(erielack) Erie Baseball Specials

["Christopher Thurner" <cthurner_@_adelphia.net>]

Listers:

 

In reviewing the schedule, I have a few observations / questions.  

 

First, it looks like a separate train was run from Bradford.  It shows a
departure time of 6:45 a.m from Olean, 6:10 am from Bradford, and 7:18 a.m
from Salamanca.  Reasonable speculation would infer a local ran from
Bradford to Salamanca, where the participants either changed trains or had
their car switched into the excursion's consist.

 

Second, did anyone notice that this schedule literally drops "off the cliff"
at Randolph?  Yes, there is a stop at Corry and Union City.  It doesn't show
stops at places like Jamestown, Meadville, Youngstown, etc. (not exactly
specks on the map).  Does anyone know if separate excursions were run from
these communities?

 

My guess this excursion was run due to the popularity of the Yankees and the
relatively nearby online location of Cleveland for the Erie.  You still see
some of this today, the Toronto Blue Jays often run ads in the Buffalo media
(i.e. tv, radio, papers) when the Yankees play at Skydome.

 

In the postings for this thread, list members have speculated about the
sports allegiances of people in WNY, specifically those towns / cities along
the Erie.  It's hard to say looking back 50 - 60 years, but as someone who
grew up along the Allegany Division, here are my thoughts:

 

Up until the mid - 1960's, there was a minor league baseball league by the
name of the PONY League in WNY (this league has no relationship to today's
PONY League which is for youth (i.e. teenagers and younger) baseball).
Hornell had a team, which I believe was affiliated with the Dodgers.  PONY
stood for the geographic area its teams covered.  The name is an acronym for
Pennsylvania, Ontario & New York.  They played in a minor league
classification that was below today's class A ball, that was eliminated in
either the 60's or likely no later than some time in the 70's.  I think one
of the major reasons minor league baseball contracted was due to the
ascendancy of television as an entertainment medium and also the increased
mobility of the populace due to the automobile opening up other forms and
venues of entertainment.  

 

Many cities and towns along the Erie (quasi list relevance) here in WNY
fielded PONY league teams.  Besides Hornell, Wellsville, Olean and
Jamestown, among others all had teams.  Contrary to Hornell, Wellsville's
owners were of great business savvy and acumen and had their team affiliated
with the Yankees.  In the late 50's, they became somewhat feeble minded and
irresponsible and changed it's affiliation to that with the classic
underperformers of the Red Sox (some man of questionable faculties from the
Boston area (and previously from Binghamton, an area of distasteful Met
fans!) made a shameful plug for them in an earlier post).  

 

Even though I've been a huge Yankee fan all my life, it was a memorable
experience to see players from minor league ball in Wellsville in the 60's
playing with the Red Sox in the late 60's and 70's, such as Tony Conigliaro,
George Scott, etc.  When I was growing up, it was interesting to hear the
locals talk about their relationships with the players.  Many rented living
accommodations from the locals during the season or purchased products from
local merchants, ate at local restaurants, etc.  One man, who ran a sporting
goods store, talked about George Scott buying a pair of spikes from him and
his reaction when he brought them back to him a few days later because the
soles had separated from the shoes' uppers.

 

Another thought on this point that has list relevance is:  Does anyone know
if these teams used the Erie to travel to their away games?  I would think
that in the 30's and 40's (I don't know if the League was in existence
during the 20's) RR travel probably would have been employed.  During the
50's, IMHO, it probably was used, at least for the earlier portions of the
decade and a some point from the mid 50's to early 60's they might have
changed over to buses.  I know that Batavia was part of the league, as were
other small cities around Buffalo and Rochester.  Some of the Ontario teams
were from Fort Erie, Niagara Falls, St. Catharines and Hamilton.  So, they
may have used the Erie to reach Buffalo and then transferred to one of the
Canadian lines.

 

To get to another point raised in this thread, Western NY, along with most
of upstate NY, is fiercely pro-Yankee.  I worked in the cable tv industry
until a year or so ago and when YES network, which now carries the Yankees,
was launched in either 2000 or 2001 in the Buffalo / Rochester areas.  It
was very clear that the customers in the cable systems in WNY were demanding
YES be included in their channel lineups (a fact that benefited YES
significantly in our negotiations - they get a license fee that is almost as
much as ESPN, which is the most expensive service in the industry).

 

The Buffalo area has a close association with the Yankees.  Part of it is
because that Joe McCarthy lived in either the Tonawandas or Niagara Falls
area for a number of years (I think up to his death).  Also, WPIX was on
cable here back into at least the early 60's and the Yanks were one of the
first teams on tv here because of that.  

 

A little more than my $0.02.

 

Regards,

 

Chris Thurner

 

Christopher Thurner

 

 



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