In February, major league baseball pitchers and catchers report for spring training and many little leaguers throughout the country also get ready for the national pastime. This photo shows some little leaguers enjoying a sunny afternoon in Capitola, circa 1940s.
One of the first formal local teams in the 1870s was the Olympics, which played home games in what is now downtown Santa Cruz. The Olympics included one African American player, Joseph Smallwood Francis, a Santa Cruz High School graduate and later the editor of an African American newspaper in San Francisco called the Western Outlook. Throughout the years, Santa Cruz County boasted a number of amateur, semi-pro and industrial baseball teams, including the Colored Giants in the early 1900s.
The aspiring players of Capitola had their own former major leaguer and inspiration, Capitola postmaster Harry Hooper, who played for the Boston Red Sox (1909-1920) and the Chicago White Sox (1921-1925). Hooper was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. According to local writer Geoffrey Dunn, it was Hooper who convinced Red Sox teammate and slugger Babe Ruth to forgo pitching.