Tonight I am thinking about baseball since Spring Training has begun. I am starting to see baseball related posts show up on my Facebook feed as some of my friends eagerly anticipate the start of the season.
I also have a friend who will be in his first season as a Field Coordinator in the Major League, but that is another story.
Tonight the post will be a sequel to my Hamburg Baseball post from last July.
This picture from 1961 comes from one of my Grandma’s Scrapbooks. The picture brings back some memories of my own from about 20 years later when I would ride a bus to summer baseball games in Southwest Kansas.
This is from my Dad’s home town of Hamburg, Iowa. My Dad had just graduated from High School, but we had family friends who played on the town teams so my Grandma saved clippings from the paper.
Ready to Roll — Retired from hauling school kids this spring, this bus was purchased by the Hamburg Fire Dept. and renovated as a baseball bus. Overhauled, painted bright red, and with appropriate lettering, the bus left Hamburg Monday morning loaded with Pint and Cub ball players off on a week-long tour of southwest Iowa and northwest Missouri towns to play baseball. The bus is lettered “Hamburg Youth Baseball Bus” and is a mighty good rolling advertisement for the city.
Although the newspaper clipping is in black and white, I can just imagine the bright red bus.
Since the bus and teams were sponsored by the Fire Department, the Hamburg Reporter was able to come up with an interesting headline.
Hamburg Cubs “put out fire”, win dist. tourney
There are several pages of articles about the Hamburg baseball teams in the scrapbook and it is interesting to read them, especially as I run across a few names of people that I know. There are also pictures of the Pints, Midgets and Cubs teams.
The teams did not always win, but Coach Clayton always had good things to say about his players.
I am having so many Baseball Memories as I write this post.
I must close it out before my mind wanders too far. I need some sleep after a long day in the classroom.
Do you remember playing baseball when you were a kid?
Were you on a traveling team?
What color was your bus?
Steven
Braman's Wanderings 
Hey, got to thinking, whenever you write a blog about something in Hamburg, email just that to me, and we could probably run it in the Reporter. I think people would like to reminisce. Or if you’ve had some from the past, send them too. We’re always looking for freelancers to write about Hamburg’s past. A lot of the old story tellers are now gone. Thanks Betty Travis. Also, I can’t find where you sent your address for me to mail you a paper with your photos/article we put in.
Betty, I will send an e-mail to you soon. I will also put together a list of Hamburg related blog posts for you. There are quite a few. You can also find them by typing Hamburg in the search box at the top of the page.
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