During the summer of 1897 a ball team from Mexico was touring Illinois. They played in such cities as Edwardsville, Beardstown, Decatur, Danville and assumedly Pittsfield. The team played the game in brown uniforms and wore large Mexican hats with "trimmings." One paper noted that they were coached in Spanish! In Edwardsville the public was charged twenty five cents to see the game, because a guaranteed fee was required by the Mexican team.
The team was from the state of Monterey in Mexico and was called the Topo Chico, (which is now the name of a mineral water and was a natural spring in Mexico in the 1890s). The first recorded game in Illinois was in Edwardsville, where the team played two games, winning both over the "Madisons." They were known to play a fast game and were very skilled baseball players. They were promoted as an attraction for everyone to see, even those with no interest in baseball -- because of the novelty of their costumes and language. By the time the team had reached St. Louis on their tour, they had won 30 of 47 games, all played on the road of course.
On June 19, 1897 (Friday) the Pantagraph had a short item stating that the Mexicans had failed to show up for an advertised game because they were stranded in Pittsfield: "The local managers ascertained by telegraph that the greasers were stranded in Pittsfield." The Topo Chico team was in fact in Decatur playing another game on the 19th, and on the 21st the manager of the Topo Chico team responded to the Pantagraph's item stating that the telegram from the Bloomington team had been delayed and did not reach them in time to add that game to their roster. Ford Dix, the manager, also objected to the use of the name "greasers" to the men on the team. The Pantagraph replied that the term is merely a nickname, much like calling an Easterner a "Yankee."
The term "greaser" as applied to people from Mexico was reportedly first used in print in 1842 in a Texan newspaper as a term that "foreigners" used to describe "a ragged fellow, or one with breeches split up the side." Of course foreigners in this case were not people from south of the border, but the
British. https://ocweekly.com/what-is-the-history-of-the-anti-mexican-slur-greaser-7510900-2/
In any case, the term was fifty years in use by the time the Pantagraph printed it and well known as an epithet. More interesting, is the fact that the Anglo manager defended his team in this manner and demanded that his team be respected by the newspapers. Sadly, I could find no photos of the Topo Chico team or any other baseball team in 1897 to add to this post. The earliest photo I could find was of a Monterey team in 1908, dressed in conventional baseball uniforms.
