|
The Hollywood Stars were a minor league baseball team which played in the Pacific Coast League during the early and mid 20th century. There were actually two different teams which played in Los Angeles as the Hollywood Stars.
The first incarnation of the Stars began its existence in 1909 as the Sacramento Solons, a team which joined the PCL along with the Vernon Tigers when the league expanded from four teams to six. The team moved to San Francisco during the 1914 season, finishing out the season as the San Francisco Missions. The team was sold to a Salt Lake City businessman after that season and moved there for the 1915 season. For the next eleven years the team played as the Salt Lake Bees. When the Vernon Tigers moved to San Francisco after the 1925 season, the Bees moved to Los Angeles for the 1926 season. Originally they were known as the Hollywood Bees, but soon changed their name to the Hollywood Stars.
The original Stars, though supposedly representing Hollywood, actually played their home games as tenants of the Los Angeles Angels at Wrigley Field. Though the Stars won pennants in 1929 and 1930, they never developed much of a fan base. They were merely a team to watch when the Angels were on the road. After the 1935 season, Angel owner William Wrigley doubled the Stars rent, whereupon the Stars moved to San Diego for the 1936 season, becoming the San Diego Padres, and Los Angeles became a one-team city once more for the 1936 and 1937 seasons.
The second version of the Stars coincidentally began its existence at the same time as the first, joining the PCL in 1909 as the Vernon Tigers. As the Tigers, the team won three PCL pennants before moving to San Francisco for the 1926 season. The team foundered in San Francisco, known as the Mission Reds or usually just the Missions, failing to establish a rivalry with the existing San Francisco Seals.
In 1938 the Reds/Missions/Tigers moved back to Los Angeles, and took the name of the departed Stars. Like their predecessors, the new Stars played their 1938 home games in Wrigley Field and -- like the first version of the Stars -- flopped at the box office.
After but one season, the team was sold to new owners, among them Robert H. Bob Cobb, owner of the Brown Derby restaurant and for whom the Cobb salad is named. They sold stock in the team to movie stars, movie moguls, and Hollywood civic leaders. Moreover, the team actually played in the Hollywood area, beginning in 1939 when Gilmore Field was opened in the Fairfax district adjacent to Hollywood.
The new Stars (or Twinks) caught on and became a very popular team, winning three pennants before 1958. They were genuine rivals to the Angels, and it was not uncommon for fights between the teams to break out during Angels-Stars games. In fact, on August 2, 1953, a brawl between the two teams lasted 30 minutes, broken up only when 50 riot police were sent to Gilmore Field by Chief of Police William Parker, who was at home watching the game on television when the fight started.
After the 1957 season, the Stars and the Angels were forced to relocate when the Brooklyn Dodgers confirmed their long-rumored move to Los Angeles for the 1958 season. The Angels became the Spokane Indians in 1959. The Stars, in a sense, "returned" to Salt Lake City (from whence the original Stars had moved in 1926) in 1959, becoming the Salt Lake Bees once more.
|
