In 1869, Thomas Foley, a gambler and pool hall owner, placed a newspaper advertisement seeking to recruit ballplayers to form a professional team to represent Chicago. Foley, an Irish immigrant from Cashel, reasoned that a professional ball club would promote wagering on the outcome of the games and allow Chicago to challenge the supremacy of the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the first professional baseball team in America. Foley’s new team, the Chicago White Stockings (the lineal ancestors of the current Chicago Cubs) became a member of the first attempted professional league, the National Association of  Baseball Players in 1871.

During the inaugural season, the team seemed well positioned to make a serious bid for the championship when fate intervened. A fire that began at the home of the O’Leary family on DeKoven Street on October 8th spread rapidly and in thirty-six hours the conflagration destroyed much of Chicago. Although the White Stockings completed the remainder of its schedule by playing on the road, the team lost some of these games and the Philadelphia Athletics finished in first place by two games.
The Chicago team was unable to resume baseball operations until 1874. Two years later, general dissatisfaction with the chaotic National Association resulted in the creation of the new National League, which became the first truly successful professional sports league. William Hulbert helped found the league and took charge of the Chicago franchise which won the first National League pennant. For many years to come, Chicago was the leading city in America in terms of its overall importance to organized baseball.

Fifty years after placing his help wanted advertisement, Tom Foley and his surviving associates founded the Old Timers Baseball Association as a social organization. Former professional and semi-pro players, team executives and employees, and hundreds of baseball enthusiasts held a series of annual reunions to celebrate the National Pastime. The gatherings were nonpartisan in that athletes and fans of all teams were welcome to join in the lively proceedings.

At the peak of the association’s popularity, its annual banquets were held at such venues as the Palmer House and routinely attracted more than two thousand guests, including prominent politicians, athletes, team executives, broadcasters and sportswriters. Until the mid-Seventies, the banquets were largely conducted in a stag party type of atmosphere where the air was heavy with cigar smoke and whiskey fueled laughter echoed throughout the hotel ballrooms. Women finally began to participate in the organization in greater numbers when retired female athletes from the All American Girls Professional Baseball League were invited to become association members. The women’s league had been promoted by the former Cubs owner, Philip K. Wrigley, and operated in the Midwest from 1943 until 1954.

Over the years, former players, including Foley, who played briefly for the White Stockings in 1871, Jimmy Archer, and Baseball Hall of Fame members such as Gabby Hartnett and Fred Lindstrom served as the Chicago presidents of the Old Timers Baseball Association. White Sox favorites such as Billy Pierce and Minnie Minoso attended many of the banquets. The association concept spread across the country to encompass similar clubs in several other American cities. Paul Schramka, a journeyman minor leaguer who had a cup of coffee with the Cubs in 1953, is the current president of the Milwaukee area Old Timers club.

The current president of the original Chicago club is Andy Pafko, “The Boy from Boyceville, Wisconsin.” Pafko is eighty-eight years young and is one of the few surviving players from the Cubs last pennant winning team, which was managed by Charlie Grimm. The 1945 Cubs denied the favored St. Louis Cardinals a fourth consecutive NL pennant, but lost the World Series to the Detroit in seven games. Schramka recalled watching Pafko in the ’45 Series as a seventeen year old Milwaukee high school student seated in the stands at Wrigley Field. Five years later, Schramka was invited to Spring Training and he practiced opposite Pafko during the exhibition season before being reassigned by the Cubs to the minor leagues.

During his seventeen year major league career, Andy Pafko made and witnessed history. In an era before free agency, Pafko appeared in the World Series four times with three different National League teams (Chicago, Brooklyn and Milwaukee). This equaled a major league record, which stood for many years, for the most World Series appearances by a single player on multiple teams. Pafko also played on two other teams that were eliminated from pennant races in three game playoffs scheduled to break ties for first place that occurred at the end of two regular 154 game seasons.

Pafko joined the Cubs in 1943, after starring for Los Angeles in the Pacific Coast League, then a top Chicago farm club.
In 1945, his 110 runs batted in, a personal single season best for him, led the pennant winning team. Pafko was a popular fan favorite, but the front office inexplicably traded him to the Brooklyn Dodgers in the middle of 1951. The move infuriated Cubs fans and hastened the team’s downward spiral into long term futility, ineptitude and mediocrity.

Later that same season, Pafko’s wife, Ellen, called for a taxi cab to take her to the LaSalle Street Station, so that she could catch a train and join her husband in Brooklyn for the start of the World Series. The taxi arrived a few minutes early and she asked the driver if he could wait a few minutes since the third and final playoff game at the Polo Grounds was nearly over. The Dodgers were leading the New York Giants by a score of 4 to 1in the bottom of the ninth. The Giants had posted an amazing 37-7 record in August and September, erasing Brooklyn’s thirteen game lead and forcing a playoff series for the league title.

A few minutes passed and Ellen Pafko turned off the radio. She returned to the taxi cab and apologized. She would not need to be driven to the station after all. Bobby Thomson had lined a game winning, three run, home run into the left field stands, a mere 280 feet down the line from home plate and Andy Pafko watched the ball clear the wall. In almost any other ballpark, the ball would have been in play for the leftfielder, but Thomson’s “Shot Heard Around the World” counted and the Giants had won the pennant. The usually vocal Leo Durocher was dumbstruck by his team’s miraculous late rally. The losing Brooklyn pitcher, Ralph Branca was appropriately dejected. Many decades later, it was revealed that the Giants had learned how to steal signs from the Dodgers and that a lookout had been placed in the scoreboard for this purpose.

Pafko would have to wait until the next year to make his first World Series appearance with Brooklyn. In January of 1953, he was traded again, this time to the Boston Braves. He was to be reunited with his former manager, Grimm. Shortly before the start of the regular season, the Braves suddenly relocated to Milwaukee. It was the first time that a major league franchise had moved in a half century. Milwaukeeans were ecstatic. Pafko quickly became a favorite of the many Slovaks in his home state of Wisconsin.

Pafko gradually yielded his regular outfield position to a player named Henry Aaron, but remained on the Braves as a valuable and frequently played substitute. Milwaukee won the World Series in 1957 by beating the powerful New York Yankees. New York turned the tables in a rematch the next October. In 1959, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Milwaukee were tied for first at the end of the regular season. Los Angeles won the playoff series and defeated the Chicago White Sox in the ’59 Series. Pafko retired after the season ended and spent a few years managing in the minors before returning to the Chicago area.
At the conclusion of a lengthy minor league career, Schramka returned home to Milwaukee and became the owner of a funeral home. His former Cubs uniform number was given to a rookie shortstop, Ernie Banks. When the Cubs retired number 14, Schramka, who had played in two games without an official turn at bat, attended the ceremony and joked with Banks, who hit 512 home runs, that he had left all the hits in the uniform number for the Hall of Fame player.

Ninety years after its 1919 founding , the original Old Timers Baseball Association is suspending its operations. Thursday was its last scheduled banquet.

The gala events that crowded reception rooms in large downtown hotels have long been a thing of the past. An enthusiastic, but much smaller gathering took place at the White Eagle Banquet Hall in suburban Niles. For many of the assembled Chicagoans, it was a last hurrah before saying goodbye. The oldest member in attendance was a gentleman who was one hundred years old. Other members walked with the assistance of canes. After dinner, it was announced that Mark Braun, the association’s executive director, and several other dedicated members had located Tom Foley’s final resting place in Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Evanston. They cleared the Foley family plot that was so overgrown that the grass had largely obscured the memorials. They sought to honor the memory of this baseball pioneer who founded the association and served as its first president. After the speeches concluded, the entire assembly sang  “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” together one last time as a group.

Baseball was once the most popular team sport in the America, but the times have changed. Football and basketball have eclipsed baseball to a degree in recent decades. In the past, many star athletes who excelled in other sports tried to become baseball players because the game paid better salaries than football and basketball. Yesterday’s ballplayers were more approachable and earned wages that were more in line with other workers (in 1945, most players averaged $6,400.00 annually — a few stars made $10,000.00 or more). Many held off-season jobs during the winter months. Pride still mattered and the prospect of increasing their earnings by a few thousand dollars by winning the pennant and playing in the World Series was a strong incentive for most players to try to do their best in every game. Malingering was not tolerated on the baseball diamond. Sadly, today it seems to be the norm.

In recent years, the association’s  membership has declined while its remaining members have grown older. As is the case with many other fraternal, social and service organizations, fewer and fewer younger members have come on board. Postage and printing costs have become prohibitively expensive and impacted upon the profitability of the association’s baseball journal, a magazine quality publication. Many current major league players travel from city to city like highly paid mercenaries and most do not develop strong ties to teams in their adopted hometowns as did retired players of yore like Pafko and Schramka. Too many of these spoiled millionaires cannot work the count and hit with two strikes or play sound fundamental baseball. Some contemporary fans seem to be as obnoxious as the players and oblivious to what takes place on the diamond. For too many, the games are an excuse to become publicly intoxicated.

Active chapters of the Old Timers Baseball Association will continue to function in other cities. Paul Schramka urged the Chicago audience to accept the hospitality of the Milwaukee Brewers and the Milwaukee area association and avail themselves of opportunities to visit Miller Park which he described as “Wrigley Field North.” Other participants promised to try to stay in touch with one and other.

Summer is swiftly passing away and there was a chill in the night air. Autumn is nigh. Soon the ballparks will be empty and the gates and turnstiles will be shut. Exiting the parking lot,

I was overcome with a sense of wistfulness. Sometimes, one wishes that the game could continue indefinitely and be played into extra innings even as the light fades and the evening shadows begin to appear.

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Daniel J. Kelley is a regular contributor to “The Chicago Daily Observer.” His late grandfather attended church and bowled on a team with the late Charles Leo Hartnett, who hit “the homer in the gloaming” in 1938. Hartnett’s bat and the home run ball are now on display in an exhibit case at the Chicago History Museum.

Image Weeghman Park in 1909 at Clark and Addison