Meet the players on the 1910-11 Bluffton High School baseball team;
one of these players invented a machine gun used by the U.S. army in WWII
Meet the players of the 1910-1911 Bluffton High School baseball team. Compare these players to the 1910-11 basketball team and you’ll see many of the same faces.
Front from Ralph Patterson and Russell Stoodt.
Second from left, Ralph West, Edmund Hawk, Harry Hall and Ralph Spangler.
Top from left, Harley Burkholder, Rene Studler, Milton Bixler and Homer Moser.
When this team played games the spitball was still legal, the sacrifice fly was introduced three season previously, and shin guards were being re-introduced to the game, however we don’t see any in this photo.
And, in 1911 Bluffton had three passenger railroads, it cost 1 cent to mail a letter, William Howard Taft was president and the United States flag carried on 46 stars. The Philadelphia Athletics defeated the New York Giants 4 games to 2 in the World Series.
We aren’t aware of the field where this team played baseball, as Harmon Field did not yet exist. Bluffton College had a baseball team, so it’s possible the high school shared the college field.
Rene Studler became a career soldier. Here is a story from a 1944 Bluffton News relating Studler's machine gun.
