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Big League Talent
In The Oil Region

The wealth of the oil industry took baseball to new heights across the region and created an intense rivalry between the two towns of Franklin and Oil City. This rivalry produced the Two-Team League between 1919 and 1921.

 

The Two-Team League was “...the most exciting event in this area’s history, second only to the globe-changing event of Drake’s successful well itself.”

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 - F.O. Koontz, board chairman of Quaker State. 1969.

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Oil City Baseball Team. 1920.

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Franklin and Oil City’s teams became so good that by 1919, other baseball clubs across the region refused to schedule games with them. With no other teams to play against, they played each other four or five times a week.
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The rivalry between the two towns became so fierce that both teams resorted to unusual and expensive recruiting practices as they became keen to outdo each other.

The
Two-Team
League
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Franklin’s team in 1920 including (L-R)  James B. Borland, Stretch Meehan, Joe Willis, Walter Kinney, John McCarty, Walter Carner, Manager Brackenridge, Harry Pierce, Marty Cavanaugh, Harry Crosson, Steve Yerkes, Gene Layden, Joe Harris, Harry O’Donnell, Walter Harnard, Manuel Cueto, and Larry Gent.

Ivan Alabaugh/VCHS

Scott Perry (1891 - 1959) playing for the Philadelphia Athletics team.

Society For American Baseball Research.

The
Scott Perry
Incident

The winning strategy for the towns of Franklin and Oil City during the years of the Two-Team League was to catch each other’s teams and fans off guard by secretly stacking their teams with professional players.​​ An example is “The Scott Perry Incident,” which occurred during a game on August 14, 1919. 

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In 1919, the Franklin team sent recruiters to Philadelphia to get major league players for an upcoming game against Oil City.​ The recruiters got two players, Scott Perry and Harry O’Donnell, from the Philadelphia Athletics team.

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"The National Game. Three ‘Outs’ And One ‘Run’,” from Harper’s Weekly September 15, 1860.

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This political cartoon satirizes Lincoln’s victory in the 1860 election over Stephen Douglass, John Bell and John C. Breckinridge as a baseball game.

Early forms of baseball were played across England and America over 100 years before the Civil War.

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However, it was not until the 1850s that modern rules were established. Union soldiers introduced the game to Southerners throughout the war. Thousands of soldiers learned the game.

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When these soldiers returned home, the game spread to friends and neighbors in every region of the country, such as Pennsylvania’s Oil Region.

Baseball

& The Civil War

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Baseball Comes

To The Oil Region

Before Captain Robert H. Woodard returned home to Franklin from the Civil War, baseball was mainly only played in unorganized games, usually on the street or in a park.

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One of the first records of a baseball game in the region was recorded in the August 17, 1866 issue of the Venango Spectator newspaper. The game was played between the Franklin team and the Young America Club at the Franklin fairgrounds.

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The first game between Franklin and Oil City–the Venangos vs. the Senecas–occurred only a few weeks later, on September 4, 1866. The game lasted three hours and fifty-five minutes. The Franklin Venangos defeated the Oil City Senecas 81 to 34. The Franklin and Oil City rivalry began that year.

Emlenton Baseball team 1904. 

Franklin YMCA Junior Baseball Team. 1912.

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Throughout all of Northwestern Pennsylvania, baseball’s popularity grew rapidly in the late 1800s, well into the 20th century.

 

In 1883, the rivalry between Franklin and Oil City intensified when a Franklin team scouted a professional pitcher and catcher in Pittsburgh. The Franklin team offered the professional players $25 (1883 value) each to play a game against Oil City. The Franklin team beat Oil City with their acquired talent.

Rivalry Intensifies

Emlenton native Claude Ritchey (1873 - 1951). Society of American Baseball Research.

Regional teams such as Franklin also boasted at the time yet-to-be baseball legend Claude Ritchey throughout the 1890s.

 

Ritchey was an Emlenton native who would go on to play in the major league as second base, shortstop, and outfield for the Cincinnati Reds, Pittsburgh Pirates, Boston Doves, and Louisville Colonels at the turn of the 20th century.

Venango County's Talent

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Emlenton Baseball team 1905.

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