Portland Green Gages
The Portland Green Gages played the first half of the 1903 season in Portland, Oregon, before their franchise was transferred to Salt Lake City on July 1. Preseason papers called the club the Webfoots or the Portland Nationals; "Green gages" first appeared in the Oregonian on April 15, and the paper spelled it Greengages from then on. No period paper explained the name, and the uniforms, green and red, are the only hint.
Opening day was Tuesday, April 14, 1903, at National Park at East 8th and Hawthorne in East Portland, after a parade with a band and tally-hos. Spokane won 3-2 in 14 innings, and Eddie Quick pitched all 14 for Portland and struck out 13; his entire major league career was one game for the New York Highlanders that September. On April 17 about 700 children got in free. Portland had two professional clubs that week, the Greengages at National Park and the Browns across town at Vaughn Street.
Shortstop She Donahue led the league with a .321 average, 192 hits and 114 runs for the season and played for the Cardinals and Phillies in 1904. Outfielder Tom Parrott, born in Portland in 1868, hit .357 with 17 triples; he and his brother Jiggs were the first Oregon-born major leaguers. In an era before radio, Portland followed its road games by telegraph and the next morning's paper.
The club was 21-42 and last of eight when the league moved it to Salt Lake City, where it became the Elders. Club president Dr. Emmett Drake fought the move and lost, and his directors lost $2,000. After the move, six players walked out over rumors that manager Jack Grim would be fired, and Grim was fired and fined $100; he later claimed he was the one who tipped Detroit to Ty Cobb.
The Pacific National League took that name for 1903, when the regional league it grew out of was renamed after the California League moved into Portland and Seattle. That year the Pacific National held the National Association sanction while its West Coast rival played as an outlaw; it answered by placing clubs in Los Angeles and San Francisco, lost that fight, shrank to four clubs and folded in June 1905.
