Walla Walla Sharpshooters
The Walla Walla Sharpshooters represented Walla Walla, Washington, in the four-team Inland Empire League of 1902, and they had a reputation before the season was out. "Walla Walla has a strong team, and they all play together," the Morning Oregonian's Pendleton correspondent wrote on August 19, 1902. "They are nearly all old league players, and are foxy to the last degree. Any umpire who officiates at a game in which the Sharpshooters participate will have his troubles." On Sunday, August 17, umpire Breed, called the best in the league, was nearly mobbed in Walla Walla after he called Treadway out at the plate to end a game in Pendleton's favor. On Labor Day, September 1, Baker City walked off the field in Walla Walla with the score tied 9-9 and one out in the bottom of the ninth, after the umpire refused to call out a substitute runner it had tagged.
The Sharpshooters played in the 1902 Inland Empire League, a Class D circuit of four towns: Walla Walla, Washington, and Pendleton, Baker City and La Grande in Oregon, the same four that had formed the Pacific Interstate League in 1891. Record books list the manager only as Sharpstein; no source found explains the Sharpshooters nickname or connects it to his name. At the season's halfway point Walla Walla was 12-12, second to Pendleton, and had just lost catcher Speck Hulbert to Oakland.
The league fell apart in early September. The last standings the Oregonian printed, on September 8, had Pendleton first at 25-10 and Walla Walla second at 17-19; record books, working from late August standings, list Walla Walla at 14-15. On September 10 the Walla Walla club announced that "the smash-up of the Inland Empire League" had made the schedule impossible to finish, and that it would carry on as an independent team with a tour to Vancouver, British Columbia.
Walla Walla's 1891 club, the Walla Wallas, had gone 16-14 for third in the Pacific Interstate League under a manager listed as Skyrocket Smith. The Inland Empire League returned in 1908 with the same four towns, and the Walla Wallas were 14-17 when the league disbanded on July 12, in extreme heat. From 1912 to 1914 the Walla Walla Bears played in the Western Tri-State League under manager Gus Bade, finishing first at 61-37 in 1912 and second in 1913 and 1914; one league history credits the 1912 title to Pendleton instead. Earl Sheely led that league with 11 home runs for Walla Walla in 1914, then spent most of the 1920s at first base for the Chicago White Sox and retired with a .300 major league average.
