The Fraternal Grudge Match at Robbins Park
Everett’s Moose and Elks lodges squared off in a Decoration Day showdown that proved more competitive than any of the fans expected.
It was some crowd, fellow citizens, that gathered at Robbins Park Decoration Day to witness the battle royal between baseball teams representing the Elks and Moose lodges. Several seasons have passed since Everett fans have had an opportunity to tear loose on our own grounds and they were bound to get the stored-up exuberance out of their system. Honest, though, most of us thought the game was going to be a joke. The story of that awful drubbing administered to the Elks by a town lot team last Sunday had been circulated pretty thoroughly, and none of us would have bet a nickel on the chance of the Best People on Earth to make a show for place. The Elks started out like winners, but in the last of the fourth, hits by Godfrey and Roberts for the Moose shoved a run over, giving them confidence. In the seventh, another lucky combination of hits and errors gave the Moose two more runs. It was a corking good ball game, remarkably good ball when one considers that neither team had had any practice to speak of.
“It was some crowd, fellow citizens, that gathered at Robbins Park Decoration Day to witness the battle royal between baseball teams representing the Elks and Moose lodges.”
This captures the vibrant, informal sports culture of early 20th-century Everett, where fraternal orders were the bedrock of community life. While Robbins Park has long since faded from the city's active landscape, the tradition of local rivalries remains a common thread in civic identity.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.