Iowa Hills William "Seattle Bill" James, baseball legend
Iowa Hills Baseball Team in the late 1800’s. Two boys sit by the tree. Photo: Placer County Museums.
We have discussed the above photo in a post that can be found here. It shows the Iowa Hill baseball team posing with a couple of children sitting by a tree. All the small mining towns in the foothills fielded baseball teams, and Iowa Hill produced a player that would eventually pitch in the 1914 World Series. William "Seattle Bill" James was the waterboy for the Iowa Hill team and can be seen sitting by the tree holding a watering can! Bill was born in 1892 and looked to be about five or six in the photo, which would make the date of the photo around 1897 or 98.
William “Seattle Bill” James pitching for the Boston Braves.
William Lawrence James was the third of four children of William and Emma James. Bill's father was a gold miner in Iowa Hill, and when Bill was 11, the family moved to Oroville, where his father took a job on a mining dredge. While his parents wanted a mining degree for their son, Bill had other plans. In the three years that Bill attended Oroville high, he matured into a 6'3", 195-pound pitching phenom. When Seattle of the Northwestern League offered him a contract before the 1912 season, he left school for good. More about Bill here at the Society for American Baseball Research.
William James baseball card from 1916.
The above photo shows a baseball card with William pitching for the Boston Braves. Bill moved to the braves after playing for Seattle in 1912, where he was renowned for his fastball and spitball. William led the Seattle team to a pennant and helped guide the Braves to the championship. He was an early baseball superstar.
The photo below features James on a “cigar blanket”. I assume, because of the size of the “blanket”, that this actually sat inside a cigar box.
A “Cigar Blanket” featuring William James.
He attempted a comeback in 1918, but WWI called, so he served in the 63rd Infantry. There, his baseball arm came into use as he taught soldiers how to throw bombs. After the war, Bill played one major league game in 1919. From 1919 to 1925, he was a coach and player in the Pacific Coast League, from which he retired.
During retirement, Bill lived with his wife Harriet in Oroville. There he drove trucks and became an assessor for Butte County. He died on March 10, 1971, just shy of his 79th birthday., He is buried in Memorial Park Cemetery in Oroville.
Williams's story is fascinating as we can watch his development from a young waterboy in an isolated mountain town, Iowa Hill, to his fame as an early baseball player in the major league.