Strawberries and Cracker Jacks
Oxnard author Jeffrey Wayne Maulhardt goes to bat with a new book about baseball in Ventura County
By Bill Lascher 05/17/2007
Jeffrey Wayne Maulhardt sure wishes he listened to his grandfather.
How many times did the elder Maulhardt try to tell Jeff and his brothers about Fred Snodgrass, an Oxnard native who played in three World Series as a New York Giants center fielder? How many times did the boys ignore him?
Then, like now, Dodger blue was the fashionable color for baseball fans in Ventura County. When Chavez Ravine roared with cheers for people like Sandy Koufax and Maury Wills, the Maulhardt boys had little interest in a player from 50 years past — especially one from the rival Giants, who now play in San Francisco.
Decades before the Dodgers and Giants moved west, however, it was Snodgrass, an Oxnard native, who helped bring professional ball to the area in a 1913 exhibition game between the Giants and the Chicago White Sox. That game became the centerpiece of Jeff Maulhardt’s first book, The Day the New York Giants Came to Oxnard, published by Arcadia Publishing in 1997.
“I got mesmerized by this story about two major league teams playing in Oxnard,” Maulhardt says. “I realized we had quite a few other people who had been in the majors, and I thought that at some place down the road I would try to come back to this subject.”
Ten years and nine local history books later, Arcadia released his Baseball in Ventura County: Images of Baseball on May 7. The book expands on Maulhardt’s research for his first book and explores the long history of baseball in Ventura County. It also features many of the more than 100 professional players from this county, including Terry Pendleton, 2003 first-round draft pick Delmon Young, and Ken McMullen, a former Dodger who sent Maulhardt and his brothers their first caps from the Los Angeles team.
Baseball in Ventura County is the fourth book Maulhardt has written for Arcadia, a South Carolina-based publisher that focuses on photo-intensive surveys of local history. Maulhardt says he discovered the baseball thread while researching a separate book on Oxnard’s first farming families, including his own.
While Ventura once saw minor league teams for the Yankees and the Braves playing at Seaside Park, its last professional team left after the 1986 season, when the Ventura Gulls played at Ventura College as part of the Toronto Blue Jays system.
It took intensive research for Maulhardt to develop the book because many materials and pictures were not easily available.
“I had to rely on my perseverance because I had to go and find pictures that I could not find in other archives,” he says.
Maulhardt will have a chance to promote his book — and Ventura County — when he throws out the first pitch before the Dodgers’ July 1 game against the San Diego Padres. The team offered Maulhardt the unique opportunity after agreeing to host a book signing the same day and purchasing a few copies to sell in its gift shops.
“I’m looking forward to it because we’re actually taking this book a step further,” he says.
Maulhardt invited players featured in the book to come on the field when he pitches. He also requested to have Mike Lieberthal, the Dodgers’ backup catcher who went to high school in Westlake Village, catch the ball.
Residents of Ventura County are also invited, and Maulhardt asked the Dodgers to reserve a section of seats to sell to fans who participate in the ceremony. He also contacted every Little League in the county; one in Camarillo has already committed to buying 500 tickets.
“I hope we can fill the stadium with fans from throughout the county,” he says. “I’m really trying to make this a Ventura County event.”
Although Maulhardt’s current book explores all the contributions Ventura County has made to the sport of baseball, he remains fascinated by Snodgrass, who was best known in baseball circles after he missed a routine fly ball that helped the Boston Red Sox beat the Giants in the 1912 World Series. However, he went on to become Oxnard’s mayor and a colleague of Maulhardt’s grandfather on the Bank of A. Levy board of directors. Maulhardt has written a movie script about the center fielder’s story.
“He had a very successful career as a businessman-turned-banker,” Maulhardt said. “It is the story of a guy who makes this error and doesn’t let this ruin his life.”
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