A WEIGHTY CLUB

Adam S. Eterovich

In the first part of 1870 in White Pine County, a silver mining boom area, a baseball club was formed and claimed to be the heaviest in Nevada, California, the Pacific Coast, and the whole world.

The twenty-one members of this Fat Man’s Baseball Club of White Pine had an aggregate weight of 4856 pounds, each man contributing from 220 to 260 pounds to the total.

The local newspaper noted on one occasion: (1)

We now have the heaviest baseball club on the Pacific Coast, and perhaps the world. The Fat Men’s Baseball Club of White Pine consists of twenty-one members whose united weight foots up to 4856 pounds.

Marco Medin, weighing in at 240 pounds, was one of the members. Marco was a prominent citizen of Virginia City with extensive interests throughout Nevada. He opened a saloon at Hamilton at the start of the boom.

By summer of 1870 the boys in the area formed another club. The Pogonips challenged New Club to a match, and the resulting score-- Pogonips, 58 and New Blub, 47-- showed that the teams were not too enevently matched. (2)

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1. White Pines News, May 14, 1870, p. 3, Col. 2.

2. Turrentine W. Jackson, Treasure Hill (University of Arizona Press, 1963).