Costco to Host Book Signing for Baseball in Orange County and Huntington Beach

MT. PLEASANT, S.C. - May 31, 2013 - PRLog -- Histories of Communities Through Vintage Images
Costco to host book signing for Images of America pictorial histories

Organized baseball in Orange County began in the late 1880s when community teams began forming among oil well workers. Around 1900, a farm boy from Kansas named Walter Johnson arrived with his family. Soon, the flame-throwing future hall-of-fame pitcher would be dominating games throughout the county as a star for Fullerton Union High School. As the popularity of baseball grew, more teams and leagues formed in Santa Ana, Anaheim, Huntington Beach, and other cities. Connie Mack brought the Philadelphia Athletics to spring train in Orange County in the 1940s. Joe DiMaggio played for his Santa Ana Air Base team after joining the Army. Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Jackie Robinson, and many other legends visited Orange County over the years. In 1966, the California Angels played their first game in Orange County, where they remain today as the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim.

Incorporated in 1909, Huntington Beach remained a sleepy seaside town until the city's legendary oil boom in the 1920s. Wells sprang up overnight, and in less than a month, the city's population more than doubled. As the area developed culturally through the decades, the once tiny farming community increased its size with 25 miles of annexations to become one of Southern California's major tourist destinations. Showcased here are images acquired from city records, including shots of the famous Huntington Beach Pier as it evolved over the century, rare amateur photos of one of the largest gushers in city history, vintage beach scenes, rarely seen historic aerial views, images of the turn of the century "Tent City," the infamous flood of 1938, and nostalgic shots of the Saltwater Plunge.

Chris Epting is the author of 19 books, including Roadside Baseball, Images of Baseball: The Early Polo Grounds, and Images of America: Los Angeles’s Historic Ballparks. Many of the images come from the author’s private collection, augmented with images from the Orange County Historical Society and the Anaheim Public Library.

Join the author for a signing:
Where:  Costco
7562 Center Ave., Huntington Beach CA 92647
When:  June 8th, 2013; 12:00 —3:00 p.m.

Available at area bookstores, independent retailers, and online retailers, or through Arcadia Publishing at www.arcadiapublishing.com or (888)-313-2665.  

Arcadia Publishing is the leading publisher of local and regional history in the United States.  Our mission is to make history accessible and meaningful through the publication of books on the heritage of America’s people and places.  Have we done a book on your town?  Visit www.arcadiapublishing.com.

Baseball in Orange County
by Chris Epting
Images of America Series
128 pages/ softcover
 Published: June 11, 2012
Huntington Beach
by Chris Epting
Images of America Series
128 pages/ softcover
Published: June 25, 2001