The Laredo Times · New York, New York · 1939

Indoor Baseball On Big Scale

December 1939: proof the National Professional Indoor Baseball League actually played, a Bronx Coliseum action photo, over a wire story in which softball veterans diagnose the league's fatal mistake: they forgot about sex appeal, since girls outdraw men.

First, the evidence. After the cocktail party and the pause to locate Chicago, the National Professional Indoor Baseball League did take the floor: “Klepack, Brooklyn shortstop, is out at first base in a National Professional Indoor Baseball League game in Bronx Coliseum. Martin is the first baseman of the New York Giants.” An action photograph, banked plays and all, of professional indoor base ball being played on a big scale. It exists.

Below it, Harry Grayson of NEA collected the second opinions, and they were not kind: “Veteran softball men say organizers of the National Indoor Baseball League made one fatal mistake. They forgot about sex appeal. ‘Girls outdraw men,’ asserts Charles A. Foster, governor of the central region of the Amateur Softball Association of America.” Foster’s economics are hard to argue: fans “accustomed to seeing the better players at from 10 to 25 cents are likely to pass up the sport indoors at 55 cents and $1.10.”

The league’s answer was names. “Club owners have brought famous baseball names into the setup. Tris Speaker is president of the loop.” Moose McCormick managing New York, Otto Miller in Brooklyn, Fred Maguire in Boston with Jumping Joe Dugan coaching, Gabby Street in St. Louis, Bubbles Hargrave in Cincinnati, Bill Wambsganss in Cleveland, and an effort underway “to bring Ray Schalk into the Chicago picture,” Chicago’s readiness evidently still a work in progress. There was even a plan for “the champions of the two divisions” to “meet in an indoor world series in March.”

Foster got the last word, and the customers got the verdict: “The girls give the customers more action … the better entertainment. So the National Indoor Baseball League appears to have two strikes on it at the start because it has no sex appeal. But, then, the old ball players wouldn’t know about that.” The wire moved this to papers from coast to coast, which is how a Bronx Coliseum putout ended up preserved in Laredo, Texas. The indoor thread on this site runs from an 1891 armory to this photograph. Forty-eight years of insisting the game fits indoors, and it kept almost being true.