Video Observer: David "Mr. Bucketlist" Jerome Writes Book on Baseball History (2024)

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Fullerton’s history is intertwined with baseball’s past. As a lifelong Fullerton resident and baseball fan, local author David Jerome decided to combine his passion for the sport and the city’s history into book form, writing about nearly thirty years of Pacific Coast League (PCL) teams who trained on the Amerige Park baseball field in “Spring Training in Fullerton: 1935 – 1963.” I recently had a chance to catch up with Jerome about his career as a writer and his passion for local baseball history at the field where over forty Hall-of-Fame members played ball.

Jerome delivered the Fullerton News Tribune on his bicycle as a child. From 1994 to 1996, he self-published a comedy newspaper called The Irreverent Times before writing over 200 articles for the News Tribune section of the Orange County Register. During his travels around the United States, Jerome has seen baseball games at over 40 major and 50 minor league stadiums. He’s had many unique baseball experiences, including receiving Angels tickets from former President Nixon, taking batting practice at Fenway Park, delivering the scorecard before a Texas Rangers game, shooting hot dogs into the stands with the Philly Phanatic, dragging the infield during an Angels game, and throwing out the first pitch before a Chicago White Sox game.

As writer of the “Mr. Bucketlist” column in the OC Register, he had to develop new materials and topics each week. He often found himself digging deeper and deeper into Fullerton baseball history. Initially, the idea was to make “Spring Training” into a chapter of a larger book about Fullerton’s extensive baseball history, but since there was so much material, he expanded it into its own story.

“I wanted to document what has happened at Fullerton’s Amerige Park because it has a long and interesting baseball history behind it, and I feel that it’s never been fully recognized,” said Jerome while sitting in one of Amerige Park’s grandstand seats (originally from Dodger Stadium).

“I had heard that Fullerton had hosted Pacific Coast League teams. But all that had been said in the other Fullerton books is just ‘what team was here’ and ‘what year they were here,’ and they didn’t go any deeper than that. I decided to look deeper. I went over to the Fullerton Library’s history room and just started looking up ‘March’ of whatever year because I knew that a team was there that year, and I decided to see what kind of articles had been written. I would purposefully find articles with a box score to know what players had played here, which teams had played against them, and what had happened in each game at Amerige Park.”

Once Jerome had the names of Pacific Coast League members, he began researching the players and what they had done in their careers. Jerome said that in 1935 a lot of baseball players chose to be a part of the PCL, even though they could’ve gone to the big leagues, and that a lot of people considered it a third major league because the quality of play was that good, the pay was that good, the weather was that good, and a lot of them chose to stay here.

“Whenever Fullerton was hosting Pacific Coast League teams, it was like the circus coming to town; it was that big of a deal,” he said. “In the Thirties and Forties, this was their form of entertainment. Depending on what team was training in town, people would come out and pack Amerige Park.”

A lot of famous games have happened in Fullerton over the years, but Jerome thinks that the most famous one took place on Thursday, March 31st, 1938, when Arky Vaughn, who had grown up here in Fullerton and had become a major league all-star, returned home to play a game. The townspeople who had watched Vaughn grow up and play at the Fullerton Union High School were excited that he was returning as a member of the Pittsburgh Pirates, who also had a few future Hall of Famers playing. Some residents at the time even called it “Arky Vaughan Day.” According to Jerome, over two thousand people showed up. Like a scene from a movie script, Vaughn hit a home run over a fence at Amerige Park onto Highland, and Jerome thought it couldn’t have been scripted any better.

“Spring Training in Fullerton: 1935 – 1963” will be David Jerome’s fourth book. He currently lives in the former home of Hall of Famer Arky Vaughn, serves as administrator for the Facebook group page Fullerton Baseball History, and is working on two more books about baseball in Fullerton.

“Spring Training in Fullerton” can be found in local bookstores and institutions, including Past Times Collectibles in the Villa Del Sol, the Fullerton Museum gift shop, and the Titan Baseball Games souvenir shop.

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