# History of Oregon Agricultural Aggies baseball in the 1890s

Intercollegiate baseball was played at Oregon Agricultural College (OAC, today's Oregon State University) from the spring of 1893. This brief history of Oregon Agricultural Aggies baseball in the 1890s charts the development of the sport at the school during its pioneering decade, from the first intercollegiate game played on Saturday, April 29, 1893, as well as the debut rivalry game with Oregon in 1894 to the decade's conclusion with the indoor baseball season of 1900.

## Background

Although tracing its roots back to Corvallis College, a small educational institution operated by the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in the 1870s, Oregon Agricultural College (OAC) in Corvallis, Oregon was only converted into a state-owned land-grant university effective with the 1888–89 academic year. That year, the school was composed of just 99 students — men and women combined — more than a third of whom were part of the college preparatory program owing to the lack of sufficient public secondary schools in the state.
Baseball was widely played throughout Oregon, typically by city teams unaffiliated with any educational institution. In the winter of 1892, a proposal was floated for the launch of an amateur baseball league including clubs from the college towns of Albany, Corvallis, McMinnville, Salem, and Eugene, but nothing came of the proposal.
Intercollegiate baseball was also beginning to stir around Oregon late in the winter of 1892, with the Oregon State Normal School at Monmouth forming a baseball team in February and issuing a public challenge to other colleges and universities around the state. OAC was not one of the schools with an organized team able to meet this challenge during the spring of the 1891–92 academic year, however.

## 1893 season

Owing to its primitive facilities, limited funding, and the small size of its student body, the emergence of organized intercollegiate athletics at OAC was not instantaneous. It was only during the academic year of 1892–93 that organized team sports emerged. Critical to this change was the self-organization of athletic-minded male students on campus as the Oregon Agricultural College Athletic Association (OACAA) — a formal group established in the fall of 1892 which collected monthly dues, elected officers, and served as a central coordinating organization for sports on campus.
Cursed by rainy spring weather, a planned intercollegiate baseball game with neighboring Albany College (today's Lewis & Clark College) was postponed more than once. However, on April 25 the school's baseball players "turned out in force ... and cleaned up the diamond and resurrected things generally" in anticipation of an April 29 game, weather permitting.
An Albany College team of nine players and one substitute made the 10-mile trip to Corvallis. This time the weather cooperated and contest — a match in which "some pretty plays were made, but about as many errors as plays," in the words of one observer. Although the score of OAC's ugly first intercollegiate baseball was not reported in the press, it is known that the home team won.
Fans being fans, an angry pseudonymous letter from an Albany fan was published in the Sunday Albany Herald, in which it was charged that the umpire had been biased towards OAC and made a series of unfair decisions — an analysis challenged in a lengthy response by a pseudonymous writer calling himself "A Ball-Player" in the Corvallis Gazette. Taking issue with the Albany writer's description of the OAC field as being in "good condition," the unnamed Corvallis "Ball-Player" added a colorful description of the state of the OAC field:
   "The outfield seemed to have been a dried up swamp with all the sediment left. There were several rock piles scattered about the field, and where there were no rock piles the ground was interspersed with dead furrows. The diamond was tolerable, but the track between the bases had been laid down in gravel, so that it was rather dangerous for a base-runner to slide when close to a base."
A return game to be played in Albany was scheduled for Saturday, May 13. In a remarkably high-scoring first inning, the Agrics took a 9–6 lead over Albany. OAC made the lead 11–6 after two innings and then held on to win by a score of 18–16 in a game featuring a running one-handed stop of a hot grounder and a catch of a foul ball after fighting through the crowd by the visitors and a line drive home run in the bottom of the 9th inning by Orva Turner of Albany. A third game of the two clubs was tentatively planned for two weeks hence.
Intramural baseball was also played on the OAC grounds during the 1892–93 school year, with the Juniors battling a picked nine of underclassmen and town kids on June 20, 1893, losing to the youngsters 7–6 in late innings when their pitcher ran out of gas. The game was otherwise noteworthy for the injury of town player Billy Kerr, who was struck by a pitch in the side of the head and lost for the afternoon.

## 1894 season

By the 1893–94 academic year, OAC's student body had more than doubled in size from its 1888-89 origins, counting 148 men among its 240 students. The governing OAC Board of Regents had taken notice of a demand for college athletes and designated one large room of the school's new Mechanical building for use as a gymnasium ahead of the 1893–94 school year. This decision was received with "much enthusiasm," with the school's women — nearly 40% of the student body — adding a seemingly-successful appeal for use of the new athletic facility two days a week.
But in the fall of 1893 it was football that exploded in popularity as OAC's collegiate sport of choice. "Foot-ball was an unknown game in this country [Corvallis] at the opening of the season; owing to the career of the College team, every person of Corvallis and vicinity understands all the intricacies of the game and fully appreciates the numerous fine points that are shown on the gridiron field," one OAC sports fan observed.
As historian Brian Campf points out, the first time that OAC did battle with their rivals from Eugene City, the University of Oregon, on an athletic field, it was on a diamond in the spring of 1894 rather than on the gridiron in November of that year. The game was won by the University squad, by an incredible score of 32–23. Pitching appears to have been in short supply.

## 1896 season

Track and field was the dominant spring sport at OAC during the 1895–96 academic year, to the chagrin of the athletic editor of the Campus Barometer, the monthly magazine of the school. "Base-ball is taking a new start throughout the West this season," he noted, adding that while the University of Portland was starting a team for the spring of 1896, "little has been done at the OAC in the base-ball line, and why it is, we are unable to answer." Poor spring weather was identified as the most likely culprit, as persistent rain had caused delays that forced postponement of a scheduled game between Albany and Portland.
Nevertheless, an exhibition game was scheduled for commencement week pitting seniors and professors of OAC against their peers from the University of California.

## 1899 season

The emergence of a tangential new sport — indoor baseball — temporarily solved the perennial problem of Oregon's rainy springs. Invented in Chicago in 1887 and played for the first time in the Pacific Northwest in the fall of 1891, the game made its way to Corvallis during the 1898–99 academic year.
Indoor baseball was played inside gymnasiums using a ball 17 inches in circumference — significantly larger than the 12-inch slow pitch softballs of today — as well as stick-like hickory bats carefully limited in size. Baselines were just 27 feet long. The ball was thrown straight overhand with no flexing of the elbow, as in cricket, with the pitcher taking no more than one step in making the delivery. Curving of the ball was deemed illegal.
Only one indoor baseball game was played in that season, a match with neighboring Albany College won by the Agrics by a score of 14 to 6. There were no conventional baseball games played intercollegiately by OAC during the 1899 or 1900 seasons.

## 1900 season

Organized indoor baseball showed signs of growth during the 1899-1900 academic year in Oregon, and the OAC team managed to quadruple the number of contests on their schedule in 1900. The Albany College "Atlas Club" was dispatched by a score of 17 to 7. This was followed by a victory over the Salem YMCA second team, with the Aggies winning a slugfest, 26 to 16.
The stage was set for the first indoor baseball battle with the rival University of Oregon. OAC pulled out the victory, 17 to 12, advancing their record to 3–0 on the year.
The final game, played against the Salem YMCA first team, provided a less gratifying outcome, with the capital city team emerging with a 20–18 win. "However as the Salem team previously had been beaten by Albany and Albany in turn by OAC, the defeat was counterbalance," one orange-and-black partisan noted. A championship game with Albany was arranged, but "unfortunately for us, other college matters intervened and it was not played," the Aggie fan further observed.
The minor detail that no decisive championship contest was held did not deter the Aggies from posing with a large banner reading "CHAMPIONS" in their team picture.

## Legacy

Baseball in the 1890s at Oregon Agricultural College was never part of the school's institutional memory the way that football and men's basketball have been. Even in 1901, the editor of a student handbook for the coming year produced by the YMCA and YWCA could truthfully write: "In baseball we have met with varying success. No league was ever formed and hence no records preserved."
Oregon State University continues to make use of an objectively incorrect origins story for its baseball program, declaring in its 2024 baseball media guide that "when Oregon State began fielding a varsity baseball team in 1907, the school laid out a diamond on a lot just south of the main campus. A century later, that same site still serves as the home of the Beavers..."