The EMPIRE CITYs - Amateur Baseball in Brooklyn

This post pertains to our "other" Schaefer line, the one that intersected with ours in 1902 when John Schaefer (not our line) married Madeline (Lena) Schaefer, who was our great grand-aunt (sister of our g-grandfather, Charles Schaefer).  I've never been able to establish any certain connection between the two Schaefer lines, the most notable difference being their line was Lutheran and ours was Catholic.  Still in all, Uncle George remembers the characters from this other line, one of whom was known as "Pig's Foot Schaefer".

So every year I try to comb through our family tree to add updates based on new and sometimes changing information. This year I stumbled across a newspaper article where the baseball fans of the Empire City amateur baseball team expressed sympathy to its manager, John "Jerry" Schaefer, for the loss of his wife Madeline.  The article listed the Schaefer's address, known to be the address where our John and Madeline were living, so there is no mistake about there being a different Schaefer in this case.

What a surprise to find that this John Schaefer was involved in early baseball!  And he was known as Jerry? I will withhold my guess as to why he was called that.  But a subsequent search of Jerry Schaefer and the word "baseball" resulted in many interesting articles about his career with amateur baseball! Jerry was apparently an acquaintance of Charles Ebbets, and was responsible for bringing up many of the talented baseball players who later would rise to fame.  From 1910-1921, his team played at a place known as Arctic Park on the north side of Johnson Ave. at Gardner Ave. in Brooklyn.  According to a website about Brooklyn's semi-pro fields, "There were no locker rooms, so teams had to change their clothes at a nearby saloon. In 1912, the Empire City team, realizing they had little chance against the powerful Lincoln Giants negro team, tried to get their opponents drunk and overfull by offering lunch at the saloon before the game. The Giants ate and drank well, and won the game easily."

But John must have decided to leave it all behind as noted in a 1928 news article about an event paying tribute to veteran ball players where it says "Schaefer is no longer actively connected to the game". It appears that he then moved on to become a restaurateur. What's sad to me is that his obituary doesn't mention his baseball involvement at all, which must have been an important aspect of his life. And worse still, there is no entry for the Empire City baseball team in wikipedia!  If anybody out there can tell me where to find more information on this amateur team, please contact me.

Even though John "Jerry" Schaefer was not a direct relation to our family, my father would have loved this story!