I Have To Keep The Team Playing Every Day

Above is a great example of the kind of postcard Gilkerson would send out in early spring to baseball managers across the Upper Midwest.   The card, which is postmarked April 15, 1920, reads:

Manager Base Ball Club

Dear Sir: -

    The annual tour of the UNION GIANTS BASE BALL CLUB will bring us thru your section of the country soon, and would like to arrange to play you a game or a series of games in your town.  If you can play us answer at once as I have to keep the team playing every day.  Kindly give me the names of all good towns around you that have base ball teams, and oblige,

Yours respectfully,

Robt. P. Gilkerson, Manager,

118 Dalzell St.   Spring Valley, Illinois

Phone 3 R 2

In the photograph, Robert Gilkerson is pictured on the far left (in the dark suit).  It is unclear when the photo was taken and therefore difficult to positively identify the players.  Gilkerson had a habit of reusing promotional materials from years before.  This could be the 1920 team but it is more likely the 1919 or even 1917 team.

Carter Wilson, who played for the Union Giants a few years later, further detailed how the team’s schedule was constructed in Robert Peterson’s book, Only The Ball Was White:

Gilkerson would make a skeleton booking for the whole season, covering Sundays and holidays, before the club started out in the spring.   As he went along, he would fill in the other days.  He had a letterhead and an ad which said, “Coming your way soon!” and he would write the managers of teams and tell them when we would be in their area.   And, of course, because Gilkerson’s Union Giants were an attraction he could easily fill in those other days.  There were very few days when we didn’t have a game.

Des Moines Register.  May 13, 1924

  

Davenport Daily Times.  April 9. 1926

Sioux City Journal.  April 17, 1926