Cedar Rapids’ first school-sponsored baseball team wore minor league team’s uniforms

Jessica and Rob Cline’s History Happenings in the Mar. 31 edition brought back some fond memories I have related to the Bunnies' successors the Cedar Rapids Raiders.

When I was a young child during the Depression of the 1930s, my family didn't have money to spend on a baseball game. But we got to see many games from atop of the hill west of Roosevelt High School in Cedar Rapids.

Later, during my sophomore year at Roosevelt, the parents of our Butternut Bakers, a successful Junior American Legion baseball team, petitioned the school board to allow Roosevelt to play interscholastic baseball. That was the only baseball program available to teenage boys at the time, but high school seniors were too old to compete. The parents were successful, but there was no money for equipment or uniforms.

Someone who was interested in Roosevelt having a baseball team knew someone with connection to the Cedar Rapids Raiders, one of many minor league teams suspended during World War II. Roosevelt was given the use of the Raiders’ uniforms. They were adult size uniforms and we looked pretty funny in them, but we could play baseball.

We lost the first game of the season 14-4 to the only public high school in Davenport at the time. We won every game after that and went to the state high school baseball championship by beating East High School of Waterloo 1-0. Our pitcher Al Schamberger, threw a no hitter in that final game.

Al Seabrooke, Roosevelt HS Class of January 1948

West Union