From Hustlers And Resorters To Beach Bums And Pit Spitters

Major League Baseball playoffs began yesterday, and though the Tigers are out of contention, it got The Ticker thinking about our national pastime. Long before the Traverse City Pit Spitters or their minor league predecessors the Beach Bums, Traverse City had its own semi-pro local team in 1894 called the Hustlers (if the name rings a bell, you might be remembering the plaque outside Blue Tractor that notes their original headquarters). 

Early references to the Hustlers date back to September 13, 1894 when the team played the Kalamazoo Kazoos, who won 4-1 on a day described as “the prettiest game played on the home grounds this season.” 

The Kazoos’ play was reported as “all around good work, with no particularly brilliant plays,” while the Hustlers “all did nobly and feel confident they can put up a good game to-day,” according to the The Grand Traverse Herald. The paper also reported on a two-game stand against the Kalkaska team where “the hoodlum element let itself loose both days, and even stones and brickbats were brought into play by the tougher portion of Kalkaska.” 

Lest you think that game was tough, the Traverse City Record-Eagle reported on May 27, 1897 that the Hustlers would be playing their first exhibition game “against the asylum team…for the entertainment of the patients at the institution as well as for practice for the teams.” That game apparently didn’t get the team off to a great start, as just a few months later in July 1897 the newspaper chided local residents for not supporting their local squad. 

“It is doubtful if there is a better amateur nine in Michigan today,” the paper wrote. “It is now the duty of the ball loving public to support the organization as such an organization should be supported…and in view of the first-class sport given, there should be a more liberal attendance than has been shown thus far this season.”

The call to root, root, root for the home team clearly went unheeded: The Hustlers called it quits on September 4th, 1899, as reported by the Traverse City Morning Record. Players went back to their day jobs: one at a hardware store, one at a state hospital in Toledo, and another on the Chicago and West Michigan Railway (which also went out of business that year). 

By July 1900, the Morning Record reported team’s uniforms were sold to a team organizing nearby, with a final dig at TC ball fans: “Traverse City has no baseball team but the fans can take a run over to Elk Rapids occasionally to see the real article.”

Ten years later, baseball returned to Traverse City. Following a public meeting held in early April 1910, the Record-Eagle reported that “the baseball fever has struck Traverse City with considerable force,” and plans were set in motion to raise funds for a new team. The paper praised baseball as “the one sport…which offers nothing that could affect one’s morals.” This team would go on to be named the Resorters (pictured), but most reporting at the time just referred to the team as the Traverse City Baseball Association and occasionally the “Summer Lads.”

The first game of the season against Cadillac was a big deal: The team was led by a band to the field, stores and businesses closed up shop for the game, and the mayor issued a proclamation “calling on the people to ‘boost’ the team.” Despite the initial excitement, money troubles quickly emerged. By late August, the team was already in need of an additional $700 to complete the season, though “the consensus of opinion was that the team was an excellent advertisement for the city and that it had furnished good, clean entertainment for the people of the city all season.”

The team continued to garner local popularity: The Record-Eagle covered the home opener of the 1912 season breathlessly, proclaiming that “baseball language does not fully contain adjectives that fully express the glorious playing of the Traverse City team.” 2,500 attendees filled the grandstands to watch the Resorters beat the Cadillac Chiefs 8-0. 

Things change quickly, though: 1913 started with reports of higher-than-expected expenses for the previous season and by December of that year, The Grand Traverse Herald was reporting that the club had been suspended from the West Michigan league over a salary limit rule violation, where players were being paid more than their contracts stated. “Baseball has become a joke and a byword in Traverse City. I am tired of such corruption,” club president W.W. Parr was quoted as saying.

1914 was the club’s final year in existence, and by this time the team’s performance was essentially mocked. The May 29th Record-Eagle called that day’s game “a parody on the national pastime…which caused two hundred spectators to sit up and take notice. It was not good ball playing, however, which caused them to assume an upright posture.” They continued: “There are no alibis or defenses. It was purely and solely poor baseball…there was not even an attempt made to conceal the fact of the travesty.”

By Labor Day, it was all over. Further financial issues caused the nearby Boyne City team to strike, and the Traverse City team was dropped from the league the same day when the new promoter quit, or in the parlance of the Ludington Daily News, “threw up the sponge.”

The paper’s front page focused more on French troops facing off against the Germans, as what would be known as World War I had been underway for just six weeks.  

This piece was assembled thanks to the resources made available by the Traverse Area District Library’s digital newspaper archive, which includes documents from papers including the Record-Eagle, the Traverse City Evening Record, the Grand Traverse Herald, the Traverse Bay Eagle and others.