Nome All Stars · Nome, Alaska · 1922

Base Ball Game Tonight

Nome, Alaska, April 1922. Tonight in Eagle Hall, the third and deciding championship base ball game: Army and Navy against the Nome All Stars, 8:30 sharp, dance to follow. Outside, the same front page reports a raging blizzard. Baseball finds a way, even two degrees below the Arctic Circle.

On April 8, 1922, The Nome Nugget ran the sporting news that mattered: “BASE BALL GAME TONIGHT. Tonight in Eagle Hall the third and deciding championship base ball game will be held between the Army and Navy and Nome All Stars. The game will start promptly at 8:30 p. m. and after the game a public dance will be given.”

Every word earns its keep. This is indoor base ball, played in Eagle Hall, because April in Nome is not outdoor weather; the adjacent column reports “the raging blizzard” delaying the mail carrier, and another item notes the last overland mail of the winter season would close April 15. The opponents are the Army and Navy against the town’s All Stars, a series knotted at a game apiece with everything riding on tonight. And “after the game a public dance will be given,” which is how a small town at the edge of the Bering Sea turned a Saturday into an occasion.

Nome in 1922 was past its gold rush glory but stubbornly alive, a place where basketball, baseball and dances all happened in the same halls through the long winter. The same page carries bids for dredging the harbor, a herring dealer quoting blubber at 8 cents a pound, and the Golden Gate Hotel promising “Best Accommodations in Alaska. Steam Heated, Electric Lighted.” Into all that, a deciding game at 8:30 sharp.

The armory games of St. Paul in 1891 and the Bronx Coliseum crowds of 1939 bookend the indoor game’s long history, but for sheer commitment to playing ball no matter what, the northernmost entry in our indoor thread takes the flag. Two degrees shy of the Arctic Circle, blizzard at the door, dance to follow.