Did You Know?
I mentioned last week that back in September of 1893, the New York Giants (these days the San Francisco Giants) baseball team visited Fayette County and played two games against a local baseball team.
The locals held their own in front of “2,000 spectators who yelled themselves hoarse,” and won the first game by a score of 12-10.
That, despite the Giants having two future Baseball Hall of Fame inductees (John Montgomery Ward and Roger Connor) in their lineup. (I can’t imagine the San Francisco Giants paying a visit to Uniontown these days, and losing. Could you?)
The Uniontown Evening News carried front-page stories about both of the encounters.
“The New York Giants were not in it. The local aggregation of ball tossers were at their best, and they played a game of ball yesterday which in the parlance of the diamond was OUT OF SIGHT (my emphasis),” said the lead paragraph of the game coverage on Oct. 3, 1893.
The local team lost the second game, 7-3, but a Pittsburgh newspaper still took note of the prowess of Fayette County’s “out of sight” baseball players.
“Poker and Baseball” was the headline for a dispatch from the Pittsburg(h) Times that appeared below the coverage of the first game. “Base(b)all is another game they seem to play up at Uniontown,” said the complete text of that dispatch. Of course, poker was the other.
The 1893 New York Giants were hardly the only famous sports team to have made a stop in Uniontown.
“Pitt Panther Club To Stay Here Tonight,” said a headline on the sports page of the Uniontown News Standard on Oct. 1, 1937.
While the defending national (and Rose Bowl) champion University of Pittsburgh football team wouldn’t be playing a game in Uniontown, plans were under way for the team to stay overnight at the White Swan Hotel.
The Pitt team was heading to Morgantown, W.Va., the following day to take on the West Virginia Mountaineers, which featured a number of district athletes (Harry Clarke of Uniontown, Dave Volkin of Mount Pleasant, Tom Davis of Nemacolin and Tom Gussie of Republic), and Uniontown was the place the coaches chose to get some rest before the big game.
On Monday, Oct. 4, the Daily News Standard’s sports page carried a large picture of the entire Pitt football team having dinner at the White Swan Hotel.
There were also pictures of future All-American Marshall “Biggie” Goldberg, and the Pitt’s legendary coach, Jock Sutherland.
Below the pictorial, it was reported that both Uniontown’s Clarke and Republic’s Gussie had been outstanding during the game, although Pitt beat WVU, 20-0.
Pitt would win its second national championship in a row later that year. No doubt as a direct result of Uniontown’s hospitality.
“Near Record-Sized Baby is Born Here,” said a headline on the front page of the Sept. 28, 1951, edition of the Uniontown Evening Standard.
“A Uniontown mother gave birth to a 13-pound, two-ounce girl in Uniontown Hospital yesterday morning, one of the heaviest babies ever born in the local institution,” said the lead paragraph.
The article about the Lenox Street mother, who had only arrived in the U.S. the previous year from Italy, also included a report about the very largest baby ever born at Uniontown Hospital.
Dr. Hugh Ralston had delivered a 15-pound baby approximately 25 years earlier.
It was reported that the baby was named Hugh Ralston Baker in the doctor’s honor.
Hugh Ralston Baker, the former 15-pound newborn baby, had grown to become a 6-foot tall, 210-pound employee of the Richmond Radiator plant.
By the way, according to the Guinness Book of World Records, the heaviest baby ever born was in Canada in 1879. That baby, which weighed 23.12 pounds, died just 11 hours after being born.
More recently, though, a 19.2 pound baby was born in Indonesia.
Among some people, these days, there is a great deal of anticipation with each new technological advance. There can be lines circling electronics stores, with tech-savvy customers waiting to get their hands on that new iPad or iPhone.
But back in September 1951, there was something of a frenzy about something we take for granted these days — the steam iron.
“Sunbeam Ironmaster Demonstrated,” said the headline in the Sept. 28, 1951, edition of the Evening Standard.
That headline was accompanied by a picture of a group of people watching a Sunbeam representative show off the new device at Metzler’s story in downtown Uniontown.
Until then, spray bottles were used to moisten clothes that were being pressed.
The new Sunbeam model featured a hose that was attached to the body of the iron that dispensed distilled water.
The Sunbeam representative remarked that with the newfangled iron, “The user can go from steam to dry ironing and back again, instantly.”
And the rest, as they say, is history.