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Monday, August 4, 2008 7:00 PM EDT
Bradner Stadium Part I of III: History of Bradner Stadium: Baseball craze
By John T. Eberth
Olean Times Herald
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| Photo submitted
Olean baseball legend James F. "App" Driscoll, shown in this photo submitted by Eileen Smith, created professional baseball teams in the 1920s and 1930s that led to the creation of the Olean Oilers. |
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OLEAN - Olean has always been sports crazy.
Before the baseball craze that swept the nation made it to Olean just prior to the Civil War, horse racing was the region's most popular spectator sport. According to press accounts from the late 1900s, most communities, big and small had a horse track.
When baseball arrived, every civic group, business and plant had to field a team.
Eileen Smith of North Olean has devoted years to chronicling Olean's early history. Her Web site, www.northoleanhistory.com catalogues much of city's baseball heritage.
She said by the turn of the 20th century, the area was swarming with baseball teams.
"There were hundreds of teams back then," Mrs. Smith said.
At the time, everyone played ball at the Olean Athletic Fields, a flat grassy plane along the Olean Creek near the intersection of Main and North Union streets.
"It was behind where Pizza Hut is now," Mrs. Smith said.
It wasn't long before Olean began organizing paid professional teams to compete with teams in surrounding communities such as Wellsville and Bradford, Pa.
In 1964 the late Times Herald managing editor Gilbert Stinger related some of the city's baseball history that had been gathered by John Walsh of Allegany.
Mr. Stinger said Olean fielded a paid baseball team, the Oleaners with the start of the new 1914 Interstate Baseball League. The league brought together teams from Cattaraugus and Allegany counties and teams across the state line in Pennsylvania.
The Oleaners didn't last long. Mr. Stinger said on June 19, 1914, the team went on strike seeking back pay. Team management responded by disbanding the Oleaners. They quickly turned around and organized a new team later that season.
For the 1915 Interstate season, the team renamed itself the Olean White Sox. Mr. Stinger said, according to accounts from the time, the Sox were a good team but not good enough to secure the Interstate Pennant from Wellsville in 1915.
During a series of playoff games between the Sox and Wellsville, league officials decided to throw out the results of one disputed game. The White Sox felt officiating at the game favored Wellsville.
When the league scheduled a new playoff game for the championship in Olean, the Sox refused to play. On July 10, 1916, the Sox withdrew from the league and disbanded.
But the team's short career managed to ignite the imaginations of prominent business and civil leaders in Olean.
According to city records, in 1913, as the Interstate League was forming, a group of influential and wealthy city residents began discussing Olean's need for its own stadium. In 1919 they formed a private organization called the Olean Park Improvement Association. According to a June 1927 article in the Olean Evening Herald, printed just before the opening of Bradner Stadium on June 20, members of the association began buying land in 1919 with their own money for the creation of a stadium with additional athletic fields. By 1924, they had 40 acres of land.
The land included a former basin that was part of the Genesee Valley Canal near the confluence of Olean Creek and the Allegheny River. The basin was used for loading and unloading canal boats and for turning the boats around. After the canal closed, the bowl was flooded by residents in the winter and used as a skating rink.
In February of 1925, the Park Improvement Association offered the land to the citizens of Olean at cost. Marsha Boardman Bradner and her husband, John Howe Bradner, offered to finance the construction of the stadium.
According to the Herald account, in a near-unanimous vote, Olean taxpayers agreed to borrow $75,000 to acquire the land and build the stadium across East State Street from War Veterans Park. In a letter sent all city taxpayers, city officials said paying for the stadium would cost the average homeowner about 40 cents per $1,000 on their tax bills for the next 20 years to pay both the interest and principal for the project.
In a proposal advocating taking the $75,000 loan, city officials argued that using the basin and the former east channel of the canal to build the stadium would save $50,000 on project costs. City officials also said more than $11,000 in private money had been pledged to the project.
On May 10, 1926, construction of the stadium began. The engineering department of A.G. Spaulding and Brothers - known as the "Athletic Authority of America" at the time - designed the stadium and its athletic fields. The design included a baseball diamond, football field, track and tennis courts. Havens Construction Co. of Olean was the general contractor.
A metal chain-link fence and a disappearing canvas curtain lined the stadium's parapet along East State Street and at the stadium's easternmost side, over its locker rooms. During games where tickets were collected, the canvass curtain was raised to ensure no one could see games for free. The stadium was designed with 6,000 seats.
As it was the off-season, the Major League Detroit Tigers and Boston Braves agreed to play an exhibition game in Bradner Stadium for its grand opening on June 20, 1927. But according to an account written in 2002 by Kim Cradduck of the Olean Historical and Preservation Society, the two teams never played that first game in Bradner.
"The Tigers arrived at the Pennsylvania Station at 5 Monday morning while the Braves had pulled into the Erie Station at 12:30," she wrote.
But it had been raining since Sunday and the storm showed no signs of letting up. The rain continued through Monday into the evening, forcing a cancellation of the grand opening game.
Carl Timme Jr., 88, of Olean said his father, Carl Sr., took him to Bradner earlier that June after the stadium declared the project complete.
Fred W. Forness Jr., who would become Olean's mayor in 1934, was there the day the stadium opened, he said.
"I was there when they opened the stadium for the first time to the public," Mr. Timme said. "Fred Forness was there on one of his big horses, holding the American flag."
Mr. Timme pointed out that it wasn't unusual for Mr. Forness to be on horseback. Like his father and grandfather before him, Mr. Forness was a well-known horseman and the Forness Stables of Olean and Allegany were known throughout the region.
Mr. Timme said as a boy in the '20s and '30s, he'd watch games at the stadium "if I could get in from over the fence."
He said teenagers and adults often tried to see games for free by climbing the fence.
"They'd put canvas up so you couldn't see the ball games from the street," he said.
He said the seats were often filled to their 6,000-spectator capacity. Mr. Timme said one popular location for watching games for free was the roof of a two-story house just east of the stadium. The house sat about where the main driveway to Country Fair is now. Mr. Timme said dozens of people would perch atop the roof to look down on Bradner's field.
"It's a wonder the roof didn't collapse," he said.
Around 1928 James F. "App" Driscoll formed the Olean Nationals baseball team. The team called Bradner Stadium their home until it disbanded in 1938.
According to research done by Mrs. Smith, App Driscoll grew up in North Olean, and attended St. John's Church and School No 7. He was a member of the Olean High School class of 1925 and graduated from St. Bonaventure College in 1929.
Mrs. Smith wrote that Mr. Driscoll so loved baseball growing up, an argument with an umpire in his youth gave him his nickname.
"He earned the name of App while he was still in grade school," she wrote. "He was playing ball (of course) and got into a loud argument with the umpire whose name was Joe Apple. From that day on James Driscoll became known as App Driscoll."
From 1928 to 1929, App was the baseball and basketball coach for schools No. 7 and No. 8.
Mrs. Smith said during the Great Depression, the Nationals became one of the most popular ball clubs in the Olean area. Mrs. Smith said App also managed the Polish National Alliance and the Polish Nationals baseball teams. From 1927-28 he was a member of the Olean Indies semi-professional football club, which he managed for four years.
On Aug. 8, 1938, App managed the Area All-Stars baseball team during a benefit game against the Major League St. Louis Cardinals at Bradner Stadium. The Olean Exchange Club organized the game to raise money to buy a two-way radio for the Olean Police Department.
App picked the best players from area teams to compete against the Cardinals.
"The Cardinals won 14-6 but the game grossed more than $4,600 and assured the Olean Police Department a two-way radio system," Mrs. Smith wrote. "Because of the good turnout for this game, it set the groundwork for the forming of the Penn-York Conference, a Class A professional baseball league. Next came the association with the PONY League, the Brooklyn Dodgers and Olean Oilers."
® Contact reporter John Eberth at jeberth@oleantimesherald.com
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