Baseball Squabbles and a Rainy Sunday
A wet, cantankerous ball game between Lynden and Everson highlights the fierce and often humorous sporting rivalries of the Nooksack Valley.
Everson 7, Lynden 9. That was the score of the ball game Sunday, which came near to being called on account of darkness. It rained, if you will remember, Sunday, rained like the mischief. The Everson boys had a hunch that there was to be an effort to do them. They growled at first one thing and then another, and the Lynden boys growled back. And then, when the growling would ease up a bit, the crowd would start it going again. I don't really think anybody was really sore; they just thought they ought to be. The line-up for Lynden included Hadley, Steinhauer, and Rittenberg. The game saw moments of confusion, including a strikeout where the batter failed to hear the decision and stayed in the box, leading to a disputed play at home plate.
“I don't really think anybody was really sore. They just thought they ought to be.”
Small-town sports rivalries remain a cornerstone of community identity in the Pacific Northwest. This account captures a very specific, human moment of pre-professionalized local culture where the 'growling' between teams was as much a part of the game as the score.
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