Hey, Coop here. Welcome to 90 Second ReCAP, where I share a quick sports history lesson based on today’s cap.
It’s October 31st, and I’m wearing a Sioux City Ghosts fitted cap from Ebbets Field Flannels, purchased in-store at Lids.
You might not know this, but Sioux City’s the birthplace of one of today’s Major League teams.
Charlie Comiskey bought the 1894 Western League champion Corn Huskers after the season, moved them first to St. Paul, and then five years later to his hometown of Chicago, where they’d play as a minor league team for a year before becoming a founding member of the American League.
Then dropping back to semi-pro status this past season.
Next year marks the centennial of the formation of the Sioux City Ghosts, a barnstorming, all-Black, semipro fast-pitch softball team–men who were winners AND entertainers, the diamond’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters.
Founded in 1925 as a after-school boys club, the youngsters would soon land sponsorship from a local cleaners, win area junior AND senior crowns, and begin playing games in nearby towns in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota.
In 1933, Fats Fisher would take over team management, introducing an approach rife with pranks and comedy routines, as well as a MUCH bigger barnstorming footprint, including Canada and Mexico.
The Ghosts would make their first California tour in 1934; as you can see from this ledger of their seven-week trip in ‘36, they went 28-7 on this swing, pulling in PARTICULARLY good crowds on San Francisco’s peninsula.
The Ghosts’ play induced laughs, but not at the expense of quality, winning more than two thousand games against fewer than a hundred losses before disbanding in 1956.
Today, the Ghosts are just that, but their spirit lives on, in the form of the Savannah Bananas.
It’s October 31st, and I’m wearing a Sioux City Ghosts fitted cap from Ebbets Field Flannels, purchased in-store at Lids.
You might not know this, but Sioux City’s the birthplace of one of today’s Major League teams.
Charlie Comiskey bought the 1894 Western League champion Corn Huskers after the season, moved them first to St. Paul, and then five years later to his hometown of Chicago, where they’d play as a minor league team for a year before becoming a founding member of the American League.
Then dropping back to semi-pro status this past season.
Next year marks the centennial of the formation of the Sioux City Ghosts, a barnstorming, all-Black, semipro fast-pitch softball team–men who were winners AND entertainers, the diamond’s version of the Harlem Globetrotters.
Founded in 1925 as a after-school boys club, the youngsters would soon land sponsorship from a local cleaners, win area junior AND senior crowns, and begin playing games in nearby towns in Iowa, Nebraska, and South Dakota.
In 1933, Fats Fisher would take over team management, introducing an approach rife with pranks and comedy routines, as well as a MUCH bigger barnstorming footprint, including Canada and Mexico.
The Ghosts would make their first California tour in 1934; as you can see from this ledger of their seven-week trip in ‘36, they went 28-7 on this swing, pulling in PARTICULARLY good crowds on San Francisco’s peninsula.
The Ghosts’ play induced laughs, but not at the expense of quality, winning more than two thousand games against fewer than a hundred losses before disbanding in 1956.
Today, the Ghosts are just that, but their spirit lives on, in the form of the Savannah Bananas.
