Remembering Gus: Movement afoot to honor long-forgotten pitcher from Kalispell

One of Kalispell’s only residents to ever play Major League Baseball, pitcher John “Gus” Thompson was good at throwing the ball past swinging batters. 

Later in life, he was good at getting missed himself.

Thompson pitched for the Pittsburgh Pirates against the Boston Americans — today’s Red Sox — in the first World Series in October 1903. 

Originally from Iowa, Thompson had moved to Kalispell around that time with his college sweetheart and wife, Edna Knapp, who graduated in one of the first classes from Flathead High School.

Boston fell behind three games to one, then won four straight to clinch the best-of-nine championship. It was a huge win for an underdog team in the American League that formed only a couple years before.

That first World Series was heavily attended and a rousing success. It started a tradition that continues today. Thompson shared the baseball milestone with players such as Cy Young, the winningest pitcher in history who helped lead Boston to victory, and “Flying Dutchman” Honus Wagner, a clutch hitter and shortstop for the Pirates and one of the first five players inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.

‘They forgot to invite him back’

Fifty years later, all the living players from that first World Series were welcomed back as guests of honor at the 1953 World Series. 

All except one, that is: Thompson never got an invitation.

The New York Yankees were leading the Brooklyn Dodgers two games to none that October when Thompson, “a hale and hearty old-timer,” walked into the Daily Inter Lake to introduce himself to sports editor Grover Fletcher and share news of the snub.

“I just wanted to tell you that I pitched in the 1903 Series for Pittsburgh against the Boston Red Sox,” Thompson said. 

“They invited all of the players who participated in that first World Series classic to be guests at the Dodger-Yankee series this year and I’d like to know why they can’t find me. I’ve been living here in Kalispell for a good many years.”

The first forgotten, Thompson reportedly was one of the last living players from that first World Series when he died in 1958. 

It would not be the last time he was forgotten.

Who’s Thompson?

About seven years ago, Thompson Field, a neighborhood park and baseball field on 10th Avenue East in Kalispell, got a makeover. Neighbors worked to get tennis and basketball courts resurfaced and a new gazebo built. 

The park had sat neglected for years. 

After the makeover, the park was renamed Eastside Park. No one remembered who Thompson was or why there would be a baseball field or park named after him.

“There certainly wasn’t any intent of X’ing anybody out of history or anything like that, it was just nobody knew,” said Robyn Balcom, a member of the Eastside Neighbors Group that led efforts to rejuvenate the park.

Thompson Field used to be one of Kalispell’s busiest sandlots. That activity has long since moved on to the Kidsports athletic complex, but one of the two old ball fields remains. Its dirt infield is choked with weeds. Its lights are gone. Wood benches in the dugouts are slowly collapsing.

“I think it’s just a shame. It’s just dead over there,” Balcom said about that corner of the park.

Betsy Wood agrees. 

Wood wants to see Thompson’s rightful place in Kalispell history restored. She lives just down the road, and the park is where her children played baseball growing up. 

“How many towns in America can lay claim to the fact that they had a longtime resident who pitched in the first World Series? I think it’s a good piece of history Kalispell needs to claim,” Wood said. “And poor Gus Thompson, he just keeps getting missed.”

Uncertain past

The origins of Thompson Field remain a mystery. 

The city of Kalispell has no record of when or why or how the Pee Wee baseball field was built or named Thompson Field, city Parks and Recreation Director Mike Baker said.

After graduating from college in Iowa in 1901, Thompson tried a couple of legal cases in Helena. His partner pulled him aside and said, “This isn’t the game for you — you’ll never make any money as a lawyer.”

Thompson gave up law and started pitching for Helena in the Northwestern League. He was the league’s highest paid player, earning $140 a month, when signed by the Major League Pirates. He later played for the St. Louis Cardinals and then in Western and Pacific Coast leagues. 

He also played semi-pro baseball in the Kalispell area, where he ran a pool hall and cigar shop for many years on Main Street.

Some remember Thompson as one of the early fathers of baseball in Kalispell. 

Others don’t.

Daily Inter Lake editor and publisher Burl Lyons referred to Thompson as such in an article in October 1966, after Montana’s two news wire services reported that Dave McNally from Billings was the first Montanan to play in a World Series. 

A pitcher for the Baltimore Orioles and a three-time All Star, McNally took the mound in the 1966 World Series and in the 1970 World Series, when he became the first and only pitcher to hit a grand slam in the World Series.

“If the wire services would have said McNally is the first native Montanan to pitch in the series, they might have been correct because some of the old-time record books aren’t too complete,” Lyons wrote.

“However, Kalispell’s Gus Thompson pitched for Pittsburgh in the series of 1903. Thompson was often referred to as the father of baseball in Kalispell and we visited with him several times in his West Side apartment.”

‘A gathering spot’

Whatever its origins, Dan Johns, the director of Kidsports, said Thompson Field was the place to be when he was growing up. He figures he spent more time there than anyone in Kalispell.

“We’d ride bikes there each morning, create our own game of home run derby, play until two or three in the afternoon, eat dinner and come back out to play a game. It was kind of the original and the premier baseball field for many years,” Johns said. 

“From my perspective, it was a gathering spot.”

Come game time, the stands would fill with people. League president Willard Bungay would be among the crowd and do play-by-play with his own little portable address system. One of the regular umpires was the chief of police.

Johns started playing baseball in 1954 when he was 8. He played through high school and then played four years of Division III ball while attending college in Minnesota. Johns always thought he was going to play in the big leagues. Then one day he realized he was the same age as Nolan Ryan, and Ryan could throw a fastball through the same brick wall he could barely hit.

Johns never met Gus Thompson or even knew about him. He said he wishes he would have, and thinks that Kalispell’s connection to the World Series through Thompson should be commemorated somewhere, somehow. 

“I’m not saying the city has to do it, but it would be appropriate in the baseball community,” Johns said.

It might help inspire that next young ballplayer trying to make it big. 

Johns thinks back to when he was 13 years old and trying to learn to pitch. He went out and bought a book called “How to Pitch” because he couldn’t find anyone else who knew anything about it. 

“If I would have known about Mr. Thompson, I would have pestered him to death.”

Reporter Tom Lotshaw may be reached at 758-4483 or by email at tlotshaw@dailyinterlake.com.