1925 Red Sox Semi-Pro Baseball Team

Bob Cunningham

Kalamazoo Gazette

March 9, 1986

Transcribed for the Internet by

Emma Thornburg Sefcik

April 28, 2002

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The town of Hartford was once Red Sox Country

HARTFORD - Folks living in western Van Buren County didn't have to wait for television to be invented to enjoy great baseball.  

Long before the Tigers were ever on the tube, the Hartford Red Sox were wowing big crowds on warm spring and summer afternoons.

From 1925 to 1936, the Red Sox regularly played top semi-professional teams and occasionally got a shot at a visiting major league team, including the Chicago Cubs, White Sox and the old Brooklyn Dodgers.

The games against the major league teams were played on the ball field at the old House of David in Benton Harbor.  The House of David, a religious sect, fielded a team of bearded baseball wizards who were known throughout the Midwest for their athletic prowess.

Bill Streight, 76, is the only surviving member of the Hartford Red Sox.

We never beat the major league teams, Streight said, recalling those days of a half century ago.

When you're playing against all-time-greats like Hack Wilson, you're lucky not to get murdered on the field, Steight said.  But they knew they'd played ball, we'd hold 'em 1-0, 2-0, they didn't beat us by much.

Streight said the toughest team he ever played was Joe Green's Colored Giants from Chicago, a part of the old "Negro League" that flourished before the major league teams were integrated.

They were terrific athletes and showmen, Streight said.  Green's Giants did it like the Harlem Globetrotters.   They'd fool around for a while and suddenly say, "let's take it."

Then they'd knock the cover off the ball, Streight said.

The Red Sox played three to five games a week taking on teams from Crystal Palace, Watervliet, House of David, Niles, St. Joseph, Buchanan, and South Bend.

Twice a year the Red Sox had what could easily be called a "captive audience" at Jackson Prison.  That's where they'd get their biggest crowds of maybe some 2,000 prisoners at each game.

The funny thing was, Streight said, the prisoners always booed their own team and cheered for us.

It might seem like heresy to some, but Bill Veeck wasn't the granddaddy of spectacular sports promotions.

Anthony Miller, who owned the Hartford Creamery and sponsored the Red Sox, had a trick of his own when it came to drawing crowds.

He found a surefire way to fill up the stands.  Miller opened some home games with a parachutist dropping to the diamond from a World War I double-wing biplane.

After all, those weren't the days of rocket launches and men walking on the moon.  The parachutist was something new and exciting.  The jump always drew an extra couple of hundred spectators to the Hartford diamond which was where the Bangor Cooler Co. is presently located.

Whether the crowd of 500 or 600 or 700 turned out to see the parachutist or the game really didn't make any difference,  Streight said.  They all paid, whether admission was charged, or as quite often happened, a hat would be passed during the game.

Even though it was a time when club owners and players alike played more for love of the game than profit, money was needed to keep the club going. 

Miller always said he paid the club's expenses from gate receipts and divided the remainder among the players, maybe a few hundred dollars a year.  But Streight doesn't think so.

Streight, who earned $5 per game and $7 when he pitched, said, Miller spent a lot of money out of his own pocket.

Several of the players, Streight included, worked at Miller's creamery.  There, they were paid $15 a week.  It was a good salary at that time, and the ball players were given plenty of time off to practice and play.

Miller had to be subsidizing the team, Streight said.  There was no way the club could have earned enough money to meet expenses and pay salaries.

But, in 1936 they couldn't make it any further. Both the Red Sox and the Hartford Creamery folded, victims of the great Depression.

Miller bounced back financially with his then fledgling Miller Thermometer Co., which he started in 1934.  The company did continue to grow and is still operated in Hartford by his grandson, Maurice Miller.

Streight and some of the other ball players worked at Miller's new company, but with the advent of World War II, followed by television and a growing interest in major league baseball, the Red Sox were never resuscitated.

Streight, who quit high school at age 16 to play on the Hartford team and later other semi-pro teams, has some good advice for future ball players.

Now I'd do it different if I had it to do again, he said, I'd finish high school and maybe college to get all of the experience I could.  A future major leaguer needs plenty of experience and practice. A player needs to practice day in and day out, and somebody that knows how to show him how to do it right.