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Exhibits

Sports Fiends

Chris Duffy

Duo’s Enthusiasm Pushes Island Athletes to the Forefront at the Alameda Museum

     Brian McDonald and Dewey St. Germaine love to collect sports memorabilia. Born and raised in Alameda, they grew up playing sports and collecting memorabilia of Bay Area
professional teams but had never met each other until four years ago.
     In 2007, St. Germaine, looking to share his personal collection of Alameda sports memorabilia, started the Alameda Sports Project website. One day, he was doing online research on Chris Speier, the iconic San Francisco Giants shortstop of the 1970s and 1980s, and Alameda High School alum, class of 1968. “I forwarded some information on Speier to Brian via the Baseball Cube website,” says St. Germaine.
     When they talked, the two instantly hit it off and discovered they lived only a few blocks from each other.
     After they met, St. Germaine suggested a sports exhibit, so they pooled their collections and put on the first exhibit in 2009 at the Alameda Museum. St. Germaine supplied the baseball bats and most of the jerseys, photos and some trading cards while McDonald also supplied photos, lots of cards and a couple of jerseys. “Our interests were complementary: I focused on old-time players, and he focused on the more recent players,” says McDonald.
     The first year, they concentrated on professional athletes and then expanded it to college athletes the second year. The two also got help from the Alameda Museum’s curator, George Gunn, who found old sports photos from the museum’s storage room.
     The Alameda Sports Project is dedicated to preserving the legacy of high school, college and professional athletes (and their teams) from the Island City who were either born and raised in Alameda or spent their youth and/or high school days on the island.
     While the project’s collection includes cards, jerseys, bats and photos of luminaries of Alameda sports such as NBA star players Jason Kidd and J. R. Rider and Major League Baseball players such as Jimmy Rollins, Dontrelle Willis, Willie Stargell and Chris Speier, it also has information about Mas “Fred” Nakano and Hisaki Hayashi, who played for Alameda Tai Kukai, the Alameda-based Japanese baseball team of the 1920s and 1930s, and memorabilia of Alameda High School basketball player Christine Fairless, class of 1985, who went on to become a Hall of Fame player at the University of Wyoming.
     St. Germaine is grateful for the support the museum has given them. “Without the Alameda Museum, the exhibit wouldn’t have happened,” he says. “And, in turn, we’ve helped get people into the museum who didn’t know Alameda had one.”
     Gunn says the Alameda Museum is happy to host the Alameda Sports Project’s exhibit since it’s an honorable cause undertaken by two men who are devoted to the subject. “They’ve made a major contribution since they’ve exposed the names of these people in various sports who had their beginnings here in Alameda,” he says.
     When not on display, the Alameda Sports Project resides in the homes of McDonald and St. Germaine. “We like to joke that our wives are happy two months out of the year since everything gets packed up and moves to the museum,” says St. Germaine with a laugh.
     “The only reason I go to work is to pay for my collecting. I’m a compulsive collector,” says McDonald, an Oakland longshoreman who graduated from Saint Joeseph Notre Dame
in 1970.
     Despite their wives’ reservations, the two collectors are always looking for more material. “I’m constantly contacting colleges so they’ll donate jerseys to us. We’re always trying to beat the bushes to keep this thing going,” says St. Germaine, a student affairs officer in the Ethnic Studies Department at U.C. Berkeley. He graduated from Encinal High School in 1986.
     Personal loans and donations have been crucial to the project, too, he says, including that of the late Diane LeMoine, class of ’63 at Alameda High, who, prior to her death in 2011, donated some of her late husband Jim’s (also class of ’63 at AHS) football jerseys and photographs from his NFL days with the Buffalo Bills and Houston Oilers.
     The families really like that we’re keeping the memories of their loved ones alive, says McDonald. “We get lots of reactions from people and some tears as people see photos of themselves and people they knew and played with.”
     Katie Dougherty has gladly loaned to the exhibit the Pacific Coast League’s Hall of Fame plaque of her grandfather, Alamedan Raymond French, who played minor and major league baseball from 1915 to 1939, including for the New York Yankees in 1920 with Babe Ruth. “I was really touched when I saw it. The display was so well done and organized. I didn’t realize what an impact Alameda’s had on sports,” she says.
The project’s 2011 exhibit at the Alameda Museum pays tribute to the 20th anniversary of Saint Joseph Notre Dame’s first California state basketball championship and to the 2011 NBA Championship title Jason Kidd just won with the Dallas Mavericks.

     The third annual Alameda Sports Exhibit runs Oct. 15–Dec 11. To find out more, go to www.alamedasportsproject.com or www.alamedamuseum.org.