Montana State Baseball League 1892

 

Recently on Face Book in the “I grew up in Philipsburg” group, Lee H. Graham posted a picture of a sweat shirt advertising the Philipsburg “Burgers” 1892 baseball team, he had found on the internet. Research by Joey Berreta found the Montana State Baseball League for 1892 and newspaper research found a couple of news articles. With a lot more digging the following has been documented. The Montana State League was a minor league baseball league that played various seasons between 1892 and 1925 as an independent league. The league consisted of teams based exclusively in Montana with the exception of 1909 when Idaho and Utah were represented. The state league played only 3 documented minor league seasons with several other times that have no professional records, according to Wikipedia and numerous Baseball historical documents and history books. 

In 1892 the League was a six-team Class B level minor league. This league played a split season with the Bozeman and Great Falls franchises leaving after the season’s first half on July 23, 1892. Bozeman left with a record of 10 wins and 8 losses and Great Falls Smelter Cities( this included Black Eagle) had 6 wins and 10 losses at the end of the half season. The final standings were: Helena 29 - 21; Butte 26-22; Philipsburg Burgers 22-23 and Missoula 18-29. Butte won the first half and Missoula won the second half title. The seasons best overall was Butte with Helena apparently forfeiting due to complaints about money and umpiring. 

Baseball Hall of Fame member Clark Griffith played for Missoula in 1892 and was showered with gold coins after the game and later bought property and built a home in Montana. After the season was over betting and cheating complaints were possibly the reason the league did not return in 1893. 

The team managers were: Helena- Con Strothers; Butte- Jim Powell; Philipsburg Burgers- Charlie Hoover; Missoula- ?Marin; Bozeman- B.E. Vaile and Great Falls Smelter Cities (This included Black Eagle)- ?Meilli. (The ? are because no first name were listed) 

The Philipsburg Burger players were: Manager Charlie Hoover, Pete Lohman, George McMillan, Tom Parrot, Harry Raymond and Guerdon Whiteley. Unfortunately there was no Federal Census performed in 1890 and so far I have not found any of the above Burger names in the 1880 Federal Census.  I will continue to search and if anyone has information about any of the above names please let me know. 

Can you imagine a person putting in a hard week of labor and then traveling to another town with very undependable modes of travel to play a game of baseball and return to work . As I am certain none of these men would have been able to spend a baseball season without continuing their hard labor, which was probably in the mines, mills and smelters.