Born in 1908, Joseph Myers was a professional baseball player, suspected bootlegger, miner, war veteran, long-time chief of police in Helper and a force to be reckoned with.
"Joe was a heavily-built, strong, belligerent, honest man who was set in his ways," said Frank Morelli Sr., 86, from his Central Commission and Supply Co. in downtown Helper.
"During the days of the brown bag, when most people in Helper bootlegged and whiskey was sold over the bar, Joe had a simple rule: 'If you have problems in your bar, you take care of them. When those problems are out in the street, I'll take care of them. But if I have to take care of your business, I will close it down.' "
A son of Croatian immigrants, American-born Myers came to Helper by way of Bingham Canyon, Salt Lake City, Park City and Sunnyside. It was there he got hooked on baseball. In the early 1920s, interest in baseball games between Utah's smelter and coal mine teams was unrivaled. Sunnyside mine owners imported rookie ballplayers from the Pacific Coast League. Typically, they gave them safe jobs, good salaries, time off to practice and bonuses for every win.
Playing fields were often like gravel pits without grandstands. Spectators in cars would hug the perimeter or along the bench lines. Competition between mine superintendents was fierce. Bets were on. And at age 15, Myers stepped up to the plate as a substitute player.
"In Price, I got on to bat as a pinch hitter at a game where [future governor] J. Bracken Lee played shortstop," he said in a 1982 interview archived at the Helper Western Mining and Railroad Museum. "There were two men on and I got a double and won the ball game. People started tossing silver dollars everywhere. I took my ball cap and scooped up over 75 bucks!"
His mother, Maria, was unimpressed. "In those days, you went and done what your dad done, and that was it!" Myers explained. "But my mother had boarders — she always had a boarding house in these mining towns — and they were really tickled. I was just a kid."
In 1929, Myers traveled with the House of David, a Michigan baseball team that "barnstormed" across the country earning money for their religious "Israelite" community.
"They don't eat meat and you got to grow a baseball beard and mustache," he said. "We must have toured 27 states in three months with an old Studebaker and a Graham-Paige automobile that half the time was tied and towed with a thick rope. We lived on the cheap but our uniforms were out of this world."
Meyers played an extra in baseball films starring comic actor Joe E. Brown. In Bisbee, Ariz., he finished the season "with a .299 average" but "tore his leg." In 1931, a rollover pinned him beneath the car for 17 hours and hospitalized him for nearly 33 days.
Returning to Helper, Myers was pulled out of the picket line during the coal mine strike of 1933 — "all you had to do was mention unions," he said — and tossed into the bullpen. In another incident, he fought with non-Union men and sentenced to jail for 10 days.
Within nine, he was extricated to play ball in Provo.
"You think you're going to bring me up with the sheriff's car and bayonet and I'm going to play ball?" he said. "I'll go on my own or I'm not going."
He drove himself.
Myers played for the Los Angeles Angels in the Pacific Coast League, Chicago Cubs, Utah State and Utah Industrial League.
"At one time in L.A., I had 17 different uniforms in my locker and played a different team every night," he said.
Myers never truly retired from baseball. He managed coal league teams and played with the old-timers in Helper. In 1948, he joined the police department.
Bootlegging? Jail time? Myers laughed. This was Helper after all.
Eileen Hallet Stone, author of "Hidden History of Utah" and "Historic Tales of Utah," a new compilation of her "Living History" columns in the Salt Lake Tribune may be reached at ehswriter@aol.com. Special thanks to Jona Skerl and Jason Huntzinger.
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