James Tarkowski, Dwight McNeil and Tim Iroegbunam tried their hand at baseball as Everton launch a new leisurewear range
To mark Everton launching a new range of baseball-themed range of leisurewear, a trio of Blues stars have tried their hand at ‘America’s national pastime’ with spectacular results. Everton’s prospective next owner Dan Friedkin, whose company the Friedkin Group has opened youth baseball fields in his home state of Texas alongside local Major League outfit, the Houston Astros, may well be impressed by the Blues stars’ slugging ability.
Donning headsets, Tim Iroegbunam, Dwight McNeil and James Tarkowski took part in a virtual reality ‘home run derby’ in the home dressing room at Goodison Park. Showing their impressive all-round sporting skills, each of the Everton aces hit several home runs with Iroegbunam scoring 4959 points; left hander McNeil getting 5359 points with a series of shots that went high into the air and the Rochdale-born attacking midfielder commenting: “I’m just used to playing cricket;” then Tarkowski, who remarked “I’m a player,” after coming out on top with 5608 points while he even somehow broke his virtual bat!
A report earlier this month claimed the new Everton Stadium could host a rugby league international. If it does so then the Blues’ future home could follow on from Goodison Park in terms of staging major non-football sporting events, with Everton PR manager and former ECHO head of sport David Prentice taking up the story…
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A century ago, some of the greatest players ever to touch base at Goodison Park pitched up on Merseyside. On October 23 1924, the Chicago White Sox and the New York Giants, two of the USA’s most iconic baseball teams, staged an exhibition match at Goodison.
This season’s Everton third kit took its inspiration from that occasion. Castore co-founder Tom Beahon explained: “We have used Goodison as our inspiration for all three of this season’s kits.
“This (third) kit is about acknowledging Goodison’s versatility and the stage it has provided over more than 130 years. We wanted to remind people that it has not only hosted the great Everton teams of decades gone by, but also been a part of the wider sporting fabric and story.”
In 1924 that ‘wider sporting story’; embraced the visit of two leading baseball sides to the UK. The whole purpose of the visit was to entertain – and ‘educate’ – English sports fans on the merits of American baseball.
Professional baseball had been played in the USA for more than half-a-century, with the Major League format an inspiration for the Football League of which Everton were founder members in 1888, and those early tourists believed they could convince English sports fans of its appeal, so a tour was arranged.
After disembarking from the liner Montroyal at Liverpool docks following a transatlantic crossing, one club official informed waiting reporters: “Say, we gonna show you folks how to play the greatest game on earth, and when you’ve seen a match between the New York Giants and the Chicago Sox I guess baseball will be played all over this island.”
Their confidence was understandable, if a little premature. In the USA baseball players were treated like superstars.
The ECHO reported that the players in the travelling tour party received wages of between £6,000 and £7,000 a year, the equivalent to £300,000 to £350,000 today. That was a huge salary for the time, even if it is just a fraction of the current wages of Major League Baseball players today.
To offer some context, in post First World War England, while attendances were booming, footballers were restricted to a new maximum wage of £468 a year.
Harry Grabiner, secretary of the White Sox, said: “Baseball players make so much money during the season that the members of the two teams are not receiving any salary during the present trip. They look upon it purely as a holiday.”
The Giants, led by the ‘Little Napoleon of Baseball,’ John McGraw, had just become the first team in history to reach a fourth successive World Series – but were denied a third win in four years by the Washington Senators who edged their first ever championship 4-3. The White Sox, meanwhile, managed by Charles A. Comiskey, known as the ‘Old Roman,’ had finished bottom of the American League for the first time.
But the White Sox managed some consolation beating the New York Giants 16-11 at Goodison. Despite the bold claims by the tourists, an estimated crowd of just 10,000 watched the Goodison exhibition – 11 days earlier 35,000 had watched Everton lose at home to Sunderland – and few appeared to have any idea of what was going on.
The ECHO’s football correspondent ‘Bee’ (pen-name for Ernest Edwards), referenced cricket when he wrote: “There was anxious enquiry every five minutes from one man who wanted to know if the Sox had reached their century yet, while another man asked for the score ‘as he had got the Chicago side in the sweep.’”
But he added: “To the average spectator the hitting, the fielding, running, and the appearance of the umpire and coach were all engrossing. Double play, or, in ordinary English, two out at once, aroused special applause, and the ball that was slashed sent the crowd scattering out of danger.”
One blow saw a ball, struck from the Bullens Road corner of the ground, land clean onto the roof of the Goodison Road stand, threatening the club sign which was mounted on the front of the stand roof.
However, Bee clearly enjoyed the experience. He added: “This is my first chance of telling the host of USA readers how very enjoyable was the baseball game at Goodison Park between the Giants of New York and the Chicago White Sox.
“I said to their manager, when the balls were flying into Gwladys Street and Bullens Road, ‘How many balls did you bring over?’ The answer was, ‘Oh, we bring hampers full.’ And they needed them on the short pitch at Goodison Park.
“The average football spectator was hard put to reckon the scores, and the coach, whom I likened to a Dickens character and christened him ‘Jovial Monk,’ was very kind in his instruction and chat to spectators.”
The Daily Express’s war correspondent H.V. Morton was also present at Goodison Park and detailed the events in light-hearted fashion for his newspaper’s readers. He wrote: “Ten thousand rather startled football fans had amazing escapes from thick ears, black eyes, and concussion when they watched the New York Giants play baseball with the Chicago White Sox on the Everton ground, Liverpool, yesterday.
“For two hours this bombardment went on while the crowd ducked in its praiseworthy attempts to stay out of hospital. Many of us had not been so frightened since 1914.
“But when we had once awakened to the stern realities of baseball played without goal nets on a football field we actually began to enjoy the game. It is said that baseball is like rounders, which is like saying a child’s pop gun is like a rifle. Baseball is rounders played with long range naval guns.”
After the Goodison exhibition, the two teams then travelled south to continue their missionary work in London. The Giants gained their revenge, winning 3-2 in front of the Duke and Duchess of York who were among 6,000 spectators at Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge.
Then King George V, who had become the first reigning monarch to visit a Football League ground when he came to Goodison Park in 1913, attended another match at Stamford Bridge, this time won by the Giants 6-5. Finally, on November 5, the White Sox got back to winning ways at Birmingham City’s St Andrew’s ground, triumphing 9-6.
The exhibition and the subsequent follow ups may not have sparked a nationwide outbreak of baseball-mania, but one young sports fan had his interest sufficiently piqued to launch a national crusade. In 1933 John Moores, by then already a successful Littlewoods pools entrepreneur, spent a huge sum of money to launch a National Baseball Association and convince 18 teams locally to create a Liverpool League.
In 1936 the British NBA was restructured, with Moores installed as President and Everton director Ernest Green appointed as vice-chairman. While Everton star Dixie Dean, who in 1924 was making a name for himself at Tranmere Rovers, became an enthusiastic wielder of a baseball bat.
He regularly turned out for the Liverpool Caledonians during football’s close season and in 1937, the Portsmouth Evening News reported that ‘Dixie’ represented England at White City Stadium against an All-American team. Those intrepid tourists from the USA had planted a seed which eventually flourished.
- Everton’s new range is produced by Mitchell & Ness, who are one of the world’s biggest manufacturers of baseball apparel. Fans can click here to view the range.
