Oakland Dudes

The Oakland Dudes, based in Oakland, California, played in the California circuit from 1899 through 1902, during its turn-of-the-century revival. Oakland was one of the league's anchor cities in every incarnation, and the Dudes era coincided with the league's most stable stretch before the West Coast's top minor league swallowed the region's baseball market in 1903.

The Dudes' claim on baseball history is pitcher Henry Schmidt, who went a staggering 35-20 for Oakland in 1902. Brooklyn signed him for 1903, and Schmidt won 22 games as a rookie, then walked away. Preferring life on the West Coast, he returned his contract unsigned with a note that he did not care to live in the East, went back to Oakland in the new West Coast circuit, and never pitched in the majors again. He remains the only pitcher in modern major league history to win 20 games in his only big league season.

In the first half of the 1900s, professional baseball reached into towns of every size across America, and the early California circuits were among the most colorful, running weekend-heavy schedules for working fans and drawing Sunday crowds in the thousands before the West Coast league era began.