“Faster, Harry, faster!” “Get this crate moving!” These were the more polite words of encouragement that came from the passengers in my 1951 Ford, as we hurdled down the road at 80 mph heading towards Turner in the summer of 1956. I pressed down on the accelerator, but with seven husky ballplayers on board, my car had reached its limit.
Why was I going so fast on one of Maine’s innumerable back roads? I was helping to transport a baseball team to Turner from Vinalhaven, a challenging sea-land operation. First, we had to take the ferry across Penobscot Bay to Rockland, where I’d left my car. Then we had to find Turner.
Every summer my family went to Vinalhaven for their vacation. I first went as a young child in 1941. Among other activities my family and I enjoyed watching the town baseball team, the Vinalhaven Chiefs, play a game or two. I loved baseball, whether it was played on Vinalhaven or at Yankee Stadium. As a boy, I knew and admired many of the local players: Brud Carver, Ducky Haskell, Sonny Oakes, Paul Chillis and Clyde Bickford.
Fifty years ago Vinalhaven had a rich baseball tradition that had begun in the late 19th century. The island had produced one major league player, Bill “Dasher” Murray, who starred at Brown and played for two years with the American League Washington Senators in 1916 and 1917. The Vinalhaven Chiefs were formed in the 1930s and, although we didn’t know it at the time, 1956 would be their last year. The team played on a field affectionately called “the old ball ground.” One of the positive results of the Depression on Vinalhaven was the improvement of this field by the WPA in the 1930s. Ducky Haskell recalls, “The field had stands for several hundred people along the baselines as well as dressing rooms and a public address system. We were our own groundskeepers. We hauled in sawdust, then rolled and raked the field Sunday mornings. We even put in tidal gates along the third base line so the field wouldn’t flood at high tide.” Even so, I remember that during particularly high tides, the field could get pretty wet. And more than one home run was hit when the ball was lost in the marsh grasses of the outfield. The field produced its share of stories, including the time when, as local resident Annette Philbrook remembers, “Someone tried to hang himself in the clubhouse.” Today the “old ball ground” is used for winter skating parties, since environmental regulations prohibit damming up what has become a protected wetlands area.
My own experience with Vinalhaven baseball coincided, unfortunately, with the decline of the sport on the island. But more on that later. In 1956 I was an enthusiastic left-handed pitcher of limited ability. Years later, the exact details of the Turner trip are a bit hazy except that I know I was delighted, as a summer kid, to be asked to play with the team. I do remember my car was part of a caravan taking the Chiefs to an away game against a town that seemed practically at the Canadian border. In the mid-1950s, Vinalhaven was an island with approximately 30 miles of dirt or poorly paved roads. The condition of these roads kept anyone from even approaching the speed limit, whatever it was in those days. The driver, vanishing in the distance ahead of me, was clearly intoxicated by the open roads of the mainland and was determined to take advantage of this rare opportunity to see how fast his car could go. And so we proceeded to Turner.
After what seemed like an eternity of bumpy roads, we arrived safely at our destination. Turner, it should be noted, is about 11 miles northwest of Lewiston. It is also 15 miles east of Norway, 30 miles south of Mexico and 35 miles southwest of Vienna, if that helps. I don’t remember the details of the game except that I pitched a bit and that I think we won. I do remember that the field was laid out on a sloping village green. The outfield dropped off so much in center and right fields that, as I stood on the pitcher’s mound, our outfielders were only visible from the waist up. The result was that balls hit by both teams were frequently misjudged once they got beyond the infield. In right field stood a large church. The ground rule was that any ball coming into contact with this sacred building was an automatic double. There was only one umpire. He was stationed behind home plate and was berated on just about every call he made. Heckling the umpire was clearly part of the game in Turner.
I played in several more games with the Chiefs that summer of 1956 and I was looking forward to subsequent summers with the team. Unfortunately interest in baseball was declining on the island and, as noted, the team was disbanded after the 1956 season. Young men were leaving the island to work on the mainland. Basketball was becoming increasingly popular and by the late 1950s television was an after-school activity for kids. After the 1959 season, even the high school team was discontinued. However, what goes around, comes around: “Baseball Returns to Island in a Big Way,” read the June 5, 2003 headline in the Rockland Courier-Gazette. An article followed on the resumption of Vinalhaven baseball that had begun with the establishment of a Little League program in 1999. According to Jim Conlan, manager of the newly formed Babe Ruth team, “The reemergence of baseball on the island is good to see because it was an important sport here for so long. People here remember playing or watching games on the old ball field. Having baseball on the island again will bring out the fans, and that will be a great thing to see.” Maybe the boys will even take another trip to Turner.
When he’s not on Vinalhaven, Harry Gratwick teaches in Philadelphia.