OPPOSITE: THE LEWISES, COURTESY ANAHEIM PUBLIC LIBRARY. ALL OTHER PHOTOS COURTESY CHRIS EPTING
Women also made their mark. “Elsie Cox and Betty Bergen, a couple of enterprising Orange High students, figured they could squeeze a few sponsorship bucks out of the fellows down at the local Lions club,” John Weyler wrote in the Los Angeles Times in 1998. “After all, there was no way a bunch of high school kids were going to come up with the $5 it cost for softball uniforms in 1936.” So the Orange Lionettes, one of the most successful softball franchises ever, was formed. Within two years, the Lionettes won their way into the Southern California Championship game. They had become fast-pitch stars a decade before female players would form the renowned League of Their Own teams during World War II. In 1940, fans in Anaheim persuaded the Philadelphia Athletics, led by Connie Mack, to spend their spring in the city. Mack brought his team west, using the Angelina Hotel as camp headquarters, with some players also staying at the Pickwick and Valencia Hotels. The Athletics wanted to return to Anaheim after World War II, but due to a shortage of hotel rooms and housing, they never did. New York Yankee icon DiMaggio enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Forces on Feb. 17, 1943, and was assigned to special services. One week later, he reported for duty at the Santa Ana Army Air Base in Costa Mesa. DiMaggio was a huge boost to the air base baseball team, but not initially: In his first game, DiMaggio went hitless against the Fullerton Junior College baseball team. The Santa Ana Air Base team was an incongruous collection of semipros, minor leaguers and teenagers who
hadn’t really played much baseball. Brothers Dick and Bobby Adams played major-league baseball after the war. With DiMaggio at the helm, the team built a strong record that included a 20-game win streak. DiMaggio himself put together a 27-game hitting streak. Jackie Robinson, who crossed baseball’s color line in 1947, portrayed himself when The Jackie Robinson Story was filmed at La Palma Park in Anaheim in 1950. In 1966, after renting Dodger Stadium for four seasons— they called it Chávez Ravine Stadium during Angels games—the then-California Angels played their first game in new Anaheim Stadium (renamed Angel Stadium of Anaheim in 2003). A 230-foot-high letter A topped with a halo was used as a scoreboard. The 210-ton sign loomed behind the left field wall until the stadium’s expansion in 1980, when it was moved to the parking lot. The $1 million price for the Big A was paid by the Standard Oil Co. of California, which swapped the cost for advertising rights. Near Angel Stadium, a marker at Melrose Abbey Memorial Park indicates the grave site of Jack Norworth, who in 1908 wrote the lyrics to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” played during the seventh-inning stretch at most major-league games. Norworth also helped establish the first Little League team in Laguna Beach, where he lived for decades and ran a curio shop with his wife. Norworth’s is the sort of story that brings into focus Orange County’s profound and lasting effect on the game, and the game’s on Orange County.
CLOCKWISE: ORANGE LIONETTES PRACTICE AT HART PARK; JOE DIMAGGIO BATS FOR THE SANTA ANA ARMY AIR BASE BASEBALL TEAM AGAINST THE LOS ANGELES ANGELS (NO RELATION TO ANAHEIM’S TEAM) IN 1943; POSTER FOR THE 1989 ALL-STAR GAME IN ANAHEIM. OPPOSITE FAR LEFT: LAFAYETTE AND LELAND LEWIS DRESSED FOR BASEBALL C. 1903; TOP FROM LEFT, LOU GEHRIG, CAR DEALER GLENN THOMAS AND BABE RUTH AT A NOW-GONE PRIVATE GUN CLUB IN CYPRESS.
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