The Early Days of Ferry Street...

 

OFFERMANN STADIUM

 

I

THERE USED TO BE A BALLPARK HERE

based on interviews with Paul Offermann

 

                    Well, my father loved baseball…..loved all sports actually. Sports was part of his business. He owned a printing company - F.J. Offermann Art Work on Broadway and Cedar that specialized in large-format wall calendars. He sold them all over the country. But in around 1910 he came up with a new idea. You see, in those days newspapers came out in the early morning and then again in the early evening. So you couldn’t read about anything that happened after noon. That was rough on sports fans who, just like today, want to hear the latest on every event. So, my dad set up a ticker tape in his office that received every bit of all of the latest up-to-the-minute sports news. It was running all afternoon. He had typesetters sitting there transcribing everything…scores, horse race results, you name…and printing them on large sheets of paper. All the bars on street corners subscribed to the sheet and at about 4.30 in the afternoon a fleet of about 30 of us kids got on our bikes and made the rounds delivering the up-to-the minute sports sheets to corner saloons all over the city. My friends and I did that everyday through high school