MICHAEL O'MALLEY, Plain Dealer Reporter



Monday, March 5, 2007

Edition: Final, Section: National, Page A1

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- The largest crowd ever to watch a baseball game — 115,000 by most accounts — packed grassy hillsides overlooking a dusty ball diamond at Cleveland’s Brookside Park for an Oct. 10, 1915, championship playoff.

But in baseball officialdom, the national attendance record still goes to a 1954 game that drew 84,587 at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium.

How can that be?

The earlier game was an amateur contest between Cleveland’s White Autos and the Omaha Luxus. And amateur statistics don’t count where it counts — The Sporting News, Elias Sports Bureau or the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The record-holding ’54 game was a major-league contest between the Indians and New York Yankees.

The tens of thousands of Autos fans aren’t worth even an official mention, an oversight that sticks in the craw of Cleveland City Councilman Kevin Kelley, who is working to statistically legitimize the Brookside multitude.

Kelley and City Council adopted a resolution last month, calling on the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y., to officially recognize the crowd-heavy game.

Kelley directed the hall to photographs of the hillside fans archived at the Library of Congress in Washington. But the hall balked, writing to Kelley in an e-mail that its focus is on professional baseball.

“The records regarding the amateur games are so decentralized, spotty and difficult to verify,” wrote John Odell, curator of history and research. “Interestingly, I did not find any references to any crowds larger than this in my search, so Brookside keeps the unofficial record.”

In other words, keep it in Cleveland, not in Cooperstown.

“We're not making a declaration of anything as far as how many attended the game,” Hall of Fame Communications Director Brad Horn told The Plain Dealer. “It's a fascinating discovery, but in terms of making a declaration, we just wouldn't do it.”

When told of Horn's pronouncement, Kelley said, “That's disappointing. You see the pictures. How can that not be looked at as a critical point in the game's history?”

The councilman noted that Cooperstown has many displays and references to baseball before it became a professional sport. “To not recognize this amateur game is a glaring omission,” he said.

Kelley noted that Cleveland also holds the official attendance record – 72,086 – for a Major League Baseball All-Star game, played here in 1981.

He said the 1915 record is just as important as the major-league ones. Kelley said he was not giving up. The Cleveland Baseball Federation, which organized the amateur games nearly a century ago and now sponsors youth baseball in the city, has joined the councilman in his battle.

“Hopefully, with some persistence we'll get some kind of recognition,” he said. “It's too important to ignore.”

It surely was important 92 years ago, when The Plain Dealer splashed the story on the top of its front page.

“(T)he great bowl at Brookside park yesterday afternoon was jammed with the greatest crowd of fans in the history of the national pastime,” the newspaper wrote. “Over 10 percent of the population of the sixth city of the United States turned out on a chilly afternoon.”

Besides the crowd count, there was one more important stat for the books: White Autos 11, Omaha Luxus 6.

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To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: momalley@plaind.com, 216-999-4893