ORAL HISTORY PROJECT
BASEBALL IN PENNSYLVANIA

Student· s Name
2. Subject· s Name

Kwiat

Jason

W

al ter

Eve

n

oski

3. Subject's Background Player, Umpire, coach
date and place •
b. Present address
c. Present Occupation
4. Date of Interview

•

I

Ma

y 17

Retired

11/20/94

5. General Comments:

DO NOT WRITE BELOW THIS LINE

JASON KWIAT

TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW WITH WALTER EVENOSKI

DR. DIXON
PENNSYLVANIA HISTORY

NOVEMBER 22, 1994

1

Q:If you could start with the beginning, what did you do and then
move along to when you first started to play ball, how old were
you?
A:I was sixteen years old and I played with, well, people that
were in their thirties and maybe twenties and thirties and some
of them were in their fifties.
I was sixteen when I started
playing in the regular baseball. And this is one thing I have
got to tell you, when we were kids we had no equipement
whatsoever, all the equipement we got we had to steal. I mean we
used to get balls that they would hit over the railroad tracks
and we would wait there for the new balls to come, brand new
ones, so someone would get them. The first guy to get them would
throw it to a guy down the road about fifty feet down the road or
one hundred yards, as far as you could throw the ball to another
guy. He got it and he threw it to someone else.
So when those
guys come over to see where them balls were, they knew we were
going to steal it, so we threw that ball three times and the
third guy, he had to take off just like a streaker. Down the
side of the railroad tracks there was a steel mill, a tin mill
there, and we would run around the fences as far as we could go
and then the guy would see that, he would run from him and he
would be about two hundred yards ahead of him, so he could never
catch him.
So he would say the hell with them, they stole that
ball from us.
So then we would wait for another fly ball to come
over and get there, and then three passes and we would go.
This
one time I was the one that was supposed to be running because we
always had the fastest guy on the last so he could go really
outrun everybody. This time they threw the ball to me and I was
running down the street and he was gaining on me and I knew I had
around the fence there and when I round the fence there was a
factory there and it had this clay, this loose clay that was wet,
so I knew that he was going to catch me so I just took the ball
and threw it in the clay. The guy came around the corner and I
said "I dont have the ball" he said "where is the ball?" I said
"the other guy took it." He said where did I have it? So I
pretended that nothing happened so the guy said after the game
where did the ball go, I said well I went round the corner and I
saw the clay and I threw it in the soft clay. So we all went
down and started digging for that ball but you could see where
the ball went in and we started digging and that's how we used to
get balls. Bats was a different thing. When I was a kid, teams
used to come and they would want a bat boy, someone to take care
of the equipment. So we would line the bats up and sort of be
the boss of the bats and sometimes they would give you a quarter
or fifty cents or whatever they would give you for watching the
bats.
So before the game and we used to go and someone would say
well your going to volunteer for bats today and you know what you
got to do. What we would do is we would take a bat and there
would be a little bit of grass there, so we would take a bat and
lay it on the grass and then we would cut the shape of the bat
there so there would be a sod. We would take the sod, we knew it
was there and when they got a rally going and everybody got
excited we would take the bat that we liked and we would take

2

that sod off and put the bat down, cover the sod up and somebody
would say where is that bat I had, that thirty six inch bat? I
would say its over there and They would come over and I had all
the bats lined up except the one they were looking for, that was
under the sod so they would say where the hell did that bat go? I
would say I dont know, mabye the other team got it, so they would
go over to the other team and check the bats, but no bat. So the
bat was under the sod.
So after they left we would go down
there, take the sod and lift it up, and a brand new bat!
So
otherwise we used to take nails and tape them up, tape balls up,
and then when I got about fifteen or sixteen years old I started
playing with them and they would give you a suit and put you in
sparingly in the game.
Q:How were the leagues organized?
A:They had a city league and it was mostly a league of the
neiborhoods. Like our team down where I lived we had a team and
we might get a couple of guys from Sheep Hill, or some guy over
here who was a pretty good ballplayer that wanted to play with us
so we would take him in . Chris's grandfather, Rudy Harvatine,
he was from Bessemer and he played with us.
But the only way we
could raise money, after all we had a dance you know out at Mount
Jackson, down at the dance hall with beer, so the money we made
with beer would go in our kitty. Otherwise we would just have to
toss the hat around and whoever put in a quarter or a nickel and
make mabye ten bucks or fifteen bucks, back in those days you
would be lucky to make five and then we would have a big dance
and we would sell beer.
That was illegal, so I knew a state man
and he know everybody down there too, his name was Mike Sarco and
he was a state liquor inspector and I new him real well.
And we
would come to him and say look Mike we are going to raise some
money over there for a couple bucks for our ball team, don't raid
us, because a state liquor inspector would come in and pinch the
whole bunch of them and whoever was behind the bar would get
pinched and they would take them to court.
So he did not bother
us.
Because all the money we raised, you know new suits, how we
got new suits, we would go to Blue Danube, a beer joint, walk in
there and say were going to have a ball team and do you want to
buy us a suit, and the guy would go over to the cash register and
he would pull out thirty or forty dollars and say o.k.
I
remember George that use to run the town pump down there he would
give us forty bucks everytime we would go in there.
One time he
told me to make sure that we did not have a number but we had
Delux Cafe on the back.
Delux Cafe or Coney Island, whatever we
could get money off of.
So that's the only way we had suits, but
you had to buy your own ball shoes. We played independently,
like we played Ryantown, that was out at Samson Street where
Waldmans meetpacking is, that was Ryantown. We played West Side,
that was up on the west side and we played out at Croton, I think
the Moose had a team one year and we would go for different
sections. When we were younger we had a team that was called the
Two Town Tigers and the only thing we had were t-shirts.
We
could only afford to buy t-shirts with Tigers printed on it, and

3

the name Tigers was more expensive than the t-shirts, and we were
younger then the guys they wanted to play on the bigger teams and
West Pittsburg had a team right where the power plant is.
That's
were there used to be ballfields and they used to have some kind
of knitting plant called the West Pittsburg Garlands where the
field were.
The field is not there now, but that is were they
used to play, but the first one was down were the power plant
was, in the thirties, we knew everyone, all over town .
Q:Did you ever travel to other cities like Youngstown?
A:Well, we used to get in a tournament every once in a while,
they would get the best ballplayers from New Castle over to
Youngstown to play.
They used to call it the NBC, The National
Baseball Congress, and they used to play people from all over the
United States. And we went over there and the teams that used to
come up from Alabama, Tennesee, Kentucky and that, they used to
get the best hotels and when we went over to play they boarded us
up in hotels but we were in a cheaper hotel. Like the Todd Hotel
over in Youngstown, and most of the people from out of town used
to get that because you couldn't put a guy from Kentucky
someplace that they would say look at this chicken shit hotel.
So they gave us one of the worse hotels, the Youngstown Ohio
Hotel.
But those guys knew that when we were there they gave us
good meals because in the Todd Hotel you had your individual
bathrooms and in the Youngstown Ohio you had a central bathroom
that we went to, and we had ten or fifteen guys.
Q:As you got older did you play in the same leagues?
A:Well, we played in the same league but every team got better
and they started getting better ballplayers. And then they made
Flaherty Field and we played up there and they took the all stars
from New Castle and they played the Indianapolis Clowns, an all
black team, that was during the black teams had the Homestead
Grays and the Crawfords and that.
So this team was named the
Indianapolis Clowns.
And they would come into town and they
would play you and we played up at Flaherty Field and it was the
biggest crowd we ever had.
And they would take sixty-forty, they
would give us sixty and thay would take forty percent whatever
they split.
So we said o.k we would play you up here and that
was an all star game. We played them one time and we beat them.
I remember Goose Tatum, he played baseball for the Clowns and he
played first base, he was a black player, Goose Tatum.
There was
other guys there that I can't remember their names, but I
remember Goose Tatum.
He was a good basketball player, Tatum,
and that time we played up there I never seen a bigger crowd up
there in my life.
Just in that one game we made in donations,
they put a hat in front of you and you could walk right by and
never put nothing in there but some people would put dollars or
two dollars in the hat to see a ballgame, so that one day I
remember we made 8000 dollars , so we gave them forty percent and
we took sixty percent out of 8000 dollars.
And then we went up
and had a big banquet up at the Cathedral. We had it all cooking

4

and everything, we had a guy that took care of that, and who came
there was the guy Bill Veck of the Cleveland Indians, he came and
talked.
This is something that very few people know, who was in
the baseball hall of fame and the football hall of fame? He went
to Geneva College, Cal Hubbard was his name, I bet that no one
can answer that question.
He was also an American League
umpire.
So he was in the hall of fame for baseball, and he also
played football down at Geneva College and he was in the hall of
fame for football.
Not to many people can answer that question.
He and Bill Veck came down and he had his little talk.
And Then
I got a tryout with the Cleveland Indians. And I was supposed to
go there in September of 1941, so I went up there in September
for the tryout and I got a draft notice for the army for
October.
So they watch you play ball and watch how you catch and
throw and that.
One of the scouts come over to me and he said
how are you fixed for the draft, I said I got my card already, he
said "son I tell you, if you did not have a draft we would take
you to play in the majors ,but this way we just can't take a
chance, so your going to go into the army so we don't want to
bother."So that was the last of my deal. When the all stars
played in New Castle a lot of scouts would come and ask you
questions, and I hit a ball in Oakland Park in Youngstown, in the
lights at nightime. We were playing a Cleveland team, I hit a
ball so far out in center field, it did not have no fence though
and the guy kept running and running and he stuck his hand up and
caught it. So the scout came to me after the game and said how
old are you son, this was after I came out of the service you
see, I said that I was twenty one and he looked at me and said
"yeah I wish you were twenty one, if you were a little younger
o.k, but." Guys would come to me when I was twenty seven, twenty
eight years old and they knew I was kidding them because they
want kids that are young, because by the time they get through
the farm system.
Q:Did you play when you were overseas at all during the war?
A:No, the only thing we played was softball against the Canadian
teams, the Canadian Air Force.
I was in charge of booking the
games and that.
we would book a team and all get in a six by six
truck and we would take off and and they would say the losers pay
for the beer.
So they had spam sandwiches and we drank beer and
we would come back in.
Q:How long did you play?
A:Then I got a job at Universal Rundle until I was thirty two and
then taught some little league for New Castle.
But years ago everything wasn't handed, you had to go out. My
dad bought me a little old catching glove, about the size of a
pancake.
The ballgloves would not have cost so much, but when
you played ball, if I played left field, and I had a glove and
you did not throw your glove out onto the field, you took it with
you because somebody would steal it.
Say that I was playing left
field and I had a glove and you were playing left field and you

5

would come out and say can I use your glove? I would say yeah
but make sure you give it to me every inning, you bring it to
me.
A lot of times we would go play ball and somehing would come
up, somebody would slide into second base and knock him over on
his ass and there would be a fight.
And nobody stopped the
fight, you would get a few knocks on the head.
A lot of times we
won the ballgame playing in Mahoningtown and a fight started in
the eighth or ninth inning, the game wouldn't finish, we were
fighting going home.
You would see somebody coming and they
would say he's from the other team and you hall of and hit him
and then ten other guys would come and you would run like hell up
the road, up the track.
I umpired in the little league.
I was coaching in the league and
they said they needed umpires so I umpired with three or four
guys together.
Some of those guys did not know the rules.
We
used to make fifty cents, and when we threatened to quit they
said o.k here's a dollar and we did a pretty good job.