Histories of the Old Pacific Coast League: A Review Essay

The triple-A Pacific Coast League (pcl) today remains a thriving operation, continuously underway since 1903. Yet the version that has been in place since 1958—when the Dodgers and Giants transplanted themselves across the continent, and the pcl was deprived of its Los Angeles and San Francisco flag-ship venues—bears little meaningful resemblance to the league that bore that name for the first half of the twentieth century. When any discussion of baseball history turns to the Pacific Coast League, it’s almost certainly focusing on the “old” pcl, the league that included not just the Los Angeles Angels and San Francisco Seals, but also occupied the now-major-league locations of Seattle, Oakland, and San Diego, and featured (mostly) independent teams competing for wins, fans, and revenue. This wasn’t merely a farm operation subsidized by and subservient to the majors.

That “old” pcl was without question a great minor league, well-capitalized (especially in its most populous cities) and genuinely independent enough to present a very high quality of play. Whether it was truly the “greatest” minor league, as the title of Dennis Snelling’s book confidently proclaims, is perhaps a matter of debate. The American Association and the International League, in their roughly 1920–1950 heyday, were both also quite superior to their later editions, or to any modern pure farm league. But taking everything into consideration—not just the quality of play, but the intensity of fan interest and attendance, and the glamour and color of operating in such stylish locales as Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and, of course, Hollywood—it does seem fair to consider the grand old Pacific Coast League as the pinnacle of minor-league baseball.

Thus over the years the pcl has attracted a significant degree of attention from baseball historians. This season, we’re greeted with two new additions to the literature. Snelling’s work is a grand and comprehensive history of the entire league over its glory years. Richard Beverage’s is a similarly ambitious undertaking, but limiting its focus to just one pcl team—albeit the team that’s properly characterized by Beverage in his preface as “perhaps the premier franchise in the Pacific Coast League” (1), capturing fourteen pennants, the most of any pcl team (eclipsing their rivals from San Francisco, who won eleven).

These books are remarkably similar to one another in structure. Both are straightforward and traditional macro-scale histories, following a strict chronological line through the decades, divided into short and sensible chapters covering a few seasons apiece. Both devote a generous portion of their space to elaborate and exquisitely detailed appendices, presenting statistics and records (for Beverage it’s about one-fifth of the book). Both also include thorough bibliographies and subject indices. Snelling’s book goes one further and also includes exhaustive endnotes, covering nearly fifty pages. It’s entirely fair to say that a reader seeking to learn about nearly any player, any event, or any episode of any significance within the scope of these works will not be disappointed. Each author clearly intends his book to become the source, the standard reference, covering his subject matter.

Suitably for such serious ambitions, both authors present a writing style that’s clear, direct, and efficient. Consider Snelling’s description of the conception and construction of a great new ballpark in Los Angeles in the 1920s:

Shortly after purchasing the Los Angeles Angels in 1921, [William] Wrigley vowed to replace the ramshackle Washington Park with a beautiful stadium that would fit his image and make the city proud. Recognizing that ballparks in the Pacific Coast League were generally thrown up in a few weeks by nailing some boards together and securing the structure with wire mesh, Wrigley wanted to initiate a new era in the pcl. He...