Densho Digital Archive - Victor Ikeda Interview (denshovh-ivictor-01-0027)

<Begin Segment 27>

VI: And some of these people I played ball with in, before I went to camp, so we knew 'em. So in, in Seattle, most of the groups were based on your basketball or baseball teams, or your church affiliation, or if you went to school, your school...

RP: And I imagine there were some pretty strong rivalries?

VI: Yeah, you always had rivalries. You used to always have rivalry between the better teams, you know.

RP: Like who did you...

VI: We had, the older people had rivalries between the Tacoma teams and the valley teams, that's the farmers that were in the valley, they had good teams against the Seattle teams, you know.

RP: The rural versus urban.

VI: Right, kind of.

RP: Which valley are we talking about?

VI: It's the White River Valley, which is a valley between, all the way from Seattle to Tacoma. It takes in Auburn, Kent, that area, Fife. And they had some good teams out of, good ballplayers there, too. So that's where you got the close-knit, in Seattle, anyway.

RP: Would you be considered the semi-pro teams of the time?

VI: Some were, some were pretty good, yeah.

RP: So who did you look up to in terms of major league players?

VI: Well, we used to have the Seattle Indians, which was a professional team, and we used to look up to, you know, the players of the Seattle Indian teams. And the nice part about that time is the professional teams usually had players, the players stuck with that team until they retired, so it was very cohesive, a community thing that you can associate with. So we used to know the shortstop, Dick Eiselman, he played, you know, and all these different people that started with the team and ended with the team. So we looked up to them, we looked up to your high school and college athletes. But now, everything's changed; money talks and people move around, especially professionals.

RP: Right, this whole, the whole issue of loyalty in sports is almost bygone.

VI: Is not there, right.