Indoor Baseball
Indoor baseball to the uninitiated was the predecessor sport of softball and popular in Chicago during the 1890s and during the first decade after the turn of the century. A 17-inch ball and a narrow bat was used so as to facilitate play inside armories and similarly large indoor facilities. (Later, when the game was moved outdoors, the ball's circumference was reduced to 16 inches.) The game had been invented by George Hancock in 1887 at the Farragut Boat Club on Chicago's South Side. By 1892 there were flourishing amateur leagues involving more than 100 teams in the city. Indoor baseball was a late development in the Cook County League. West Division had a team as early as 1892, but it was not until December, 1895, that representatives of ten schools formed a league.
Only five schools actually participated the first year—Austin, Lake View, Evanston, Oak Park, and English—because of the difficulty of the schools in obtaining playing facilities.The first year Austin won the banner. The sport was conducted annually until the demise of the league in 1913, and lingered on for two to three years afterwards.
One peculiarity of competition was how the high schools on the West Side—West Division (McKinley), English (Crane), Medill, and Austin—dominated the league. In the years 1907 to 1913, Crane High—with brothers Walter and Frank Halas and later brother George Halas (of professional football fame)--was in every title game and took the championship five of those seven years. Even the West Side girls got involved, because as early as 1895 West Division had a girls team and in 1899 was joined by another West Side school, Medill. The two schools competed against each other for a half decade or so.
Read more about this topic: Cook County High School League
Famous quotes containing the words indoor and/or baseball:
“As a man grows older, his ability to sit still and follow indoor occupations increases. He grows vespertinal in his habits as the evening of life approaches, till at last he comes forth only just before sundown, and gets all the walk that he requires in half an hour.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Ethnic life in the United States has become a sort of contest like baseball in which the blacks are always the Chicago Cubs.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)