They were barely a footnote in the history of semi-pro baseball in Los Angeles, a ragtag team of “little chance” and “once were” ball players without a park to play in — and no fans to cheer them on.
Every game they played for four years was on the road in another team’s park. All they heard were boos.
“Few people knew our team even existed,” said Bob Triggs, a bat boy for the semi-pro Hollywood Stars, which played in the 1930s — just preceding the Hollywood Stars of the Pacific Coast League in 1939.
Those Hollywood Stars had a ballpark — Gilmore Field — and plenty of fans, at least until the Brooklyn Dodgers announced they were moving to Los Angeles, and they had to relocate. The team went from Hollywood to Salt Lake City, and became the Bees.
That was 66 years ago, and as the Dodgers get ready for another run at a World Series banner, the old bat boy, now 90, opens the scrapbook in his North Hills home and takes us back to a team bankrolled by his father and a starting lineup of real Hollywood stars.
“My dad worked as an electrician at Warner Bros. for 35 years, and knew most of the stars personally,” said Triggs, of his father Gilbert Triggs. “He loved baseball, and as he got older he researched getting a team at the semi-pro level.
“He talked to the stars, producers and directors he knew, and offered to put their names on the backs of the players’ jerseys if they’d support him buying bats and balls, uniforms and equipment. Most of them did.”
Every Sunday, when the Hollywood Stars took the opposing team’s field, fans looked down from the stands and saw Jack Oakie playing first base, Bette Davis on the mound, Dick Powell at third, Pat O’Brien, George Brent and Lyle Talbot in the outfield.
It became a humbling experience for opposing players to go home and tell their wives after the game they went 0 for 3 against Bette Davis that day.
“Most of the semi-pro teams represented stores or local businesses,” Triggs said….
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