A Rusted, Old Cowbell
Hilda Chester and The Baseball Reliquary
May 22, 2019– It could be said that the journey of The Hall Ball began on Staten Island, where I took the first photo in August of 2010. For those who don’t recall (or never knew), that first photo was of the then-unmarked grave of Sol White, Negro League pioneer. Sol has a fine headstone now, with an epitaph written by myself. He is buried in Frederick Douglass Cemetery, a historically black burial ground that has been suffering through financial difficulties for years. White is the only member of the Baseball Hall of Fame buried on Staten Island, the red-headed stepchild of the boroughs.
He is not, however, the only name from the history of baseball to spend eternity in Richmond County. Jim Mutrie is buried there. Mutrie was an early manager of the New York Giants, taking the helm in 1885, the first year they began to shed their previous moniker of the more traditional, “Gothams.” Earstus Wiman, a Canadian journalist who moved to the United States and became one of the main developers of Staten Island, is buried in Silver Lake Cemetery in the neighborhood of Richmond. In 1886, in an effort to bring more tourism to his adopted home, Wiman purchased the American Association New York Metropolitans and promptly moved the team from the original Polo Grounds to the St. George Cricket Grounds, not far from where the Staten Island Yankees play today. A handful of others are spending their eternal rest in the “Borough of Parks,” though many of them are names that would not stir the memories of the average fan.
There is one, however, whose legacy in the sport continues to survive. Hilda Chester was one of the game’s most beloved celebrity fans. Like ‘Nuf Ced McGreevy in Boston and the now-lesser-known Frank Wood who patrolled the Polo Grounds, Chester became famous for her fanatical devotion. For Hilda, the Brooklyn Dodgers weren’t just a passion, they were a reason for living.
Much of her backstory is clouded in mystery. She was born in New York City at the conclusion of the 19th Century, in 1897, to her Russian parents Barnett and Fannie Chesler. It is uncertain when (or why) she changed her surname, but by the time she was a teenager, she was known to spend her afternoons loitering around the offices of the Brooklyn Chronicle to learn how the Dodgers did that day.
It is believed that she became an outfielder with the New York Bloomer Girls, a successful women’s squad that barnstormed the country through the 1910s and ‘20s. Her daughter Bea Chester, whom Hilda turned over to the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum when the child was on the eve of her fifth birthday, later played for the South Bend Blue Sox and the Rockford Peaches of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. The circumstances that drove Hilda to give (what is believed to be) her only child over to the care of others cannot be surmised, beyond the very likely reason of poverty. Hilda was employed, at times, selling peanuts and hot dogs at the New York City racetracks. Already well-known, she once made headlines in 1958 for attempting to break up a fight between a pair of customers, a brawl that left her covered in mustard.
She was devoted to sports, including hockey and especially the New York Rangers. She screamed her joy and pain from the bleachers of Ebbets Field beginning in the 1930s, when the cash-strapped Chester started taking advantage of “Ladies’ Nights,” until she was too old for her lungs to keep up with her enthusiasm. That was when she adopted her now famous symbol, the cowbell. She was a fixture at Ebbets until the Dodgers famous move west. When the team left for Los Angeles, she became one of the disenfranchised. She refused to follow the fate of the team in LA, instead choosing to go to Yankee Stadium. No, not to cheer for the hated cross-town rivals, but instead, in her words, to “root for…the umpires.” Yankee Stadium, more “dignified” than Ebbets, made her leave her cowbell at home.
Her death went relatively unnoticed in 1978, with no obituaries appearing in the New York papers. As Rob Edelman noted in his 2015 biography entitled “The Enigma of Hilda Chester,” (which was immensely useful in putting this piece together and can be read at https://sabr.org/research/enigma-hilda-chester), for many years it was uncertain who her parents were and if she had any remaining family at the time of her death. I was able to turn up, through a little digging on ancestry.com, a 1910 census which confirmed the information on her lineage. The owner of the family tree I accessed is her great-grandson, who confirmed his relationship to her after I contacted him.
I have known of Hilda for many years. Despite the quiet circumstances of her death, she remains one of the game’s most famous fans, even inspiring a 3/4-sized fabric-maché statue by artist Kay Ritter that lives at the Hall of Fame, alongside similar statues of other notable cranks.
But why am I writing about her today, on The Hall Ball blog, which has been dormant since last October? Much has happened since I told you about the disappointing response from The Hall of Fame. I signed a contract with McFarland & Co., who will be publishing my book about the project within the year. Perhaps more importantly, though, I found the ball a home.
After The Hall declined the donation I decided to reach out to other museums to see if they might be interested. The very first one I contacted was The Baseball Reliquary, in Pasadena, California. I had long been a fan of the Reliquary’s ubiquitous facebook posts, largely driven by their founder Terry Cannon. The Reliquary was once referred to as the “People’s Hall of Fame,” by none other than Jim Bouton. If you are unfamiliar with the quirky artifacts they possess, as well as their “Shrine of Eternals,” may I suggest you visit their website, at http://www.baseballreliquary.org/. Once you do, you will see why The Hall Ball is a perfect fit for the irreverent antidote to the sacred halls of Cooperstown.
Cannon was enthusiastic about including the ball in an exhibit they are presenting this summer called, “108 Stitches: The Art of the Baseball.” After the exhibit ends, followed by what I hope will be a tour to other museums to coincide with the release of the book, the ball will become a part of the Reliquary’s permanent collection. With the completion of what will be a decade of travel, the beat up baseball that began its adventure when it was pulled from a stream in upstate New York will finally come to rest on the other side of the country.
And Hilda? Another piece of her legacy can be found at the Reliquary where, since 2001, they have given The Hilda Award. The Hilda is a rusted cowbell in a plexiglass box, inscribed with the name of a baseball fan that Reliquary members choose based on that fan’s willingness to go above and beyond the “normal” level of commitment. The award has gone to people like Rea Wilson, who traveled across the country to visit all 30 major league stadiums; and Dr. Seth Hawkins, who has traveled far and wide to witness some of the game’s most important historical achievements. People like John Adams, who has pounded his bass drum from the bleachers of Indians games for over 45 years, and Cam Perron, who began recording the legacy of the surviving Negro Leaguers when he was just 12 years old. Some past winners, like Tom Keefe and Emma Amaya, are facebook “friends” of mine, whose passion caught my attention before I even knew of their connection to The Hilda. There’s even one famous winner. Actor and comedian Bill Murray, whose baseball fanaticism is well documented, took home the award in 2006.
It was announced yesterday that the 2019 winner of The Hilda is none other than yours truly. It is a thrill, to be certain, to have my maniacism recognized. I am overwhelmed to become a part of a fraternity of equally committed individuals who have dedicated their hearts and minds to our game. I will be going to Pasadena to receive the award this July 14th, when the Reliquary inducts this year’s “Immortals,” J. R. Richard, Billy Beane and Lisa Fernandez.
To celebrate, I decided to return to Staten Island, where this whole crazy thing began, and visit the grave of Hilda. She is buried at Mount Richmond Cemetery, right across the street from the parking lot to Historic Richmond Town. When I snapped the photo of the ball next to her modest stone, I was flooded with the memory of that first picture, of Sol White. The August heat and the sound of B in the background (“Dad can we go to the playground after this?”) remain vivid in my mind. I am a fan of symbols, and the fact that these two bookends to my tale are spending eternity just .7 miles from one another is not an insignificant one.
Fandom is a funny thing. It turns normally reasonable people into screaming lunatics. It breaks hearts and it mends them, sometimes in the same inning. It makes it possible for a little Jewish woman from Brooklyn, whose existence would otherwise have been lost to the mists of history, to become something of a legend. And it offered me a reboot, a new path in life when the one I chose at first was no longer filling me with the ardor it once did. There are few awards out there that are more fitting for me than The Hilda, and I will accept that rusted old cowbell with pride.