Saturday, December 31, 2005

An Update on His Central California League Research by Bill Williamson

Hi Carlos;

Hope you have a great football weekend and a Happy New Year.

A bit of background about my Central Cal research:

I got interested in the Central Cal League of '10 and '11 when it was mentioned at a Minor League Committee meeting at the San Diego SABR Convention in 1993 and over the years was aware that others had looked into the League as well. Both Larry Zuckermann and Rick Smith had said at Roth Chapter meetings that it was an area of interest for them. Never did get into any fine points of their research with them, though.

About 10 years ago, with time on my hands in the East Bay, I paid a visit to Public Libraries in Oakland, San Leandro, and Hayward. Only in San Leandro was I able to find any box score accounts of any Central Cal games - four or five for each year. What seems very unusual, is that none of the Oakland papers did a very good job in reporting the League - they concentrated on the PCL and the Cal State with hardly a mention of the Central Cal.

This year I was finally able to get to the State Library in Sacramento and came away with a good deal more info from a number of newspapers. The Richmond Daily Independent covered the local nine pretty well when it started publishing in early June of 1910, but by then about 10 games had already been played. Now am awaiting to see if I can get the Richmond Terminal and the Alameda Evening Star through Interlibrary loan.

Like you mentioned, there's a question of just how many League games were played - the Reach Guide and the Minor League Encyclopedia do not match. Speaking of the Reach Guide of 1910, right under the Standings is a team batting table. So somewhere at sometime someone had all the info to put these numbers together. It would be interesting to know what the source of it was and what ever became of the original data.

Right now I have about 40% of the box scores for the 1910 season - less for 1911. Hope to hear from my local Library that they have some more microfilms for me so I can get back on the project.

Bill


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