July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Wanted: Info on game with Reds
Dear Reader
The quest continues.
It began a couple of weeks ago in Dunkirk after News and Sun editor Bob Banser came across an interesting story while working on local history pieces in connection with Dunkirk’s sesquicentennial.
Among a bunch of clippings was mention of an amazing couple of baseball games back in 1907. Some of the newspaper accounts were sketchy, based upon scrapbooks.
But one appeared to be authoritative. And I’m not just saying that because it was written by my brother Steve.
Back in 1963, when Steve was doing some summer fill-in work in Dunkirk, an Ohio woman wrote the weekly newspaper asking about a legendary pair of games in the early 1900s when a Dunkirk squad had defeated the Cincinnati Reds not once but twice.
The newspaper published her question and asked if any local residents could shed light on the matter. One could.
A fellow named Norman Younts stepped forward with the scorebooks from the 1907 games. It was amazing documentation of a delightful moment in local sports history.
To make a long story short, the Reds were apparently passing through Muncie by train and had an overnight stay.
Trying to drum up interest in National League baseball, they staged an exhibition game in Muncie against a Dunkirk team and lost by a score of 12-7. That was on July 1, and the Reds wanted a rematch. So they played again in October of 1907, that time in Dunkirk.
And again the Dunkirk team won, this time 3-2.What made Steve’s 1963 story remarkable was that it was based on the scorebooks themselves. It wasn’t just legend or memory or scrapbook boxscores. The scorebooks were the ultimate primary source.
But then, after the story was published, both the 1907 incident and the scorebooks faded from memory. Forty years later they have evaporated.
Ask most Jay County residents if they’ve ever heard of the Reds playing a Dunkirk team, and you’ll draw blank looks.
Ask about the scorebooks, and you may hit a brick wall.
At least I have so far.
With the help of Chick Whitesell, I was able to locate both of the daughters of Norman Younts. But both Vivian Armstrong, now of Fishers, and Norma June Scott, now of Chesterfield, knew nothing of the scorebooks.
Younts himself died in 1975, and it’s not known whether he passed the historic scorebooks on to another local history buff.
Ralph May of the Jay County Historical Society has gone through the museum’s extensive collection of sports memorabilia but has so far come up empty-handed.
Sports aficionados at the Dunkirk barber shop are pondering leads on where next to look.
The fear is that, like many bits of paper ephemera, its value wasn’t recognized. It may be lost forever.
And that would truly be a major league loss.[[In-content Ad]]
It began a couple of weeks ago in Dunkirk after News and Sun editor Bob Banser came across an interesting story while working on local history pieces in connection with Dunkirk’s sesquicentennial.
Among a bunch of clippings was mention of an amazing couple of baseball games back in 1907. Some of the newspaper accounts were sketchy, based upon scrapbooks.
But one appeared to be authoritative. And I’m not just saying that because it was written by my brother Steve.
Back in 1963, when Steve was doing some summer fill-in work in Dunkirk, an Ohio woman wrote the weekly newspaper asking about a legendary pair of games in the early 1900s when a Dunkirk squad had defeated the Cincinnati Reds not once but twice.
The newspaper published her question and asked if any local residents could shed light on the matter. One could.
A fellow named Norman Younts stepped forward with the scorebooks from the 1907 games. It was amazing documentation of a delightful moment in local sports history.
To make a long story short, the Reds were apparently passing through Muncie by train and had an overnight stay.
Trying to drum up interest in National League baseball, they staged an exhibition game in Muncie against a Dunkirk team and lost by a score of 12-7. That was on July 1, and the Reds wanted a rematch. So they played again in October of 1907, that time in Dunkirk.
And again the Dunkirk team won, this time 3-2.What made Steve’s 1963 story remarkable was that it was based on the scorebooks themselves. It wasn’t just legend or memory or scrapbook boxscores. The scorebooks were the ultimate primary source.
But then, after the story was published, both the 1907 incident and the scorebooks faded from memory. Forty years later they have evaporated.
Ask most Jay County residents if they’ve ever heard of the Reds playing a Dunkirk team, and you’ll draw blank looks.
Ask about the scorebooks, and you may hit a brick wall.
At least I have so far.
With the help of Chick Whitesell, I was able to locate both of the daughters of Norman Younts. But both Vivian Armstrong, now of Fishers, and Norma June Scott, now of Chesterfield, knew nothing of the scorebooks.
Younts himself died in 1975, and it’s not known whether he passed the historic scorebooks on to another local history buff.
Ralph May of the Jay County Historical Society has gone through the museum’s extensive collection of sports memorabilia but has so far come up empty-handed.
Sports aficionados at the Dunkirk barber shop are pondering leads on where next to look.
The fear is that, like many bits of paper ephemera, its value wasn’t recognized. It may be lost forever.
And that would truly be a major league loss.[[In-content Ad]]
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