The Cake and Beer Store

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Which prominent LDS family own a Cake and Beer store just prior to the restoration?

a.                   The Youngs

b.                   The Kimballs

c.                   The Smiths

d.                   The Knights

Yesterday’s answer:

D   The Port Elizabeth Battalion

As the number of elders serving in the South African Mission increased (158 were called between 1935 and 1940), so, too, did their influence on baseball throughout the Union. In Port Elizabeth, the increase generated the formation of a team that would provide overt advertisement for the Mormon cause. In its only season of play, 1939-40, the Nauvoo Baseball Club, aptly nicknamed the Nauvoo Legion, had a difficult time maintaining a head of steam when two of its better players, Elders Preston T. Marchant and J. LeRoy Chatterley, were transferred halfway through the season. Its biggest accomplishment was upsetting the undefeated Uitenhage Pirates before ending a championship bid in a loss to the green and gold Firestones. As the Nauvoo Legion case shows, the missionaries were often at a disadvantage due to transfers, releases, and of course, the fact that not all missionaries had played or even liked baseball. As the Cumorah’s Southern Messenger put it: “The ‘Mormon’ ball team in P.E. [Port Elizabeth] this year, has met with its success and failure, but considering that the season was begun with five men who had never played a game of baseball, we feel that this year’s ball playing has been great.” Furthermore, the focus on positive exposure and publicity, rather than wins land losses, was balm for the sting of defeat.

In addition to the Cumorah’s and the Nauvoo Legion, the missionaries in South Africa organized a third baseball team. In September 1936, the elders serving in Johannesburg partnered with three former missionaries, all of whom had donned Cumorah uniforms in the past, and organized an all-Mormon team called the Wembley Americans. Clarence E. Randall, Evan P. Wright, and O. Layton Alldredge were American-born, former South African Mission missionaries who had returned to South Africa as businessmen to create an chain of ice cream parlors throughout the country. Randall was definitely the most accomplished baseball player of the three and had previously been the Cumorah’s best Mormon pitcher (the best, R. C. Robinson, was not a Mormon) before Stan Smith’s arrival. However, Wright was no slouch on the field nor was Alldredge who, despite having served his mission prior to the organization of the Cumorah’s, had played for the maroon and white as a regular member and had even played for the Western Province all-stars one year. With the commitment of these members and an increased number of missionaries in Johannesburg, the Wembley Americans were able to field an all-Mormon team. The only South African was a convert named Bertie Price. Price was not only a valuable player but was also the team’s coach and manager.

The team received a lot of press that first season, and expectations for the club were extremely high, especially in light of the reputation of the Cumorah’s and the Mormons in Cape Town. An article published in Johannesburg’s Sunday Express on October 25, 1936, spoke to public anticipation. The headline proclaimed, “Team of Non-Smokers and teetotalers; American Ball Players at Wembley.”

Among the new sides competing in the Saturday baseball league are the Wembley Americans, a club that promises to become one of the most popular in the competition. They are known as the Mormons, and for a very good reason, since the majority of the players are young missionaries from the State of Utah, assisting, among other things, to convince the world that Mormons are not polygamists. In every way these Americans can be called d a team. They are always in one another’s company, they dine together and they play the game in a happy-go-lucky spirit that is certain to appeal. That they should not experience any great difficulty in attaining physical fitness is obvious from the mode of livelihood, for they are total abstainers and non-smokers, while in addition, they do not drink either tea or coffee.

Booker T. Alston, The Cumorah Baseball Club: Mormon Missionaries and Baseball in South Africa, Journal of Mormon History, Summer 2014, 119-121.