Spring Grove Smith’s Bluebird Bakery baseball team: A band of York County brothers
The team at Spring Grove’s E.C. Smith Enterprise Steam Bakery are shown at the turn the 20th century. Pictured in this photo along Main Street are, from left, R. Lloyd Senft, Edward C. Smith, Jacob Mathias, Wesley Shue and Edward Shue. (See photo of the bakery’s baseball team below.) Spring Grove museum displays horse gas mask and more and A leading York County name: ‘Keeping it in family is the Glatfelter way’ and Is this a York County farm truck or is it just a wagon with a motor?
York’s Ed Smith is seeking information on Smith’s Bluebird Bakery baseball team that played in the Spring Grove area in the 1930s.
His hunt is a bit personal.
He has a photo (see below) of the team that shows five Smith brothers, all kinsmen of Ed. And one brother, Benton, wasn’t there when the photograph was taken… .
Smith’s Bluebird Bakery baseball team, sponsored by the Spring Grove bakery, circa 1935, includes a lot of Smiths, including Donald Smith, the batboy, front row, center.
The team was sponsored by another kinsman of Ed Smith, another Ed Smith, E.C. Smith, sponsor of the team.
A photograph in the “The Spring Grove Years, 1882-1982,” (above) shows the bakery at the turn of the 20th century. It joined other mainstay businesses in Spring Grove in those years, according to the book: the Spring Grove Canning Company, later Myers Canning Company, Jesse Zeigler and Sons plumbing business, and Pennsylvania Knitting Mill.
Ed Smith has search archives at the Spring Grove Area Historical Preservation Society, York County Heritage Trust and has consulted with local baseball expert and author John Coulson. When did the team play? When did it break up? Ed Smith wonders.
If you can shed any light on this local baseball team in those days, call Ed Smith at 848-6388 or 825-7898.
