Between 1909 and 1911 the Fort Pierce Baseball Club took on the east coast. In summer it played West Palm Beach, Eau Gallie, Cocoa, Stuart, St. Augustine and Miami; in winter it played the cadets of the Kentucky Military Institute. In the summer of 1910 it won five of its eight games against Miami. This is that club, from a winter game with the cadets to a thirteen-inning game that ended in the dark.

One loss in nine

In the summer of 1909 the club beat West Palm Beach 10 to 7, then went up to Eau Gallie and won there 5 to 1. By September its manager, W. E. VanLandingham, was in a war of words with Titusville, whose manager had been sounding off in his town’s paper. VanLandingham answered with an open letter. Fort Pierce, he wrote, had played West Palm Beach, Cocoa, Eau Gallie, St. Augustine, Miami and Stuart and lost only one game in nine. When Titusville could say as much, it might “windjam” with something to back it up.

The cadets

In winter, one of the visiting nines was a school team. On the last Saturday of January 1910, Fort Pierce beat the baseball team of the Kentucky Military Institute 10 to 3 before a good crowd, many of them from out of town. By March the News called the cadets’ nine the most popular ball club that visited Fort Pierce.

Eighteen innings in Miami

In the summer of 1910 the Fort Pierce Baseball Club took the train to Miami to play the city’s team on a Thursday and a Friday. Miami’s manager met them at the train, and the players came home talking about their royal treatment. Fort Pierce lost the first game 4 to 3 and won the second 2 to 1, and Jim Windham pitched all eighteen innings and gave up only two scratch hits.

The Tribune blamed the first loss on the umpire. In its account he walked two men in the eighth inning to fill the bases, with the help of an error, then let a run score on a ball that rolled off the side of VanLandingham’s mitt, saying first that it had struck the backstop and then that it had hit a man, who denied it. Players and spectators asked for a new umpire for Friday’s game.

The next week the club split two games each with West Palm Beach and St. Petersburg, and both of its wins were shutouts.

Miami comes north

Later in August, Miami came up for a three-game series on the home diamond. Fort Pierce won the second game 2 to 1, and its other pitcher struck out eighteen men in nine innings, gave up two hits and walked no one. The third was an easy win, 7 to 3, with Windham pitching again. The Tribune called the home club “the fast aggregation of ball tossers of the county seat of St. Lucie,” and by its count Fort Pierce had won five of the eight games the two teams played that season.

Thirteen innings and the dark

The club played on in 1911. In June a home-talent benefit was given at the Crystal Theatre for the team, and in August Eau Gallie came down for a series. The second game, on a Friday afternoon, stood 4 to 4 after nine innings, and nobody scored in the tenth or the eleventh. Each side scored once in the twelfth. Eau Gallie went ahead in the thirteenth, and Fort Pierce answered with two runs, the winning run coming in when it was almost too dark to see the ball. It ended 7 to 6. The News called it the longest game ever played in Fort Pierce, and one of the most exciting.

For the town these players came home to, see Fort Pierce in 1910, the town as it described itself in the same years.

Sources

This page is drawn from the two Fort Pierce weeklies of the day, digitized by the Library of Congress in Chronicling America and in the public domain: the Fort Pierce News of July 2, 1909, July 30, 1909, September 17, 1909, February 4, 1910, March 4, 1910 and August 11, 1911, and The St. Lucie County Tribune of August 5, 1910, August 12, 1910, August 26, 1910 and June 23, 1911.