"Honolulu Stadium" takes viewers through five decades of memories, familiar faces and voices, including: Fred Antone, "the voice of the stadium"; legendary St. Louis coach Francis Funai; Kamehameha coach Cal Chai, whose father played against Babe Ruth at the stadium; "The General," broadcaster Les Keiter; Tommy Kaulukukui, the UH's first All-American football player and later a UH coach; another local football star, Herman Wedemeyer; Jim Leahey, broadcaster and son of famed Hawaii broadcaster Chuck Leahey; and Harold Bell and Richard Dias, who for 40 years were stadium ushers.
The still photographs remind viewers of a kinder, gentler, slower-paced Honolulu. But is is the voices of locals and their soft-spoken memories that will give you chicken skin.
Leahey recalls needing a student ID to get in for free and the "very grouchy Portuguese gatekeepers who took no excuses" for having the wrong one.
"Honolulu Stadium was part of the family," he says. "It was the greatest babysitter in the world. Parents would sit in the stands while their kids played in right field and caught flyballs."
"Money would fall through the cracks under the seats and kids would always be searching for it below," an usher says. "Some kids used to spill malts and drinks on us deliberately so we would have to wear jackets to stay dry!"
Honolulu Stadium was "the people's stadium," Culbertson said. Surrounded by houses and yards, its neighbors would hear the games in their living rooms, or have fly balls land in their yards.
The stadium held about 24,000 people but at times as many as 30,000 crammed inside. Not bad for a venue with just 87 parking stalls, including 11 for management and eight for the media.
But the lack of parking created more of a community feeling, not less. People forced to walk for blocks through neighborhoods bought shave ice, saimin or sweet bread from sidewalk vendors, Culbertson said.
"Part of the event was finding a place to park," he said. "You paid someone to park in their lot or yard or you parked at Central Union Church and took the bus."
Viewers also learn some of the stadium's secrets.
Since the press box was so far from the bathroom, some reporters relieved themselves in coffee cans rather than risk missing a crucial play, Culbertson said. Then when the can was full, well, look out below.
The groundskeeper kept dogs in a pen at the stadium, letting them out at night to patrol the place. He also grew vegetables behind the makai bleachers.
The best seats were in Section 6 on the 50-yard line because these were covered from the "Manoa Mist" by the press box's overhang.
The stadium was built by a private developer for about $150,000 who then sold shares to Hawaii's movers and shakers. Five years later the UH bought it from them.
Communities need a place to rally around and Honolulu Stadium was that place, Culbertson said. "We lost some innocence and sense of community when we lost Honolulu Stadium," he said. "It was made of wood and warmth; it was Honolulu's field of dreams."
Thanks for the info and leads. I'll try to follow up on those. And, yeah, I doubt it's the Islanders. I'm no expert, but those uni's look pre-1961 to me.
Here are blow-ups of the patch and the sign in the background. Couldn't really pick up any more detail on the sign. Those characters on the patch appear to be 13 stars (as opposed to letters).