BELOIT — The Beloit Sky Carp are hosting a Fairbanks Morse Fairies Night at ABC Supply Stadium on Friday when the team hosts the Quad Cities River Bandits.
Yours truly was invited to briefly summarize the Fairies era of baseball in Beloit during a kickoff luncheon.
The invitation is flattering, particularly since I’ll never describe myself as an expert on that fabulous Fairies era of baseball. But their story is certainly interesting and important if you want to understand how interwoven baseball is in the history of Beloit.
The start of the Fairies is right out of Field of Dreams as the Fairbanks Morse Company asked its employees in Beloit in 1915 to “build it — a ballpark that is — and a baseball team will follow.”
That was the start for one of the best semi-professional baseball teams in the Midwest and the reason thousands of fans flocked to a place called Morse Field from 1915 until the team disbanded in 1928.
The Fairbanks Morse Athletic Association was created to provide recreation for the company’s employees and about 1,000 workers joined it, paying 25 cents annual dues.
They joined mainly to bring about the baseball team they sought to follow. Many of those workers brought their hammers and saws with them in April, 1915 and set out building a ballpark with material provided by the company. Morse Field stretched along Park Avenue and included a full covered grandstand.
By May 1st, Morse Field was already ready for occupancy. A parade was held from the downtown area with a Fairbanks Morse float pulled by six horses and the company band in attendance. Plant manager W.S. Hovey threw out the first pitch as the Fairies played a team from Belvidere.
Jack Wootton struck out 14 Belvidere batters in a 16-8 Beloit victory. The only Belvidere batter to have any success was Beloiter Nate Tilley with four singles. He would later join the Fairies.
Guiding the talented Beloit players was manager Alva J. “Boss” Chubb, and over the years he would attract several former major leaguers to his talented roster. Soon playing for the Fairies had its advantages. Not only did the team pay well, but during World War I it provided a shelter from the draft since the ballplayers also held down factory jobs deemed vital to the war effort.
The team had many pro aspects, including traveling south to Arkansas for spring training. It drew major league teams to play exhibition games at Morse Field. In 1919, for example, the Fairies beat the Chicago White Sox on July 8. Two Sox players, Dick Kerr and Buck Weaver, would play for the Fairies following the “Black Sox” scandal after the 1919 World Series.
Other former big leaguers to play in Beloit included Eddie “Patsy” Gharrity, Jimmy Breton, George “Zip”Zabel and George Perring. Herb Kemman, Beloit’s first city bowling champion, was a pitcher for the Fairies, as was Butch Krueger, who would become the city’s greatest golfer.
Through 1919, the Fairies’ overall record was 310-49. They ushered in the Roaring Twenties with a 51-11 record, winning 17 straight games and drawing over 50,000 fans for 41 games at Morse Field that season.
One of the biggest “name” players from pro baseball joined the Fairies in 1921, Jim “Hippo” Vaughn. He began the season pitching for the Chicago Cubs. While suspended by the Cubs, Vaughn played for the Fairies under an assumed name. Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis got wind of his moonlighting and handed down a year-long suspension. Vaughn turned around and signed a three-year contract with the Fairies, earning $800 a month from April to October and $300 a month from November through March.
When I was a young reporter, I had the opportunity to interview former Fairies fan Phil Albrecht in 1982. Just a schoolboy at Royce School in the early 1920s, Albrecht said he watched the team play its best baseball from 1921 to 1923.
“They were drawing pretty good crowds and Vaughn was one of the best pitchers around,” Albrecht said. “No doubt about it, we had some pretty good baseball here at that time.”
Albrecht remembered receiving free passes to Saturday games for good conduct in school. The YMCA sponsored the program, called the Knothole Gang.
“I always managed to get in on Saturday afternoons,” he said. “On Sundays we used to sit on the boxcars west of the ballfield and chase fly balls that went over the fence.”
Another Beloiter, Fred Hewes, also remembered the Knothole Gang, but said, “I think I snuck over the fence as many times as I went in with knothole tickets.”
Beloit won the Chicago League title in both 1921 and 1922. That league included four Chicago teams, as well as the Joliet Standards and the Kenosha Simmons Bedmakers. It was popular for businesses to sponsor semi-pro teams, but Fairbanks Morse was at the cutting edge. It’s football Fairies handed the Green Bay Packers their only loss in 1919 and its basketball team routinely defeated top semi-pro teams from around the country.
The baseball Fairies held their spring training in Hot Springs, Ark., in 1923 and then competed in the old Midwest League against the Kenosha Simmons, the Kenosha Nash, the Racine Horlicks, the Canton Pennsylvania Railroads and the Massillon Agathons.
Mark Finnegan worked as a clerk at Fairbanks and remembered attending many Fairies games. He said street cars brought throngs of fans to the ballpark, where baseball wasn’t the only feature. Occasionally the company showed motion pictures there.
“They drew really good crowds for games, especially on Sunday,” Finnegan said.
In 1924, the Fairies added Gharrity, a Beloit native, who had been the starting catcher for the Washington Senators and was Hall of Famer Walter “Big Train” Johnson’s favorite backstop. Gharrity returned to Beloit when his daughter became ill and he played for the Fairies until the team disbanded in 1928. He returned to the big league Senators at that point as a player-coach.
The popularity of the Fairies fell as Major League Baseball‘s rose. Talent became scarcer and gate receipts were in decline, making it difficult to keep up with the cost of the ballpark.
Employees at Fairbanks Morse also wanted more hands-on opportunities for their own recreation. By 1930, Morse Field was demolished to make way for plant expansion and a company golf course.
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