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c h a p t e r t w o Baseball and the Transformation of Rural California O n a hot Sunday evening in June 1887, the Davisville Oletas and the Dixon Etnas played the fifth of fourteen ballgames between the two rivals that summer. Several hundred fans crowded around the diamond at “the Y,” a triangle-shaped grounds bounded by the three railroad lines that converged at the Davisville depot. Sitting on grocery boxes, empty kegs, rocks, and small benches under the broiling sun, the spectators—“highly desirous of witnessing the contest ,” as the local scribe put it—waited anxiously for the first pitch. The game did not meet their expectations, however. “The local nine played listlessly” and lost by a score of 18 to 7. The Etnas took home the hundred dollar purse, and the betting in the stands amounted to hundreds more. Fortunately for the “disappointed” Oletas fans, another game was already scheduled for the following Sunday at Driving Park in Dixon, where their team would have a chance to “redeem themselves .” Sure enough, the Oletas returned the favor, beating the Etnas on their diamond and sending the Dixon fans home equally disheartened. By season’s end, the two teams had split their summer series evenly, with fans from both towns “mourning the defeats” and cherishing the victories.1 Baseball (an earlier version of it), introduced to rural California during the gold rush, gradually gained a stronger foothold over the next two decades, and then caught fire in the 1880s, when farmers and townspeople began spending lots of time watching, playing, and reading about it in the local newspaper. By 1885, according to the same reporter, they had become “devoted to the game”—so much so that on the rare occasions when a Sunday evening in the summer went by without “their accustomed amusement,” life became “unbearably dull” for 36 t h e fa r m e r s ’ g a m e players and fans alike. The scheduled games, well-established venues, large crowds, newspaper coverage, fierce rivalries, high-stakes gambling, and close bonds between teams and residents all reveal that baseball—largely regarded by historians as an urban phenomenon—had by the late nineteenth century become deeply rooted in the region’s rural culture. One farmer went so far as to say that attending church on Sunday—or, more specifically, “seeking the salvation of our immortal souls”—had become “a matter of secondary importance.”2 The farmers’ devotion to the game in the 1880s raises interconnected questions , the answers to which root in California’s post–gold rush history. First, just how “rural” (and in what sense) was baseball in towns such as Dixon and Davisville ? Did the farmers themselves play it? Second, rural California underwent a series of dramatic transitions—economic, generational, and environmental— during the second half of the nineteenth century. How did these transformations affect patterns of recreation—horse racing, gambling, and baseball, in particular —in communities such as Davisville and Dixon? Third, why did baseball itself become so popular in rural California at precisely this time? What about the 1880s—socially, culturally, economically—compelled rural residents to embrace the game so wholeheartedly? By focusing on one region, two towns, and a relatively small number of players and fans, this chapter offers a starting point for answering such questions. On a broad level, we know much about agriculture and rural life during this period and a great deal about baseball’s development from a primitive game into a profession and “the national pastime.” For at least three decades, in fact, practitioners of both the new rural history and the new sport history have emphasized culture and society . But the two subfields have rarely intersected. At the grassroots level, consequently , we know little about baseball in late-nineteenth-century rural California. Players and fans in Davisville and Dixon perceived the game from a local, not a national, perspective and, indeed, as a local, not a national, pastime.3 The rivalry needs understanding that way—in its rural context, not as a by-product of the developing urban, professional game. “Our players are mostly farmers,” wrote the Davisville correspondent, words that should be taken seriously. The history of the game in the region, he knew, intertwined with the history of the region itself.4 wWere the players, in fact, mostly farmers? The limited literature available suggests otherwise. Even the few scholars who have promised to emphasize “barn raisin’ games” and “down home” baseball in...

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