I was talking to a woman the other day who had attended the “World’s Fair” in San Francisco years ago. Presumably this was the 1915 Panama Pacific International Exposition, when she was 25, rather than the 1939 Golden Gate Exposition, when she would have been 49. Apparently her husband had some important business connection, and the company paid for them to go out there from Alabama. This was a big event in her life, and she went on excitedly about how they stayed in the same hotel as Teddy Roosevelt and so forth.
Anyway, one of the things she mentioned was that they went to a ball game out there. I thought nothing of it, assuming it was the Giants. It was an hour later before it occurred to me that the Giants wouldn’t be in California for another 43 years. Professional football was in its infancy in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Certainly there could have been college teams, of either baseball or football, or perhaps minor league baseball.
But all of this would seem to be a little unusual, so I’d be very interested to find out what “ballgame” took place in 1915 San Francisco.
A map shows an athletic field at the grounds, but I’ve been unable to find any mention of the sporting events at the Expo.
