Tombstone Base Ball Rises from the Grave

On March 6, 1886, small article was posted in the Tombstone Epitaph.

A match game of base ball is shortly to be played in our city between the Tombstone and San Pedro nines. The boys of our town are practising daily on Mr. Light’s lot, corner of Third and Safford streets, and all ball tossers are requested to come down during the afternoon and join them. As yet the clubs have not been fully organized, and it is hoped that these who are fond of the sport will assist in completing the arrangements. A well played game of ball would be much appreciated by the public, and if the boys will go in with a will, get their respective clubs up in trim, and play with science, we will insure them deserved success.

Base Ball had come to Tombstone via
George Staples Rice, a Massachusetts civil engineer who worked as superintendent of the Stonewall Mine, owned by the Boston and Arizona Smelting Company. 

Rice formed the San Pedro Boys, a team based out of the Boston Mill.

It was a company team. It wasn’t until the Rev. Endicott Peabody came to town that Tombstone began organizing a team of its own.

Men began practicing just a thousand feet from where Morgan Earp would be assassinated two weeks later. Tombstone was a powder keg already on fire, and yet the men played on.

Spurred by Peabody’s mission of “Mascular Christianity,” a team of nine represented Tombstone against the San Pedro Boys on April 29, 1882. And the rest, was history.

Today, led by a new crop ballists, including “The Reverend” Bill Jensen, Wes “The Commish” Abarca and “The Artist” Jimmie Green, Tombstone Base Ball has risen from the grave.