Spring Creek Baseball. Who are those guys anyway?

   Remember the line in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid as they hid behind a mountain and peered up at the bounty hunters who were chasing them? "Who are those guys anyway?"

   The same can be asked about the ten-man baseball team in this photo. Their shirts read Spring Creek and they are pictured rather formally with an older gentleman and a young boy who appears to be the team manager. Gary Nicholls of Mumford shared the photograph with the website. It belonged to his late father, Ed Nicholls, also of Mumford.

   Jean Guthrie, former president of the Big Springs Historical Society and Museum and author of the African American exhibit there, said through her research for the exhibit, she can almost positively identify the African-American player standing in the back row, third from the left. Guthrie says she believes him to be Tom Sims, the first African American to graduate from the Geneseo Normal School and to play on the school’s baseball team. She believes he may have had some family ties to the Cal-Mum area. After showing the photograph to others in the community and to the Town of Caledonia Historian Eileen LaFave, none of the other men in the photo could be identified. Guthrie and LaFave both say, however, that local baseball teams were very common in the early and mid 1900’s. Both of them believe the photo probably dates back to the early 1900’s, based on the uniforms and the appearance of the equipment.

   If you have any information on the identity of the baseball players in this photograph or of the Spring Creek baseball team, please contact the webmaster@cal-mum.com

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