Harvey Christensen (1893–1947): Journeyman Baseball Player in U.S. and Canada

Harvey Christensen

Main Mausoleum, Section Six, Crypt 590, Tier 5

Harvey Christensen belonged to a generation of California ballplayers who helped define early 20th-century baseball, when local industrial teams, town clubs, and professional leagues all blurred together into a single, thriving ecosystem. Born in 1893, Christensen grew up in San Leandro, where baseball quickly became both his passion and his livelihood.

Oakland Tribune teasing abridged honeymoon

By his early twenties, he was already making a name for himself around the Bay. The Oakland Tribune described the young infielder as a “well-built youngster who cavorts around the second station,” when he joined the Oakland Oaks during spring training at Boyes Springs in Sonoma County in 1914. Under manager Del Howard, Christensen proved to be a sure-handed second baseman with quick reflexes and a dependable bat. That same year, the papers noted another milestone in his life — his marriage to Ruth Enos of Stonhurst — teasing that the newlywed’s honeymoon had been cut short when team management called him back to camp: “Even a baseball idol must eat,” the Tribune joked.

Over the next several years, Christensen became a fixture of Northern California’s baseball scene. He played in the Alameda County Midwinter League and for clubs such as the Oakland Commission Merchants and the Halton-Didlers, often sharing the field with future Pacific Coast League professionals. During World War I, he anchored second base for the Alameda Bethlehem Shipbuilders, one of the powerhouse industrial teams representing the Bay Area’s wartime workforce. The Tribune named him the best second baseman in the Shipbuilders’ League of 1918, praising his remarkable .975 fielding average and his reliability in playing “every game of the season.”

After the war, Christensen continued to pursue opportunities beyond local play, joining professional clubs in the South and West. He signed briefly with the Nashville Volunteers of the Southern Association and later moved to the Wilson Bugs in the Virginia League after becoming a free agent when, as one newspaper put it, “the Travelers cut his salary 100 iron men.” Like many journeyman ballplayers of the era, he traveled constantly in search of the next roster spot and steady paycheck.

Harvey Christensen, 1920 Calgary Bronchos (top row, 4th from left)

One of the most distinctive chapters of Christensen’s career came in 1920, when he ventured north to Canada to join the Calgary Bronchos of the Western Canada League (WCL). The WCL, then a Class B professional circuit, featured teams from cities such as Calgary, Regina, Edmonton, Moose Jaw, Saskatoon, and Winnipeg. It offered strong regional competition and a level of play comparable to America’s Class B minor leagues.

That year, the Calgary Bronchos were a dominant force, winning the league championship after a dramatic best-of-nine playoff series against the Regina Senators. Christensen was among the players listed on the Bronchos’ 1920 roster, appearing in the team’s lineup during its most successful season. For him, the Calgary stint represented both an adventure and a professional high point, a chance to play at an elevated level far from his Bay Area roots and to experience baseball’s growing international reach.

Western Canada League schedule

The Western Canada League itself was short-lived — folding after the 1921 season — but its brief existence marked an important phase in the spread of organized baseball into the Canadian Prairies. For players like Christensen, it was a proving ground and an opportunity to extend a career that might otherwise have been confined to the industrial leagues at home.

After his professional years, little is recorded of Christensen’s later life, though he eventually returned to California. He died in 1947, remembered among the ranks of those unsung ballplayers who bridged the gap between baseball’s rough-and-ready regional past and the modern, organized sport that emerged after World War I. 

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Sources:
Oakland Tribune, Ogden Standard, Ruthven Free Press, At the Plate: Western Canada League Archives, Alberta Dugout Stories, Find a Grave, Ancestry records

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