The Mystery of Bigelow Field

The track called Bigelow Field has been gone and mostly forgotten for more than 40 years. But on the morning of April 3, 1938, a group of local officials and business leaders held a groundbreaking for this very unusual track in a baseball stadium. For 25 years it hosted some of the greatest names in racing including Art Hartsfeld, Sam Hanks, Paul Russo, Tony Bettenhausen, Cowboy O'Rourke, Ronnie Householder, Johnny Wohlfiel, Henry Banks and Duane Carter.

Al (Ace) Blixt was a significant part of the Bigelow Field story for a little while in one of the strangest, and (for me) mysterious episodes of his career.  For more about Bigelow and the ill-fated 1940 season, read on. (photo by Ace)

Midget racing was booming in the late 1930's and new tracks were springing up in some unusual places.  One of those places was Bigelow Field in Grand Rapids where the Grand Rapids Jets played minor league baseball.  Here we see the view of the grandstand  from center field.  Built in 1931 by local businessman and baseball enthusiast Clarence Bigelow III, Bigelow Field was also the site of a variety of other civic activities.  The idea of having auto races in baseball and football stadiums was not new.  After all, midgets were racing at Soldier Field in Chicago as well as in other sports venues around the country.

Racing historian Dick Lee has written a wonderful article on Bigelow Field and I will let his words begin our story:

"If I were to talk about midget racers that included stars like Ted Hartley, Art Hartsfeld, Sam Hanks, Paul Russo, Tony Bettenhausen, Cowboy O'Rouke, Ronnie Householder, Johnny Wohlfiel, Henry Banks, and Duane Carter, you would probably be thinking of perhaps a track such as Motor City Speedway or the Chicago Amphitheater or the Nutley Veldrome.

Actually Id be talking about a now-defunct little midget track built on a baseball field in Grand Rapids, called Bigelow Field. You say that you never heard of it? That doesn't surprise me. Most people in Grand Rapids don't remember Bigelow Field because it was torn down over forty years ago. The track sat on the northwest corner of 39th   street and South Division. A McDonalds and a Laundromat are now sitting on that corner.

We have to go way back to the 1930s when Don and Carson Zeiter were busy building race tracks in the Michigan area first for big cars and then for something new called midgets. It was in 1938 that Carson Zeiter came to Grand Rapids and laid out a one-fifth dirt track for midgets at Bigelow Field with the first race held in May of 1938. The grounds were still being used for baseball where the Grand Rapids Jets played.

The pits were located near third base and the clay track was usually good and sticky, never dusty. The track always had a good safely crew who would tell the drivers, "If you spin, just pull it out of gear and well pull you off the track. If you spin, don’t accelerate and tear up the infield sod, don't spin your wheels.

Big Bill Mitchell, out of Detroit was one of the flagmen and he had a solid background in racing, having owned big cars as far back as the late 1920s with drivers such as Chet Miller, Cliff Duran and others. Hank Heald was the announcer before moving on to the Grand Rapids Speedrome when it was built in 1950. Charley Herman announced from 1951 till the closing in 1953.

The Zeiter promotion ran through the season of 1939. Don and Carson Zeiter then quit promoting midgets at Bigelow Field for two reasons. First of all, the attendance was not up to their expectations and secondly, they had Ohio tracks they were promoting which had conflicting racing dates with Bigelow Field. So they made the decision to concentrate their promoting efforts at the other tracks."

This 1938 clipping shows the Bigelow track from the air. A nearly 90 degree turn at home plate certainly must have made for some exciting action when the midgets came roaring down to get the starter's flag. 

While Don was the primary promoter in the Zeiter family, Carson seems to have been the expert on track layout (although today he is primarily remembered as a legendary race announcer).  Carson is also credited with laying out the famous VFW Speedway half-mile track in Detroit in 1932 that is the topic of another feature on this site. (See "It's 1932 and Detroit has a New Speedway.)

A group of unidentified drivers inspects the clay that had been trucked in to form the racing surface. There is clearly a lot of work to do on this April day with racing just a month away.

Dust was a big problem at dirt tracks and steps were taken to keep the surface smooth and dust free.  Oil was sprayed on the track and then rolled in. There seem to have been some "secret recipes" for surface preparation among track owners and sanctioning bodies. The surface at Bigelow Field was treated before the 1940 season with "a special speedway oil applied under pressure at a temperature of 160 degrees" according to a news release at the time.  Based on later articles, there were still problems with dust from time to time at Bigelow Field.

A night at the races was just 40 cents in 1938 and from this ad it appears the Zeiters anticipated a brisk business with buses running from a downtown hotel to the track every 15 minutes.  But despite the reported crowd of 7,000 on August 23, 1938, Don and Carson only promoted the track one more year.

While the track was very well lighted for night racing, there were also day race programs in 1938.  Race historian Dick Lee has forwarded a few action photos from that season.  See one of them below.  

The action looks great as the drivers round home heading for first base. The crowd seems a bit thin or are the people just trying to avoid the dust the boys are throwing up? In any event, the guy in the suit has only hay bales to protect him.

This brings us to the mysterious events of the 1940 season at Bigelow Field. At least, they are mysterious to me.  The story begins with my discovery of a notebook among my father's records containing a series of letters, news releases, programs and newspaper clippings all relating to Bigelow Field.

Ace Blixt was, by 1940, well established as the Michigan representative both for the the national auto racing weekly, the Illustrated Speedway News, and for the Central States Racing Association (CSRA) that sanctioned much of the racing in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.  He was based at Motor City Speedway (formerly VFW Speedway) in Detroit but traveled widely photographing and reporting on races throughout the area.  When a new promoter from Indianapolis named W.R. Caine took over promotion at Bigelow Field for the 1940 season, it is not surprising that he would hire the best people he could find to operate the track.  Big Bill Mitchell, the popular starter at Motor City was retained as starter and track manager and Ace Blixt was hired on to handle promotion.

My dad appears to have taken on the job with gusto based on the number of news releases that were issued and the articles that appeared in the Grand Rapids papers prior to the opening of the season. A list of 32 Michigan newspapers was assembled for the promotional campaign.  Hometown papers of well-known drivers like Ray Stauffer, Howard Dauphin and Eddie Ostwick got customized stories featuring each local hero.

Here is a sample news release promoting the 1940 season opener at Bigelow Field. Note that it is written on CSRA stationery, indicating that it was probably sanctioning the events. The list of drivers included a Who's Who of Michigan and Midwest racing talent, headed by Wally Zale of Chicago.

Wally Zale is shown here in his #1 midget in 1940.  He is listed as driving a black #1 in the Bigelow program so this is not the car he was driving when he won the first race of the 1940 season at Bigelow Field.

Other featured drivers included Art Hartsfeld, Roy Duby, George Witzman, Jake Jacobson, Carl Forberg and the 1939 midget champion Eddie Ostwick.

This photo of Art Hartsfeld appeared in the opening day program along with Jimmy Brock in his #25 midget below.(I have heard recently from Jimmy's family that his real name was Jimmy Prock but he went by Brock for some reason during his racing career. See feature on Jimmy on this site.)

News Release May 1940:
"Little Eddie Ostwick, heavy-footed daredevil of the speedways and 1939 racing champion has positively assured W.R.Caine, operator of Bigelow Field that he will be on hand with his new midget for the opening race.  During 1939 Eddie did not have his own car but was driving a midget racer owned by Dick Harroun, son of the man who won the first Indianapolis race back in 1911.  Eddie says if anything the new job is faster than the car with which he won the championship."

Everything seemed to be going fine as opening day arrived.
  The ads and stories had been placed for the May 14th opener.   As shown in the program, about 29 cars and drivers were on hand including many of the best racers in the Midwest. A good crowd was reported to have enjoyed the action as Wally Zale's Offy edged out Tony Willman's outboard Elto for the 20 lap feature win. One accident occurred during the running of the first heat race.  Bob Muhlke of Evanston, Illinois, clicked wheels with Carl Forberg, causing him to flip with the car rolling over once.  He was rushed to the hospital but was soon released

It appears that the May 21st races were rained out. Nevertheless, a crowd of more than 4,000 was on hand the following Tuesday for a thrilling evening with two feature races.  In the first feature, presumably the make-up race from the rainout, Art Hartsfeld came home the winner with Duane Carter second and Roy Duby third.  Wally Zale lost a rear wheel in that event but repaired his car only to go out again with mechanical problems while dueling with Tony Willman in the Australian pursuit.

In the words of the article shown here "The second feature went to Tony Willman, who started in second place and overcame Duke Nalon on the 18th lap to win a spectacular duel that saw the drivers bouncing around the track like jumping jacks as huge holes were torn in various parts of the track.  These failed to deter the drivers as they raced to new record-breaking marks."

So, now to the mystery. There was two more weeks of racing on June 4 and then June 18, 1940 and then ...nothing.  Something had certainly happened. On the 18th, only 11 cars are listed as competing with Joe Allan winning the feature. Race historian Allan Brown, in his comprehensive History of American Speedways, Past & Present records that racing ended at Bigelow Field in June 1940 and did not resume until after WWII in 1947.  What happened?  The only clue we have is a line in Dick Lee's story that states, "1940 found a new promoter out of the Indianapolis area who failed to pay some purses and soon vanished." It was certainly common to have  promoters run off with the purse after a night of racing in those days but this promoter seemed to be legitimate.

Here is the promoter in question, W.R.Caine. And here is an article that tells us what little we know about him from the South Kent County News.  Someone at CSRA seems to have vouched for him.  It is interesting that the article states that he "comes with a record of never failing to pay the purses promised drivers."  Was he a crook?  If so, he fooled a lot of people.  Maybe there is someone among our readers who knows more.  I will update this story when and if more information is available.

 

 

  

 

Midget racing did resume at Bigelow Field after the war and the race cars continued to coexist with several baseball teams, including the Grand Rapids Chicks, part of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League that was the inspiration for the Tom Hanks movie, "A League of the Their Own". Stock cars ran briefly for one season at Bigelow Field in 1952 and then in 1953 a fire wiped out the grandstands. Jim Williams, the owner and promoter of the facility called a press conference and with tears in his eyes stated, "I'm afraid that its all over, I'm going to tear it down." 

Comments

[Gary Brey]

This was the first track I went to at about age 4, with my parents. A driver lost his life there when he drove into a dugout.

[Paul]

Great article Al! That turn at home plate must have been a doozy!

-- Paul Ostwick (Eddie Ostwick's grandson)