The Tigers' Disastrous Home Opener
Six thousand Tacoma fans endure a sloppy, demoralizing loss at the hands of the Oakland ball club, prompting local sports writers to question the team's heart.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Six thousand people climbed the hill to the Eleventh street ball ground yesterday afternoon, expecting to see a professional game put up by bright, snappy players; instead, they were treated to an amateur exhibition of burlesque baseball. For weeks, the Tigers had been hyped as a real live bunch, but their performance was listless and sloppy. By the sixth inning, even the crowd was weary. While the team showed signs of life, a ninth-inning failure left them with a 9-10 loss to Oakland. More than anything else, the game demonstrated the inadequacy of the ball grounds; if a ball was struck a couple of rods beyond the base lines, it went into the crowd, where it was impossible for the fielder to connect for a play.
“Six thousand people climbed the hill... expecting to see a professional game; instead, they were treated to an amateur exhibition of burlesque baseball.”
Early 20th-century sports reporting captures the same intense, fickle devotion of Tacoma fans today. The frustration over the 'inadequate' ballpark grounds mirrors the ongoing modern-day civic debates regarding the quality and suitability of Tacoma's aging sporting infrastructure.
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