"A Year Probably Never Before Equaled . . .": The Klein Chocolate Company Team and its Nine-Game Major League Run of 1919

"A Year Probably Never Before Equaled . . ."The Klein Chocolate Company Team and its Nine-Game Major League Run of 1919 Gerald Huesken Jr. (bio) In the spring and summer of 1919, a semipro company baseball team known as the Klein Chocolate Company Team took local baseball fans in southcentral Pennsylvania on a wild and unforgettable inaugural run of success, culminating in an unheard of nine-game run against major league talent. Today it's almost unthinkable to imagine major league owners or managers allowing their rosters to go up against minor leaguers, semipros, or local amateurs, but back in 1919 it was just another aspect of the game. To understand the Klein Chocolate Company Team (often referred to as the "Lunch Bars" or the "Chocolatiers" in the local media), one must first understand the story of their industrial patrons William and Frederick Klein and how these two brothers of immigrant parents built a successful semiprofessional baseball unit. Such a story as this plays on the time-honored and culturally significant tradition of many American immigrants vying to integrate deeper into American society through the love of American sports. In this case, the Kleins did not just integrate themselves to American culture with a love of baseball, but they also used it to further their own economic interests. Click for larger view View full resolution Fig. 1. The Klein Chocolate Company factory in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania. Image courtesy of the Elizabethtown Historical Society. In March of 1883, Gottfried Klein emigrated from Germany with his family to Lancaster, Pennsylvania and settled into a home on Woodward Street, where he remarried and had two more sons—the aforementioned William and Frederick Klein—plus five more children.1 In an effort to support their growing clan, William and Frederick took to selling newspapers and traditional German chocolate eggs on the streets of Lancaster's Penn Square. Their [End Page 66] sweets soon became a popular local treat, bringing them to the attention of local businessman and candymaker named Milton Hershey,2 the owner of a successful caramel company in Lancaster who had had a lifelong fascination with German milk chocolate after trying it at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Driven to find a method by which he could mass produce this milk chocolate for an American audience, Hershey was impressed with the chocolate knowledge of the young Klein brothers. He ended up hiring the Kleins as apprentices in his caramel shop and brought them with him in 1900 when he sold his Lancaster offices and built his iconic milk chocolate empire in Derry Township, the Hershey Chocolate Company. Over the next twelve years, the Klein brothers became trusted lieutenants for Hershey, with Frederick serving as a factory supervisor while William served as an advisor and candy-experimenter, helping Hershey develop his signature brand of milk chocolate.3 In 1912, the Klein brothers decided to strike out on their own, heading for nearby Elizabethtown to start their own milk chocolate venture. Popular myth speculates that the Kleins left because of a pay dispute with Hershey, but no evidence can be brought forward to verify this claim. Hershey uncharacteristically never tried to buy out his former protegees' company like he did with other local and regional competitors. This speaks to a more friendly, even respectful relationship between the chocolate baron and the Kleins. From a small shop and warehouse on Market Street in Elizabethtown, the brothers developed their own signature brand of milk chocolate with an emphasis on fresh local milk as a key ingredient. The crowning achievement of this early innovation was the Klein "Lunch Bars," which sold at three cents a bar and became quite popular with working class families who couldn't always afford the high cost of candy.4 By 1915, the brothers had opened a new state-of-the-art factory and were looking for innovative ways to further publicize their business interests.5 It was William Klein who proposed the idea of marketing Kleins' chocolate through semipro baseball. Since he was a young boy, William Klein had been obsessed with the sport.6 While working for Hershey, he had been actively involved from 1905 until 1912 as a...