Inside Baseball at the Federal Reserve Banks

Since the 18th century, amateur enthusiasts in America have enjoyed some form of baseball: hitting a round object with sticks, cricket-style bats, or other homemade instruments, and playing by homegrown rules.

Among the earliest references to the game is a 1791 Pittsfield, Massachusetts, bylaw that aimed to protect the windows in the town’s new meeting house by banning the game of baseball from being played within 80 yards of the building, as Major League Baseball Historian John Thorn described in an Aug. 3, 2011, blog post. (Also banned: “wicket, cricket…bat-ball, foot-ball, cat, fives, or any other game played with a ball,” according to an 1869 book on Pittsfield’s history cited by Thorn.)

Rules and regulations of the
Knickerbocker Base Ball
Club, 1845

Modern rules of the game, first adopted by the New York Knickerbockers in 1845, weren’t widely applied until after the Civil War, when the “New York style” was adopted and swiftly expanded into a national game.

By the 1920s, baseball was one of America’s most popular forms of recreation, albeit one looked upon quite negatively by the Commercial and Financial Chronicle in 1929 for the perceived moral cost of the game, which was said to have inspired “a passion for winning, a love of the spectacular, and an idle thirst for excitement and thrills, a sheer desire for pleasure that leads away from sober living and, shall we say, high thinking.”

From Broken Windows to Discount Windows

Perhaps not everyone was on board with the game, but in 1928, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported on the gains in productivity within industrial companies where recreational activities, including baseball teams, were encouraged and sponsored. Whether because Bank directors relied on the promise of increased productivity, or because the employees just wanted to get outside and knock some Uncle Charlies, eventually even the Federal Reserve suited up and joined in the spectacular fun.

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A photo of the 1920 Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco Bankers’ League team was featured in the September 1920 employee newsletter, Annals of 12-L.

Image courtesy of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco

“All week long, you are indoors, perhaps working under artificial light—breathing dead air; and your disposition suffers,” said the May 1920 issue of Annals of 12-L, the employee news publication of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. “Saturday afternoons and Sundays, you can get out to see an interesting baseball game and at the same time get plenty of sun and fresh air; and in the green of the grass, find relief from sore eyes.”

Crossing Bats with Local Bank and Business Teams

The San Francisco Fed’s baseball teams were divided into a junior and a league team, and the Bankers’ League team crossed bats with seven other local bank teams throughout a 17-week season, playing against Wells Fargo, Bank of Italy, and the Oakland Bank of Savings, among others.

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A May 11, 1920, issue of the San Francisco Call reported on Bankers’ League standings.

Image via University of California, Riverside, Center for Bibliographical Studies and Research.

The teams played every Saturday, each fighting for the “challenge cup” presented by the American Institute of Banking. On May 8, 1920, the San Francisco Fed team defeated the First National Bank, 18 to 10, as the San Francisco Call reported. The Aug. 14 games brought the season to a close: the San Francisco Fed lost its final game to Oakland Bank of Savings with a score of 12 to 5, and the Anglo & London Paris National Bank (the Anglos) finished the season with 11 wins and 0 losses, taking home the challenge cup.

During the 1921 season, the Kansas City Fed’s baseball club, known as the Federal Reserves (sometimes the Federals), played in the Missouri–Kansas League. The semi-professional league included other teams such as the Aristos Flour Company and the Kansas City Railway Company, but it was the Sweeney automotive trade school that brought them down to the cellar, as an Oct. 6, 2021, article in the Kansas City Fed’s Ten Magazine recounted. The season’s loss was all despite the promise of the Federal Reserve’s pitcher, Matty Glandon, who was hailed as a veteran semi-pro from the Kansas City area.

Women’s Teams in the First Half of the 20th Century

Fed baseball and other Fed sports in the first half of the 20th century didn’t limit participation to male employees. In the fall of 1924, while some of their colleagues attended a course in “cultural arts” to learn proper posture and correct breathing, the women’s baseball team of the Seattle branch of the San Francisco Fed, the Sultaninas of Swat, were busy winning the Seattle Inter-Branch Baseball Championship, according to a January 1925 issue of the Annals of 12-L.

Softball teams for women were also popular: The women of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis’ Girls Softball League nearly won their 1947 season, ending in the runner-up position with 9 wins and 3 losses, including a final and somewhat poetic loss to Mississippi Valley, reported employee newsletter The Four Four News.

In St. Louis, women’s 1948 employee bowling teams included the Royalettes, the Fatal Eight, the Baudettes, the Goofie Govies and the Boneheads. In the 1920s, the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco hosted women’s basketball, golf, tennis, hiking, swimming, rowing, and horseback riding. It was reported in the May 1921 Annals of 12-L that the women who took up horseback riding “have become so expert that they now ride in Golden Gate Park.”

Baseball Outside Organized Leagues

Outside of the organized leagues, baseball was often part of the fun: According to the Annals of 12-L from January 1926, the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank Club hosted a game pitting the married ladies against the single ladies, but the Annals intentionally left the final score a mystery.

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The San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank Club hosted a game between Married Ladies’ and Single Ladies’ baseball teams, the January 1926 Annals of 12-L employee newsletter reported.

Image courtesy of the San Francisco Fed Research Library.

In August 1950, the Seattle branch held an employee picnic during which the married men faced off against the single men, with the married men winning 20 to 0. A team spokesman for the single men noted in 12-L News that his teammates “weren’t at their best, having all been out rather late the night before.”

Fed banks continued to take part in baseball and softball teams through the 1960s, with golf becoming the more prevalent employee pastime through the 1970s–1990s. Nevertheless, Federal Reserve Banks have enjoyed a long and exciting history of involvement in America’s favorite sport, and that’s a dinger.

This post was developed in collaboration with archivists and librarians at the Kansas City, San Francisco and St. Louis Federal Reserve banks, who provided photographs and shared their knowledge and prior research on the topic.