History Happenings: Cedar Rapids Bunnies

It is almost time for another baseball season to get underway — and your correspondents fervently believe that is a cause for celebration.

To gear up for the 2024 season, the elder of these writers has been reading a variety of books about the national pastime. Of most note for this column is “The Worldly Game: The Story of Baseball in the Amana Colonies” written by Monys A. Hagen and published by Iowa City’s Penfield Press.

Drawing heavily on oral histories, Hagen traces baseball in the Amanas from the period when the elders of the community (rather ineffectually) forbade the playing of the game in the early part of the 20th century to the eventual demise of organized baseball in the community a few years before the end of the 20th century.

As a general rule, our monthly investigations into area history are bound by the borders of Linn County. The Amana Colonies are in Iowa County, so it might seem as if we’ve given up our usual home field advantage to play an away game.

But Hagen’s book includes quite a number of interesting facts and anecdotes about baseball in Linn County and its various connections to baseball in the Amana Colonies. Among them is the story of a significant innovation that was implemented in Cedar Rapids well before the major leagues caught up.

Under the lights

Hagen recounts the difficulties faced by baseball clubs at all levels during the Great Depression. To keep the game vibrant and operating in the black, teams had to find creative and appealing ways to convince people to come out to the ballpark. We’ll let her recount what that meant in Linn County:

“In Cedar Rapids, the owners and community leaders thought that ‘Cedar Rapids could not afford to relinquish its franchise in the Sippi league,’ and installed flood lights for night games to bolster attendance. For Cedar Rapids, with its economy tied to manufacturing and agriculture, night games did not compete with daytime employments.

“Fans responded enthusiastically and attendance exceeded expectations. At an August 1932 game against Keokuk, over 3,000 spectators packed Bunny stadium, leaving standing room only along the third base line. Four years ahead of major league fans, baseball enthusiasts in Cedar Rapids enjoyed night games.”

The Friday, Aug. 7, 1931, edition of The Cedar Rapids Tribune covered the first night game on its front page, taking the apparently numerous doubters to task for their lack of faith in the plan to light up the field. Under the headline “Popularity of Night Baseball Here Assured,” the paper printed:

“Doubting Thomases who did more than their share of crepe hanging last spring when local baseball enthusiasts started out to rejuvenate interest in the game by the installation of lights for night playing, should have been among the more than 3,000 wild-eyed fans at Bunny park last Monday night.”

The cost

“Wild-eyed” strikes us as an odd way to describe local baseball fans, but perhaps the lights were truly dazzling. In any case, despite this swipe at the “Doubting Thomases,” it isn’t too hard to understand why some people were unsure about the plan. The same article reported:

“This year, the local boosters faced a $4,000 obligation at the outset and when it was decided to take a whirl at night games, an additional fund of about $7,000 was required. … There still remains a deficit of a few hundred dollars before the lighting equipment is paid for, and the solicitation of contributions will be continued until the entire amount is secured.”

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That $7,000 in 1931 was equivalent to more than $133,000 in today’s dollars — a hefty and potentially risky outlay of funds during the Depression. But the Tribune — and apparently the local fans — were all-in on night baseball. The article concludes with the following pitch:

“The enjoyment of night baseball cannot be described and one does not have to be a devotee of the game to get a kick out of it. Anyone who has not yet watched the Bunnies caper around under the floodlights at the west side ball yard has missed a lot of fun and good sport. …

“It’s cool and comfortable out there, the admission fee is reasonable, the boys are playing great ball, the rooters have some new gags, and Cedar Rapids is certainly becoming baseball minded. Join the crowd and exercise your lungs.”

We’ll be in the crowd to the see the local team this summer. We hope to see you at the ballpark.

Jessica Cline is a Leadership & Character Scholar at Wake Forest University. Her dad, Rob Cline, is not a scholar of any kind. They write this monthly column for The History Center. Comments: HistoricalClines@gmail.com

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