Lakeside Leagues
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| Sport | Baseball, softball, horseshoes |
|---|---|
| Founded | c. 1924 |
| Ceased | c. 1958 |
| Country | United States |
| Venue(s) | Lakeside Park 39°46′42″N 105°03′34″W / 39.7783°N 105.0594°WCoordinates: 39°46′42″N 105°03′34″W / 39.7783°N 105.0594°W Fatal error: The format of the coordinate could not be determined. Parsing failed. |
| Notes | |
| "Lakeside Leagues" is a collective term for several distinct amateur leagues that played at Lakeside Park, not a single organization. The dates reflect the span of "Lakeside League" coverage in Colorado newspapers. | |
The Lakeside Leagues were a group of amateur sandlot sports leagues that played at Lakeside Park, on the western edge of Denver, Colorado, from the 1920s through the 1950s. The name was applied in the local press to several distinct competitions held on the park's diamonds and courts, including baseball, softball, and horseshoes leagues, rather than to a single organization. Several of the leagues were run or sponsored through the Whitney Sporting Goods Company of Denver, which organized amateur play across the city.[1] The longest-running and best-documented was an amateur and semi-professional baseball league, while a separate softball league at the park drew sustained coverage during the Great Depression, including from Denver's Intermountain Jewish News, whose teams featured prominently in the 1932 season.
Background
Lakeside Park, the recreation grounds adjoining the Lakeside Amusement Park, maintained ball diamonds that, by the 1920s, hosted organized amateur leagues sponsored by local businesses and fraternal, ethnic, and company groups. Contemporary Rocky Mountain News coverage treated "the Lakeside League" as a recurring fixture of Denver's amateur sports calendar, with season-opening notices, standings columns, and named sportswriters following play.[1] In 1932 alone the "Lakeside" and affiliated "Whitney" banners covered at least three different sports: a Sunday-morning baseball league, a horseshoe league, and a softball league.[1][2]
The leagues
Baseball
The recurring baseball competition at the park, variously called the "Lakeside League" and the "Lakeside Sunday Morning Baseball League," was organized through the Whitney Sporting Goods Company and opened its 1932 season on June 5 of that year.[1] The baseball league continued through the 1930s. By 1937 the Rocky Mountain News and the suburban Arvada Enterprise were following a Lakeside League dominated by clubs such as the Leyden Miners, with bylined coverage from sportswriters including Chester "Red" Nelson.[3] In 1937 the Leyden Miners won the inaugural Colorado state semi-professional baseball tournament at Pueblo and went on to represent the state in the national semi-professional tournament at Wichita, Kansas.[4][5]
Softball
A separate softball league played evening games on the Lakeside Park diamond. In 1932 the Rocky Mountain News ran its nightly results under the heading "Lakeside League," listing company-sponsored and community clubs side by side.[2] This softball league was distinct from the contemporaneous Y.M.C.A.–Whitney League, which played at East 10th Avenue and Columbine Street.[6] Known in the press as the "Lakeside Softball Loop," it recurred as an annual fixture. The Rocky Mountain News carried season-opening notices from at least 1933 through 1938.[7][8] The 1932 softball season is treated in detail below.
Horseshoes
The "Lakeside Whitney Horse Shoe League," also organized through Whitney Sporting Goods, ran a weeknight schedule in 1932 featuring teams such as Massie Grocery, Mile High, Merkle Grocery, Union Pacific, Vassar Park, and the Colorado and Southern Railroad.[1]
1932 softball season
The 1932 Lakeside softball league is the best-documented single season of play at the park, owing to nightly results in the Rocky Mountain News and a weekly bylined column in the Intermountain Jewish News. The league mixed company- and store-sponsored clubs, among them O. P. Skaggs, Union Pacific, Fabricant Auto, Midwest Refinery, and Denver Coal & Timber, with community and fraternal teams, several of them tied to Denver's Jewish community.[2][6][9]
Jewish community teams
Denver's Intermountain Jewish News followed the season closely through "Thru Enger's Eyes," a weekly sports column by Herman Enger that reported games, standings, and player news for the city's Jewish amateur clubs.[10] In its 1932 sports review the paper identified four "Jewish teams" then playing softball: the B'nai B'rith club, the Sobule Brothers, the Zekman Furriers, and the team fielded under the management of the Hiawatha Theater.[11]
The Hiawatha Theater team and the Zekman Furriers were the same group of players, competing under the furrier's name in the Y.M.C.A.–Whitney League and under the theater's management in the Lakeside League.[12] Its players, identified in the News box score and the Intermountain Jewish News column, included pitcher Fred Zekman, who threw a no-hit, no-run game in July 1932, along with shortstop or left-fielder Bennie Newman, second baseman "Pups" Snyder, and infielders Nadler, Schwartz, and Richardson.[12][13][11] Enger described Newman as one of the best all-around softball players in the city.[12]
The Sobule Brothers, a club associated with a Denver haberdashery business and led by pitcher Aaron Pinsky, also played in the league.[14] The same club had won the Colorado state softball championship in 1931 and reached the state final again in 1933, in a tournament at La Junta run by the Colorado softball association and the Colorado Y.M.C.A.[15][16] The B'nai B'rith team, whose players included first baseman Toothaker and Barney Levine, was likewise a regular entrant.[17]
Playoffs and the Elitch split
Through August 1932 the Lakeside League ran a championship playoff on the park's diamond. In one round, the Hiawatha Theater shut out Fabricant Auto 2–0, the Sobule Brothers beat Denver Coal & Timber 8–2, and Blayney-Murphy defeated the M.C.A. team 2–0.[6] The Lakeside results fed a citywide playoff that combined the Lakeside and Columbine Street (Y.M.C.A.–Whitney) divisions, with finals scheduled at Lakeside.[18]
Late in the season a dispute with the management of Lakeside led four teams, among them the Hiawatha Theater, to withdraw from the city playoff and instead enter a rival Labor Day championship tournament at Elitch's. Six clubs competed there: the Sobule Brothers, Fabricant Auto, the Hiawatha Theater, Denver Coal & Timber, Blayney-Murphy, and the Berkeley Boosters.[9] The Intermountain Jewish News year-end review reported that Fabricant Auto won the city title by defeating the Sobule Brothers twice in the holiday tournament at Elitch's.[11]
Legacy
The Lakeside baseball league persisted into the late 1950s, and the name "Lakeside League" appears in Colorado newspaper archives across roughly three decades (1924–1958), while the softball "loop" ran annually through the 1930s.[3][8] The amusement park's broader history has been documented by historian David Forsyth,[19] but the amateur leagues that played there, particularly the 1932 softball season and the Jewish-community clubs covered by the Intermountain Jewish News, have otherwise received little dedicated treatment.
See also
- Lakeside Amusement Park
- Esquire Theatre (Denver)
- History of the Jews in Denver
- Intermountain Jewish News
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 "Lakeside League To Meet Tuesday". The Rocky Mountain News. Denver. May 29, 1932. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 "Lakeside League". The Rocky Mountain News. Denver. August 5, 1932. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Leyden Miners Lead in Lakeside League". The Arvada Enterprise. Arvada, Colorado. June 24, 1937. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ "Leyden Wins Title". Greeley Daily Tribune. Greeley, Colorado. Associated Press. July 29, 1937. p. 10. Retrieved May 23, 2026 – via NewspaperArchive.
- ↑ "State Tourney Set". Greeley Daily Tribune. Greeley, Colorado. February 9, 1938. p. 6. Retrieved May 23, 2026 – via NewspaperArchive.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Softball". The Rocky Mountain News. Denver. August 19, 1932. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ "Lakeside Softball Loop Opens". The Rocky Mountain News. Denver. June 13, 1933. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "Lakeside Softball Loop Opens Tonight". The Rocky Mountain News. Denver. May 16, 1938. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 "Six Softball Teams In Elitch Tourney". Intermountain Jewish News. Denver. September 2, 1932. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ Enger, Herman (July 1, 1932). "Thru Enger's Eyes". Intermountain Jewish News. Denver. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 Enger, Herman (September 30, 1932). "Review of Sports for the Year 5692". Intermountain Jewish News. Denver. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 Enger, Herman (July 28, 1932). "No Hit-No Run Softball Game Is Pitched by Fred Zekman". Intermountain Jewish News. Denver. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ "Big Crowds See Opening Of Softball Tournament". The Rocky Mountain News. Denver. August 31, 1932. p. 13. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ Enger, Herman (July 8, 1932). "Sobule Brothers Defeated 2 to 1 in Feature Softball Game". Intermountain Jewish News. Denver. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ "Review of Softball Year Made by State Committee". Greeley Daily Tribune. Greeley, Colorado. November 11, 1931. p. 12. Retrieved May 23, 2026 – via NewspaperArchive.
- ↑ "Weld Teams Eliminated at La Junta". Greeley Daily Tribune. Greeley, Colorado. Associated Press. September 5, 1933. p. 6 – via Newspapers.com.
- ↑ Enger, Herman (July 21, 1932). "B'nai B'rith Softball Team Defeats M.C.A. by 5-3 Score". Intermountain Jewish News. Denver. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ "City Softball Nears Finals". The Rocky Mountain News. Denver. September 4, 1932. p. 13. Retrieved May 21, 2026 – via Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection.
- ↑ Forsyth, David (2016). Denver's Lakeside Amusement Park: From the White City Beautiful to a Century of Fun. Louisville, Colorado: University Press of Colorado. ISBN 978-1-60732-430-0. Search this book on
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