Celebrating 100 years
of baseball history in Prineville
By Lon Austin, Central Oregonian, Prineville Aug 3 2011
Davidson Field, which opened on June 11, 1911 is believed to be one of the oldest continually used baseball fields in the country
If you take the time to stop at Davidson Field in Prineville you can almost hear the voices that echo across its now nearly-vacant baseball diamond.
The field, which first opened for play on June 11, 1911, is the second oldest field in Oregon.
Today, about the only time the field is used is for the high school JV team to practice, and the occasional game.
“Davidson Field is not utilized very much within our park district very much,” said Crook County Park and Recreation Director Maureen Crawford. “We used to do T-ball and soccer and whatnot, but now we don’t offer any programs there.”
This wasn’t always the case.
Jerry Pimentel, who ran the youth baseball program in Prineville for 17 years, remembers the field fondly.
“We started playing a week after school was out,” Pimentel said. “We would have a week of practice, five weeks of games and a week of playoffs. Then we would take August off so kids had time to be kids.”
Pimentel remembers the field being used for as many as four little league games at a time as well as Babe Ruth and American Legion games.
“The hard part was watering the field when it wasn’t being used,” he said. “It was a very tight schedule.”
Today, Pimentel is sad to see the field sit mostly vacant.
“Over the years I’ve tried to describe the feeling I have when I drive by there and it’s not being used,” he said. “Seeing that field empty leaves a hole in my heart.”
Pimentel is not the only person to have fond memories of Davidson Field.
“That was our home field,” said retired teacher, and Crook County High School graduate Tim Huntley. “My fondest memory outside of playing center field at Davidson Field is when I was a bat boy in ’61 or ’62. Davidson Field is so big that it took a lot to hit it out of there, but I remember we played Pendleton in a district playoff and I saw Steve Bunker from Pendleton and Richard Nicholas from Prineville hit them off of the roof of Bob Sartain’s house which is in left center field. That to me was absolutely amazing. I still remember Mike Barrow’s dad tackling him as he went around third base.”
The game Huntley refers to happened in 1962. Crook County had finished the west half of the Intermountain Conference with a 12-1 record, earning home-field advantage for the district playoffs. The Cowboys easily won the first game of the playoffs over the Pendleton Buckaroos 10-1 on a Friday afternoon. However, Saturday was a very different story. Needing to win just one of two games to reach the state playoffs, the Cowboys came up short.
Pendleton blasted six home runs in the two games, winning the first game Saturday 12-1, then taking an 11-3 victory in game two.
Huntley went on to play high school ball for the Cowboys, then went on to play for Central Washington University.
“Those are great memories,” Huntley said about playing at Davidson Field. It was one of the very few covered baseball stadiums and I always get a little chuckle because the dugouts at Davidson should have been replaced 40 years ago, and they’re still there.”
Huntley went on to add that the field still looks much the same as it did in photos from the 1930s.
“It hasn’t changed much,” he said. “I know that we put the batting cage in down the right field line and the pump house down the left field line is where all the little league stuff was kept. I can remember one of us kids had climbed up on the roof of Davidson after we had gotten it ready for a district tournament in the summer and we had redone the whole infield and leveled everything and somebody had climbed up there and took a picture of it. It was quite the deal at the time.”
Huntley still vividly recalls practices at Davidson when he was in high school.
“I have pretty fond memories of Davidson,” he said. “From the old high school we had to jog down to Davidson, have practice and jog back. That was the way it was. Not too many kids had cars of their own in the 60s. It has changed. Nobody wants to walk or jog anymore.”
Huntley’s father, Red Huntley, is credited with starting the little league program in Crook County. After he retired and Pimentel took over the program, a sportsmanship award was named in Red Huntley’s honor.
“That was created I believe when dad was the parks and rec director,” Huntley said. “When dad was still alive, he used to present that to the little league kids at the end of the summer. It wasn’t the award for the most valuable player, it was for sportsmanship and for the kid that helped out the most and was a team player. That’s what it was really based on. It was a pretty big deal, but it isn’t something that you see anymore. There’s been a lot of traditions that have sort of gone by the wayside.”
Long-time Prineville resident Ray Wooldridge also has great memories of Davidson Field.
“I have a lot of memories of that field every since I was in Pee Wee league,” said Wooldridge, who first played high school varsity ball on the field in 1959.
“When I was a sophomore we had a wondrous team,” he said. “We had some upper classmen that were great ballplayers, but Bend was pretty good too. They were coming off of a state championship and I remember that we were able to beat them. I swear that we had some great players. Guys like Wayne Key, Denny Denton, Jim Dunaway, Joe Mulvahill, and Richard Nicholas, but Bend had some great players too.”
Wooldridge noted that Ed Cecil from Bend went on to pitch in the minor leagues and went on to say that he believes that Key was so good that he could have played shortstop in the major leagues if he had chosen to continue playing.
“If you talk to him, he will undersell how good he was,” Wooldridge said about Key. “But I tell you what, you talk about a shortstop.”
Wooldridge added that Bend and Crook County had what could only be described as a fierce rivalry at the time.
“There were fights every time we played Bend,” he said. “I mean real fights with fisticuffs. It would start with a hard slide into second base or something like that. The coaches would keep us apart, then when we were walking out after the game it would start back up. It was kind of hard going into a ballgame with them to keep your mind on the game knowing that there was probably going to be a fight afterwards, but those are some great memories.”
Wooldridge also has great memories about then head baseball coach Will Price.
“He was probably the biggest influence on me as a young kid coming up,” Wooldridge said. “He was a great man. He knew baseball, but more important, he knew people. He knew how to get the most out of you and he knew how to motivate people.”
Following the 1961 season, Price left Crook County to take a teaching job in Corvallis where, in 1962, he became an assistant coach for the Oregon State Beavers.
The only ball field in Oregon that has remained in continuous operation and is older than Davidson Field is Goss Field at Oregon State. That field opened in 1907. The home of the minor league Corvallis Knights, as well as Oregon State, Goss Field has the distinction of being the oldest professional baseball field in the United States.
However, Goss Field recently underwent extensive renovation and currently looks like a modern baseball diamond. Unlike Goss, Davidson looks much as when it was originally built.
Before Davidson Field was built, baseball in Prineville was played at the Crook County Fairgrounds on a makeshift field.
In 1911 the Oregon and Western Colonization Company began an extensive development in Prineville.
The corporation began selling lots in Prineville in April of that year. Half city blocks went for $700 while single lots were going for $250 apiece. As part of the development project, Oregon and Western Colonization Company donated the land for what is now Davidson Field.
Company President W.P. Davidson donated $5,000 to build grandstands and bleachers large enough to seat 700 people.
The stadium opened with much fanfare as a town team from Prineville defeated a team from Bend 5-0.
The Prineville Brass Band played to open the festivities and Davidson threw out the first pitch. The Crook County Journal proudly declared the field the finest field in Oregon following the game.
Fourth of July weekend of the same year the field hosted a three-day baseball tournament which offered a purse of $1,000. The Prineville squad defeated Silver Lake 8-7 to win the tournament championship.
Since 1911 Davidson field has had a number of different uses.
In December of 1914 it was converted into an ice skating rink. Dirt was built up about a foot on the low side of the field and a fire hose and hydrant were used to flood the field. Lights were installed and a 25 cent admission fee was charged.
In the 1930s the field fell into disrepair. However, in 1938 a concerted effort was made to clean the field up.
According to Pimentel, at some point in time lights were installed at the field and Crook County High School briefly played football at the facility.
Later, Crook County Parks and Recreation Department utilized the field for baseball, softball, and soccer.
In the late 1980’s the field was the center of a major controversy. Pimentel was retiring as director of the baseball program and the Crook County Parks and Recreation Department decided to rename the field after him. In 1988, the field was renamed Pimentel Field. A few weeks later, members of the Prineville Historical Society began a campaign to restore the name to Davidson Field, and in 1989 the field was once again named Davidson Field.
“That would have been my 17th and final year and the parks and rec board of directors decided to name it after me,” Pimentel recalls. “A few weeks later the Historical Society came up with a number of reasons why that shouldn’t be. They applied pretty constant pressure until they changed their (Crook County Park and Recreation Board) mind. It didn’t bother me as much as Gary Ward and Jeanie Searcy at Parks and Rec. I think Jeanie Searcy at Parks and Rec felt better about the new field (the current Crook County High School baseball field was named after Pimentel in 2010) being named after me than I did because she felt so bad about the first one.”
However, Pimentel doesn’t hold a grudge. Instead he chooses to remember only the good things that happened at the field.
“It was a great field,” Pimentel said. “It had covered grandstands and you could also sit in your car and have a good view of the game. I remember when I was writing sports stories for the paper sitting in my car in the early spring to stay warm and jotting down notes.”
Pimentel said that from time to time he still sees former baseball players who talk about how much playing little league baseball at Davidson meant to them.
He recalls one such instance when Willy McCabe was a freshman at Oregon State.
“I think he was 18,” Pimentel recalls. “We were talking about baseball and he said ‘remember the good old days down here.’ That old field has meant so much too so many people. It’s just a shame it doesn’t get more use today.”
