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.”
