They were barely a footnote in the history of semi-pro baseball in Los Angeles, a ragtag team of “little chance” and “once were” ball players without a park to play in — and no fans to cheer them on.
Every game they played for four years was on the road in another team’s park. All they heard were boos.
“Few people knew our team even existed,” said Bob Triggs, a bat boy for the semi-pro Hollywood Stars, which played in the 1930s — just preceding the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League in 1939.
Those Hollywood Stars had a ballpark — Gilmore Field — and plenty of fans, at least until the Brooklyn Dodgers announced they were moving to Los Angeles, and they had to relocate. The team went from Hollywood to Salt Lake City, and became the Bees.
That was 66 years ago, and as the Dodgers get ready for another run at a World Series banner, the old bat boy, now 90, opens the scrapbook in his North Hills home and takes us back to a team bankrolled by his father and a starting lineup of real Hollywood stars.
“My dad worked as an electrician at Warner Bros. for 35 years, and knew most of the stars personally,” said Triggs, of his father Gilbert Triggs. “He loved baseball, and as he got older he researched getting a team at the semi-pro level.
“He talked to the stars, producers and directors he knew, and offered to put their names on the backs of the players’ jerseys if they’d support him buying bats and balls, uniforms and equipment. Most of them did.”
Every Sunday, when the Hollywood Stars took the opposing team’s field, fans looked down from the stands and saw Jack Oakie playing first base, Bette Davis on the mound, Dick Powell at third, Pat O’Brien, George Brent and Lyle Talbot in the outfield.
It became a humbling experience for opposing players to go home and tell their wives after the game they went 0 for 3 against Bette Davis that day.
“Most of the semi-pro teams represented stores or local businesses,” Triggs said. “Paramount Studios had its own team and home ballpark, Cole Field, and the Rosabell Plumbers from Pasadena was one of our main rivals.”
Who can ever forget those great teams fielded every Sunday by the Bartenders Union, Jack’s Barber Shop, O’Shea’s Lounge and Piggly Wiggly?
Semi-pro was baseball at its purest — at the grassroots level. Players didn’t have big contracts, they had handshakes. And no one ever tried to renegotiate a handshake.
They worked regular jobs and had rent and gas bills to pay, just like the fans, who didn’t have to take out a second mortgage for season tickets and parking.
A hot dog and beer didn’t cost the price of a steak and glass of fine wine.
Many of the players rode the same bus to the ballpark as the fans. Often, they lived in the same neighborhoods. They knew what it was like living paycheck to paycheck, and didn’t complain.
They were playing baseball and getting paid. How do you beat that? If someone better came along to take their position, Piggly Wiggly or O’Shea’s Lounge always needed a shortstop.
“Probably our best player was Don Pulford, a pitcher,” Triggs said. A check of the record book shows Pulford had 95 wins and 90 losses in his career with the Abberville Athletics, New Orleans Pelicans, Wilkes-Barre Barons, Nashville Vols, Hollywood Stars, Portland Beavers and Mexicali Aguilas.
Ironically, it was against the Mexicali Aguilas team — an overnight bus ride from Los Angeles — that Gilbert Triggs’ Hollywood Stars played its last game in 1941.
“I didn’t go because I wasn’t paying attention the game before when one of our players threw his bat on the ground after striking out,” Bob Triggs said. “It bounced up and hit me in the face across the nose. I remember my dad got on me for not paying attention.”
He can’t remember who won that last game, but it really wasn’t important. The Hollywood Stars were about to join a much bigger league as they got back on the bus after the game and headed home to L.A. with a lot more than baseball on their minds.
It was Dec. 7, 1941 — a date that would live in infamy.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.