Diamond Anniversary: Pioneer League Baseball came here in 1940
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This year marks two big anniversaries for Idaho Falls. In 1865, the town got its start with a toll bridge over the Snake River, and in 1940 halfway between then and now professional baseball came to stay.
Baseball and Idaho Falls are about the same age. When men came with the Utah and Northern Railroad in 1879, baseball was one of the ways they would pass the time. One of the men who came to work, Swedish immigrant John Lindgren, envisioned an oasis on Idaho Falls’ north side. Besides a picnic area, lake and dance pavilion, from 1919 on Highland Park featured a baseball diamond where teams from Pocatello, St. Anthony and other Snake River Valley communities would come to challenge the semipro hometown squad.
A first stab at professional baseball came in the mid1920s, when the Idaho Falls Spuds played in the Utah-Idaho League. After winning two championships, in 1926 and 1927, the team faltered due to rising travel expenses. Soon the Great Depression, which started in 1929, gave Idaho Falls more to worry about than its baseball team.
A new dawn arrived in 1939 when Sam Collins, owner of the Lewiston Indians, let it be known he was interested in relocating. By early November he and Idaho Falls Mayor Chase A. Clark had signed a transfer deal on assurances that Idaho Falls would improve its ballpark. Clark ordered 16 100foot light poles and filed for help from the federal Works Project Administration to build covered grandstands, bleachers and fences.
In March 1940, Idaho Falls Baseball Club President Lew Garland announced the Idaho Falls Russets would be a farm team for the World Champion New York Yankess. Collins and George Weiss, head of the Yankees’ farm system, had made the deal months before but it needed the OK of Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis to be official.
World War II put the Pioneer League on hold from 1943 to 1945, but in 1946 the Russets were back. In the years that followed, future stars such as Billy Martin, Donn Clendenden, Tom Brunansky, Devon White, Jose Canseco and Billy Butler made brief stops on their way to the majors. At various times, the Idaho Falls club was affiliated with the Los Angeles Angels, Oakland A’s, Atlanta Braves, San Diego Padres and Kansas City Royals.
The one person who qualifies as Idaho Falls’ greatest baseball booster was E.F. McDermott, publisher of the PostRegister from the 1920s to the 1970s. When the Highland Park grandstands burned down in the fall of 1975, it was he and Club President Eugene Bush who led the effort to get a new facility built in time for the opening game of 1976. The park was called McDermott Field until 2007, when a new facility was built and named Melaleuca Field.
In 75 years, Idaho Falls has the longest continual record of any team in the Pioneer League. Where once there were wooden benches, games can now be enjoyed from luxury suites or a hot tub on the right field line (or, if you live in the right part of the neighborhood, a lawn chair or bench on the “upper deck” of your house.)
Whether you are a regular or a visitor, we invite you to enjoy the game and take note of the special place baseball has in the heart of our community.