Connecticut the Prospect: Minor League Baseball in the Nutmeg State

By David Allen

Connecticut has a fruitful history in professional baseball. The three major league clubs from Hartford, New Haven, and Middletown proved the Nutmeg State's immediate interest in the national pastime. This piece will travel from the late 19th century to 2011 and discover Connecticut's vital role in the creation and continuation of minor league baseball.
Cover Picture: Reenactment by Newtown SVBB

• Language: English
• Publisher: David Allen
• Release date: Sep 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466174474

David Allen

David Allen is an international author, lecturer, and founder and Chairman of the David Allen Company, a management consulting, coaching, and training company. His two books, Getting Things Done and Ready for Anything were both bestsellers. He is a popular keynote speaker on the topics of personal and organizational effectiveness.

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Connecticut the Prospect:

Minor League Baseball in the Nutmeg State

By David G. Allen

Copyright 2011 David Allen

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Connecticut the Prospect:

Minor League Baseball in the Nutmeg State

Table of Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 – Major League Connecticut

Chapter 2 – A Time of Confusion and Exuberance

Chapter 3 – Dispersion and Success

Chapter 4 – The Bell City

Chapter 5 – Baseball in the Modern Era

Bibliography

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Introduction

The mascots! Fans playing games on the field! Sponsors involved with the crowd! Music playing at any possible moment! Minor League baseball today resembles the vaudeville style of Major League baseball in the early twentieth century. The youthful vibe of the current New Britain Rock Cats and the Connecticut Tigers exhibits the initial enthusiasm of baseball that was present since its inception in the 1830s. Baseball was the game that was played by boys who had the motivation to become legendary, immortal, and forever eternal in the minds of Americans. The continuance of enthusiasm for the national pastime by residents of the Nutmeg State added to the blossoming of baseball within American culture following the Civil War. Connecticut was among the first states to participate in professional baseball. The early incarnations of the major leagues were three teams within Connecticut’s borders, the Hartford Dark Blues, the New Haven Elm Citys, and the Middletown Mansfields.

Recent scholarship on Connecticut major league baseball exhibits the major role the Nutmeg State had in the continuance of the National League and professional baseball. The current local focus of professional baseball research gives insight onto the successes and failures of the minor leagues in Connecticut. This thesis will use professional baseball as a window into Connecticut history that will assist in better understanding the social and cultural changes occurring within the Nutmeg State from Reconstruction to present day. As Jules Tygiel states, ..baseball with its long, rich, well-documented history remains a powerful vehicle for exploring the American past.[1]

In my thesis I will explain how the structure of baseball in Connecticut was one of the reasons for the unsuccessful attempts made by its surrounding New England states to form a major league. The direct focus of the thesis will be to observe the overall history of the professional minor leagues in Connecticut and their teams. The reasons for their successes and failures will provide insight into the discontinuation of New England major league baseball save for the Boston Red Sox. Connecticut’s role in the history of the national pastime will shed light on the understanding of the legends that rose out of regions that were not capable of maintaining their own major league teams. It will also explore the continuance of professional baseball within other regions of the United States.

All major league players need a strong foundation in order to build their skills and enhance their training. Hall of Famers have played on Connecticut ball fields but their experiences there are seldom or never remembered. Connecticut baseball managers deserve credit for the success of their teams and future major league all-stars. Morgan G. Bulkley, the owner of the 1876 Hartford Dark Blues became the National League’s first president. The New Britain Rock Cats were once the home of current Twins greats Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau. This thesis will give a more in-depth explanation of the reasons why Connecticut did not succeed as a major league state. I will give insight into why the rest of New England ball clubs failed and explain Connecticut’s role as a haven for the minor leagues.

Connecticut has been termed the Land of Steady Habits since its beginnings as one of the original thirteen states. The consistent rituals of rural farming and primogeniture proved difficult for a developing professional ballgame that had first born sons signing contracts instead of tending the fields.[2] In the present day the state is called a place of change and prosperity. Since 1790 which saw Eli Whitney’s invention of the Cotton Gin and Samuel Colt and his arms factory in Hartford, Connecticut citizens have contributed in many ways to the industrial development of the United States. Bristol, the home of the Clock Museum, the Carousel Museum, one of New England’s oldest theme parks, the Giamatti Little League Center, and ESPN, showed much promise for a prospering city to house a professional baseball team in the late nineteenth century and in current day.

The booming clock industry at the turn of the twentieth century brought many workers to Bristol. The population grew exponentially in the town that was considered a vacation area for the people of Hartford and New Britian. The national pastime became the primary topic of discussion. The spread of professional baseball in the nation enticed the people of Bristol to join a professional organization. The love for baseball dwindled over the years in Bristol. Today Bristol has lost its connections with professional baseball. Muzzy Field is primarily used for local school sporting events. The town is modernized by the very industries that encouraged the national pastime. A few questions to consider are: Why does Bristol not have a professional club today? What happened since the 1880s that made Bristol incapable of sponsoring a major league team? How does Bristol serve as an example for all major New England cities in Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine?

Baseball as a sport originated in the 1850s with each region having their own set of rules and guidelines. The official way to play baseball today comes from the rules formulated by the New York Knickerbockers with a diamond for a field and the rule of a forced out. Connecticut’s geography led to its induction into organized play as the bridge that connected the two major Northern ports of Boston and New York. In the 1860s leagues in New England were social more than professional compared to today’s male softball leagues. The lifestyle of a nineteenth century worker entitled him to make a respectable living in a trade or in academics and baseball was not on the list of prestige.[3] The lack of a skilled professional league in New England did make the region seem incompetent compared to Ohio, where the Cincinnati Red Stockings became the first professional baseball team formed in 1869. Eventually, in the 1870s the Nutmeg State gained three professional ball teams: the Hartford Dark Blues, New Haven Elm Citys, and the Middletown Mansfields. Fans began to swarm around the ballparks in New Haven and Hartford in the mid-1870s to see their home teams win against their foes. However, how does this fandom compare to the other large towns gaining baseball clubs during this period?

Minor associations titled professional regional leagues came out in the 1880s and 1890s these teams were independent institutions that allowed the acquisition of its players to the majors. The major leagues were the American Association and the National League in which both merged by the end of the nineteenth century to formulate rules and place a reserve clause on player’s salaries. The minor league system of the late nineteenth century allowed Connecticut to spread their ball clubs across the state. Players like Mo Vaughn, Ted Williams, and the mighty Babe Ruth walked the grounds in New Haven, New Britain, and Bristol. Hall of Fame managers like Connie Mack played for the Connecticut League on the Meriden ballclub. Other historians have not examine the fact that many baseball heroes led fabulous careers in Connecticut minor league baseball prior to joining major league teams.

Unsung greats like Steve Dalkowski are forgotten due to the lack of research on the minor league system. The time that these men spent in the Nutmeg State is not well documented or remembered due to being a transitional stage for them to become men in the major leagues. In my thesis, I will present a collection of data and stories of baseball in the Nutmeg State. I will show Connecticut’s importance as a haven for up and coming players to begin their journeys into professional baseball. I will also answer why there are no major league baseball teams currently within the state.

The economy, politics, and technology advancements were factors in the development of baseball across the country and especially within the Nutmeg State. Connecticut was a forerunner in the professional realm of baseball within an association of clubs from highly populated New York, Boston, Chicago and Philadelphia. The Constitution State showed its fascination with baseball over its long history and continues to show its appreciation and love for the national game. I will attempt to answer the following: How was Connecticut important in the history of baseball through the field of minor leagues? What is Connecticut’s role in modern day baseball? What were the factors that led to Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Connecticut becoming the homes of minor league baseball teams and not teams in the majors? What major works on baseball can give insight into the importance of the national pastime to Connecticut and the surrounding New England states?

Literature Review:

There is a lack of pertinent information on the cultural, political, and economical influences of the game of baseball in the Nutmeg State. There is a substantial body of scholarship on the game in other New England states, but little work has been done on Connecticut. Charlie Bevis’ the New England League: a Baseball History 1884 – 1949 provides the reader with an in-depth history of the teams that emerged out of eastern Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Maine, and New Hampshire. Two recent works, Connecticut Baseball in the Nutmeg State and Major League Baseball in Gilded Age Connecticut, have a direct focus on Connecticut teams and players with their importance to the growth of baseball in New England towns. Ken Burns and Geoffrey C. Ward’s compilation of baseball history in Baseball and Jules Tygiel’s Past Time: Baseball as History expand the picture to include the national as whole, but their research is limited to the greater cities of New York, Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis that prospered from the Gilded Age to present. Yet they ignore the historical significance of Hartford, which had the first team n the National League. The works of Bruce Chadwick and James P. Quigel on the minor leagues show a more microcosmic, local focus than is exhibited in recent baseball historiography. Harold Seymour and David Voigt are the forerunners of baseball history in an academic format in the 1960s. Steven A. Riess is an anthropologist that has interpreted the social history of baseball and its role in American culture. Riess has focused on immigration and social status within America and their importance to the sport of baseball from the Gilded Age into the Progressive Era. As in the edited work of Baseball in America and America in baseball, Richard Crepeau recites a quote, from Jacques Barzun, Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.[4] He, points out that if you read on to the end of the sentence Barzun offers further direction: and do it by watching first some high school and small town teams.[5] Barzun’s statement expresses the local and micro focus of historical research on baseball in present day. Finally Douglas S. Malan’s book on the Bristol ballfield, Muzzy Field tells the local history of sports in Bristol, Connecticut and the culture of baseball in New England from the 1850s until present day. All sources add greatly to the historiography of baseball, but lack a more direct focus on the minor league teams of Connecticut.

Charlie Bevis’ book The New England League examines the history of a regional league based in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Bevis delves into the successes and failures of the New England League. The league was comprised of teams from Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, and Maine that lasted from 1884 until the break-up of the league in 1949. Bevis ignores the fact that the Nutmeg State had its own league, the Southern New England League, the history of which demonstrates the major differences between Connecticut and Massachusetts. This thesis will explore why Connecticut and Massachusetts prospered in maintaining ball clubs, while the surrounding states did not.

Throughout all of baseball history the economy of a city or state reflected its ability to hold a baseball franchise. Bevis describes Connecticut as, isolated from eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island.[6] Bevis explains that the shoemaking and textile industries of Lynn and Lowell differed from the metalworking industries of Hartford, Meriden, and New Haven. According to Bevis, transportation was a major factor that distinguished eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island from Connecticut. Bevis described the social and economic history of eastern New England: the growing metropolis of Boston, the ever-growing capital of Providence, and the more isolated towns in New Hampshire and Maine. Bevis spends most of his efforts describing the landscape and cities of eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island and ignores other part of New England. This thesis will examine whether the population density of Boston and Providence prevented other ball clubs from prospering in Southern New Hampshire and Maine.

Although Connecticut was not part of the New England League it accumulated until present day about 421 registered teams within professional to minor leagues in 26 different cities. Rhode Island had 116 within her lifetime in five different cities. I will argue that the sheer difference in statistics must show that Connecticut had a more unified structure in organizing baseball teams than Rhode Island. Bevis’ work explains Connecticut’s bordering New England states. This thesis will directly explore Connecticut baseball and will unravel answers pertaining to the Nutmeg State’s role in American baseball.

Connecticut's geographic location was important to its early success with professional ball clubs in the 1870s, but in recent times it is divided by fandom to the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. Don Harrison’s Connecticut Baseball The Best of the Nutmeg State is not a scholarly work, but nevertheless gives some useful insights and sources that serve as the foundation for this thesis. Most useful is this observation made in the book's foreword by former baseball commissioner, Faye Vincent. Baseball is essentially a local game. We love our local teams, and my friend Bart Giamatti often noted that there is an imaginary line through the center of the state that runs through New Haven and divides the Yankees west from the Red Sox East.[7] Furthermore Vincent states that, there is a long and illustrious line of great players from the tiny Nutmeg State, and Harrison has lovingly assembled this compendium of interviews with twenty-five of the most prominent.[8] Thus, the most useful part of Harrison’s work lies with his interviews with Connecticut players. These oral histories were done primarily for the purpose of writing stories for local newspapers like the Waterbury Republican, Bridgeport Light, New Haven Journal-Courier, Fairfield Citizen News, and the Greenwich Chronicle. The Connecticut Section in the New York Times became filled with Harrison’s oral history work. So, Harrison's book is a collection of these stories, with an additional chapter that illustrated the history of some of Connecticut’s prominent ballclubs.

The oral histories within Harrison’s book give insight into how the players experienced their baseball careers in the Nutmeg State. Some of the players interviewed were born and raised in Connecticut. While some were born elsewhere and simply played on the state's teams. This thesis will build on Harrison's work and provide a more scholarly and in-depth account of Connecticut’s role in baseball history and culture.

This thesis will also draw on point made in David Arcidiacono’s Major League Baseball in Gilded Age Connecticut, which concentrates on the success and failure of Connecticut major league teams in Hartford, New Haven., and Middletown. Arcidiacono examines the major political, social, and economic reasons for the failure of these cities to maintain major league ball clubs. In his first chapter, Acidiacono states, after a victory of the Hartford Dark Blues over the Boston Red Stocking, Men tossed their hats in the air, women waved handkerchiefs, and young boys jumped about and shouted wildlly. At this moment, Connecticut was the center of the baseball universe.[9] According to Arcidiacono, Connecticut played a major role in early baseball history. His argument is that Connecticut assisted baseball in gaining popularity across New England and rest of America. The formation of the National League with Morgan Bulkley as its president, the owner of the Hartford Dark Blues, clearly expresses the respectability that Connecticut had in organized baseball's youthful years. Even after the enormous success of the Hartford Dark Blues in its first season in 1876. The team did not have enough fans to support the franchise financially. Arcidiacono also provides a guide to the vast amount of information that is available for further research. This research has become more effective with digitized newspaper and journal archives and a plethora of websites to search on the World Wide Web. Harrison and Arcidiacono’s books have been issued within the past two years, there is still much work to do in this area. This thesis will further explain the Nutmeg State’s transformation from major league status in the 1870s to a state that excels in the minor leagues.

Major League Baseball in Gilded Age Connecticut also explains the main reasons why Hartford, New Haven, and Middletown’s ball clubs failed. The failure of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players and the Panic of 1873 were key factors toward the disbanding of major league Connecticut baseball. Arcidiacono gives a great history that opens a