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[ The Elmhurst Scene ]
Diamond in the Rough
One of Elmhurst's first baseball teams got behind a borrowed plow to turn a potato patch into its own field of dreams.
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Most sports come with their own origin myths: think of Abner Doubleday’s first baseball games and James Naismith’s peach basket. Elmhurst athletics has its own origin tale, and this one happens to be true.
It begins around the turn of the 20th century, when Elmhurst was still a “proseminary”—a secondary school for aspiring ministers and teachers, sponsored by the German Evangelical Church of North America. In the first year of the new century, the seminary’s colloquial name, Elmhurst College, appeared for the first time on the cover of the Jahrbuch, or catalog. The rest of the catalog remained in German, and outlined a resolutely European, not-very-collegiate curriculum.
The catalog’s split personality reflected a divide in the institution’s evolving self-definition. By 1900, Elmhurst was a German-language secondary school that was beginning to display many of the social attributes of an American college—including a growing absorption with athletic competition. In this development, students led the way. The Proseminary provided no athletic facilities, except for a small room for calisthenics in the basement of Old Main. Elmhurst students played baseball on a field between Old Main and a barn (the present site of Schick Hall). The spot was sloping and uneven. So the students took it upon themselves to find a spot for a proper baseball diamond, and lay one out.
At their fiftieth reunion in 1953, members of the Class of 1903 recalled that the decision to allow the students to create a baseball diamond was made by the “Old Man” himself, Director Daniel Irion. A tall, lean, and imposing man, Irion was the school’s first American-born leader, but he was resolutely German at heart. The students determined that the proper place for the baseball diamond was on the land where Langhorst Field now stands. This location presented two problems. The terrain was rough, and was used for growing potatoes and cabbages. So the students had to convince Director Irion that baseball was more important than potatoes and cabbages. They somehow won that battle, but they still had lay out a baseball field on rough land. One student had a friend in town who happened to have a team of horses, a plow, and a scraper. Thus equipped, the students completed the baseball diamond, along with a running track, within a day.
The first baseball game on the new diamond was against St. Vincent’s College, now DePaul University. If the memories of the 1903 alumni can be credited, the Elmhurst team triumphed convincingly. At around the same time, the students organized a Student Athletic Association. It was totally supported by student effort and dues. In 1901, it paid for uniforms, bats, and other equipment for the new baseball team. To raise the funds, the Athletic Association presented plays to students and local citizens. Within a few years, Elmhurst students were competing against colleges in soccer and track as well as baseball. The soccer team—still entirely student-supported—won a state intercollegiate championship.
In 1919, Director Irion retired; Elmhurst began to move toward an American-style college curriculum; and the institution began to properly support its athletic teams. |
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Best Leader
Commencement speaker Eboo Patel included in U.S. News ranking.
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Big Questions
EC’s thought-provoking student orientation program is featured in the Chicago Tribune.
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In The News
EC student Jessica Sullivan talks about hope and President Obama in The New York Times.
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Teacher’s Gift
An Elmhurst professor for 39 years, George Thoma reflects on what he's learned.
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Taking the Lead
At the LeaderShape Institute, the emphasis is on bonding and brainstorming.
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Chemistry Show
A science class for non-science majors teaches students to teach chemistry to kids.
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