Now that the season has started it made me think about how the major leagues moved there players before trains. When the Yankees (Ruth, Gehrig) played the White Sox, did they take the 20th Century Limited or The Broadway Limited? Did not see any books on the subject and was interested. Any feedback would be appreciated.
An interesting question. The trains you noted were top of the line names. I wonder if they'd have spent the money for such accommodations? Or taken a cheaper train?
I would wonder if they would have needed to take trains based on most convenient time between playing schedules, regardless of how fancy the train was. Play a day game and take a night train to get to another city for- for a next-day game or a following night game? Just wondering... I want to have the ability to model some "special trains" on my layout once I get all the regularly scheduled stuff running. But the only athletes I am thinking of at present for special train movements are thoroughbred racehorses.
I once read an article on baseball in general. IIRC, major league players rode in basic Pullman upper and lower berths, but minor leaguers rode on busses, sleeping in their seats. Google may pull up some historical information on this subject....?
If you remember the movies about baseball from the 1940's, the travel was shown as pullman cars with upper and lower berths. Remember that in the 1920's-1930's and 1940's, MLB had 16 teams, 8 AL (Red Sox, Yankess, Athletics, Nationals, Indians, Tigers, White Sox, & Browns) and 8 NL (Braves, Giants, Robins/Dodgers, Phillies, Pirates, Cubs, Cardinals, & Reds). NYC had 3, Yankees, Giants, Robins/Dodgers; Phila Athletics & Phillies; St Louis Cardinals & Browns; Boston Braves & Red Sox, Chicago White Sox & Cubs. With St Louis being the furtherest West, most of the cities were within one day travel of each other. My father grew up in Robesonia, PA, about 60 miles from Phila, his father was employed by the Reading Co., they took the train to NYC and watched the Yankees as my grandfather believed that if you were going to watch baseball watch the best. They did a round trip just about every Sat or Sun during baseball season, of course the only expense they had was the admission to Yankee Statium, rail employees rode free. later, Craig
Baseball and trains in the US started about the same time. Pretty sure the teams traveled by train back when baseball was basically the only popular professional sport in the US. As casmmr pointed out, there were a lot fewer teams and they were located much closer together geographically. My personal experience, thanks to my dad's employment with the REAX and his pass on the New York Central, involved yearly trips by rail on a NY Central local from Little Falls to NY City, where we caught Dodger-Giant series, rode the subways to either the Polo Grounds or Ebbetts Field. Great times. We were National League fans, never set foot in Yankee Stadium.
This is all very true. What we now know as "Major League Baseball" is nothing like what there was pre-WWII. After the war, airlines really came into heavy passenger use and made the spreading out of teams possible. One thing we miss today, is some cities, such as Chicago, even had their own in-town championships between teams. I used to really be into baseball. But the Curt Flood litigations, which led to free agency, changed it too much for me. Now we never even know who our teams are with all the player shuffling. Good thing for airlines to fly everyone around the continent these days! There are probably traded players and teams in the skies right now.
The minor league teams and company teams also traveled by train in many cases. My father-in-law's dad pitched on the company team for the Norfolk & Western. In off season he worked repairing coal hoppers. My father-in-law gave me his old railroad passes.
