Organized baseball in Long Beach dates to 1910, whenthe Long Beach Clothiers of the Southern CaliforniaTrolley League played opponents wherever a streetcar could take them. Exhibition games later featured Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Bob Feller, and other Major League barnstormers. Homegrown talent includes Baseball Hall of Famers Bob Lemon and Tony Gwynn. Pioneering entrepreneur Bill Feistner built the first accommodating baseball park in 1922 at Redondo Avenue and Stearns Street in the shadow of oil-rich Signal Hill. When ballplayers weren't on the Shell Park diamond, they worked the derricks.
Author Tom Meigs, an electronic-game developer, previously published Ultimate Game Design: Building Game Worlds. He pieced together this window into Long Beach's sporting past with the help of the Old Timers, a group of legendary Long Beach area baseball players, scouts, umpires, and enthusiasts, as well as the Long Beach Collection at the Long Beach Public Library and The Topps Company, Inc.