College Football - Hampden Park, Springfield, Massachusetts 1905

Image Museum website

 



This is Main Street, Springfield, Massachusetts in November, 1905.  You see the railroad arch down the street, and hanging above the road in the foreground is the "Championship Football" game between Brown University and Dartmouth to be played at Hampden Park on Saturday, November 25th at 2:00 p.m.

Bundle up, if you're going.  And plan to get there well ahead of time; you know how that lot gets filled up with horses and carriages.

Let 'er rip - Sledding in Holyoke, Mass., 19th Century

Image Museum website

 



I don't when we're going to get the first big snowfall, but these kids are ready for it.  This is a late 19th century photo of some back alley fun in Holyoke, Massachusetts.  The contraption they're riding seems to be some sort of a "rip".   Do you remember rips?  Or did they call these sleds something else where you're from?

Shelburne Falls Bowling Alley - Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts

Bridge Street on Shelburne Falls is the gateway to adventure.  At least the alley to which the arrow on this handy sign is pointing.  It leads us to...

 

 

The appropriately named Shelburne Falls Bowling Alley, where folks have been bowling "half Worcesters" since 1906.  It's candlepin, of course.  Have a look here at a previous post on candlepin bowling, and here at the Shelburne Falls Bowling Alley website for more info on the world of fun waiting for you at the end of the alley. 

 

 



Fenway Park at 100

Funny how the oddest  images can become iconic.  Kenmore Square, Boston, a "big oil" advertising sign peeps over the treetops.  Baseball fans in New England will recognize the sign from another vantage point: from inside the walls of Fenway Park.

Closer now, just outside the park on game day.  Banners of previous glories heralding a tradition to cling to in other years of little glory.  There have been a few of those.

Fenway Park turns 100 years old on April 20th. 

The park, more so than with other major league teams, represents the heritage of the team, the fans, and the game, and is so identified with the Boston Red Sox that where other teams have a stadium, the Red Sox, and its fans, have a home.

For more on the 100th anniversary celebrations, have a look a the official Boston Red Sox website.  For photos of decades gone by, have a look at this interesting site.





 

Floating Down Swan River, Cape Cod

Cruising down Swan River on Cape Cod, deep enough only for a kayak or a flat bottomed paddle boat. You wind along watching herons, and gulls, and the occasional artist and easel on the green banks.

Marshes, where the critters live, and kids with pails of clams waving to you from a dock, where they live.

You aim for the narrow opening under the bridge that runs under Lower County Road. Eventually, after a few more gentle twists and turns, you are rewarded by the a sight that certainly should not be unexpected, but somehow is…the place where fresh salt breezes smack you in the face and the water becomes wide, and deep, and suddenly choppy. Nantucket Sound. All yours. Or so it seems for a moment.

But you dare not leave the safety of the slow-moving river in your little craft. You have to turn around and go back.

In another minute.

Early Days of Baseball in Western Mass.

One of the first historical references to the game of baseball would seem to indicate that the game was being played in Pittsfield Massachusetts as early as 1791. That year, during President George Washington’s first term in office, a bylaw in town in prohibited the playing of baseball too close to Pittsfield's meetinghouse.

"…for the Preservation of the Windows in the New Meeting House . . . no Person or Inhabitant of said town, shall be permitted to play at any game called Wicket, Cricket, Baseball, Football, Cat, Fives or any other game or games with balls, within the Distance of Eighty Yards from said Meeting House."

Baseball enjoyed a long century of amateur status where local legends ruled the roost before national heroes, when it was still only a national “pastime.”

In 1866, the weekly Springfield Oracle recounted in typical flamboyant manner a typically flamboyant baseball challenge in western Massachusetts between Chicopee team, the Hampdens, and a team from the Northampton village of Florence called the Eagles. It was not merely the season championship, it was a heroic joust.

“So to Florence last Saturday, they went full of beer and courage,” the writer wrote of the underdog Hampdens. Fortified, the Chicopee boys quite unexpectedly clobbered the champions “in the wilds of Florence”.

“It would be difficult to find a happier set of men than are the Hampdens at the present time.” In their celebration, full of more beer, we can only hope they made their way back to town safely. It was not an easy trip then, no matter the amount of beer or courage.

It was surely a different game then. Batters could request high or low balls to be pitched to them. It took nine pitches and not four to get a base on balls. It was a time when gloves were only thin, tight slips of leather.

It wasn't until the 1870s that bunts were played, or runners leading off base could be thrown out. Stealing was new. Some weren't even sure it was moral.

In his “A.G. Spalding and the Rise of Baseball” ( 1985), author Peter Levine notes the famed Cap Catch rule of 1873, where players were no longer allowed to catch fly balls in their caps. They did it because their gloves were so thin it hurt to catch the baseball.

It was a rugged game, a manly game more metal was tested in Homeric contests, and dramatized by some wonderful sportswriters who viewed men like Springfield’s Rabbit Maranville and A.G. Spalding with blatant hero worship. The white knickers, mustachioed chaps were gods.

A.G. Spalding, Bain News Service, Library of Congress, photo now in public domain.

In 1874, the Boston Red Stockings was the best team in the country. Their star pitcher was Albert Goodwill Spalding.
In 1875 Spalding moved over to the Chicago White Stockings. It wasn't quite like the curse of the Bambino, but nobody in Boston was too happy about it. Spalding would later help establish the National League, and he was posthumously selected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1939.

While still a player he became involved in sporting goods. In the summer of 1890, he came to the manufacturing town of Chicopee, Massachusetts, home to the former courageous and beer swilling Hampdens, to negotiate with the Overman Wheel Company to market bicycles. He later manufactured tennis rackets, dumbbells Indian clubs, baseball and golf equipment at the Spalding’s factory established here in 1904. Spalding's moved to a more modern plant on Meadow Street in Chicopee in 1948 which later focused on golf equipment. Now a division of Russell Corporation, the company has offices in Springfield and Holyoke.

The turn-of-the-century was an important time for amateur sports. Being amateurs they were taken away from the game by war by jobs and personal commitments, and our hero worship shifted to professional ballplayers.

For more on Pittsfield’s place in early baseball history, have a look at this website.

Opening Day at Fenway

That was a do-over. NOW play ball! If it doesn't rain again.

Candlepin Bowling

The three objects above are identifiable probably only to New Englanders. They are, of course, candlepin bowling balls. The sport created in New England is played only here and in some of the Canadian Maritimes.

The sport actually is less popular in Rhode Island and Connecticut, but I’d love to hear from our friends in these states to know if they’ve been candlepin bowling in their communities, or if it’s duckpin they prefer. Or ten-pin, which some New Englanders call “big balls.”

We have Justin White to thank for this sport, who in 1879 bought a billiard and bowling business in Worcester, and developed the game. Bowling of one form or another had been around since people lived in caves, but Mr. White made some refinements, and this particular game’s popularity took off.


For our friends not familiar with candlepin bowling, the game is a bit harder than ten-pin bowling (big balls). The pins are more narrow and streamlined (like candles), the balls are smaller (like grapefruit). The balls can frequently pass right through the spaces between the pins and hit nothing, prompting much harassment from fellow bowlers.

Ten-pin? Heaving a giant ball at a bunch of fat pins, of course you’re going to knock something down. Big deal.

Each game in candlepin is called a string, and a bowler gets three tries each box to knock ‘em down. We leave pins up in configurations called “the four horsemen” or “spread eagle” or a “half Worcester”.

Many of us grew up watching Don Gillis on “Candlepin Bowling” on TV. For more on candlepin bowling, have a look at this website.

Hartford - Insurance Capitol

A children’s coloring book from years ago taught about the 50 US state capitols. Each page in the coloring book featured an iconic image to color about each state capitol. I think Boston’s picture was of a Pilgrim, or possibly a Minuteman. State capitols from the Midwest featured ears of corn or Abraham Lincoln, or the St. Louis Arch. There were images of Alaska and Kansas, Florida orange groves, of fishing boats, the Liberty Bell, oil rigs, cowboys, and lobstermen.

The page for Hartford, Connecticut had a picture of an insurance policy.

Once called the insurance capitol of the world, Hartford continues to host many insurance company headquarters, and it is still a major industry here.

Here we have Travelers, Aetna, CIGNA, Phoenix Mutual, and of course, The Hartford. Some companies, like MetLife and MassMutual have moved out to the suburbs. Those that remain occupy buildings that are bastions, famous for their architure.

Aetna’s headquarters is considered the world’s largest colonial revial-style building. Above we have a shot of the distinctive Traveler’s building. Contrasting these traditional architectural forms, is the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance Building, a modern structure reputed to be the first two-sided building in the world, and as such, is on the National Register of Historic Places.

Aetna issued its first life insurance policy in 1850. According to the website of The Hartford, among its most famous customers was Robert E. Lee, who in 1859 took insurance out on his home, which as General of the Army of Northern Virginia during the American Civil War, he lost when the Union Army began to bury its dead in his front yard. His home is now Arlington National Cemetery. One wonders if he was insured for Civil War.

President Abraham Lincoln also took insurance with The Hartford out on his home back in Springfield, Illinois in 1861, which he would never see again, after his Presidendency ended with his assanation.

In 1890 Buffalo Bill Cody collected on a claim after a fire on his property. In 1920, the same day Babe Ruth was traded by the Red Sox to the Yankees, Ruth bought a “sickness” policy to protect his income should illness threaten his career. The Red Sox should have bought a Curse of the Bambino Policy the same day.

In 1947, the Junior Fire Marshal Program began, and many of us were taught in school the basics of fire prevention, and took home one of these little toy badges. Check out eBay sometime and you’ll see many of them still exist.

Perhaps some of you fans of Old Time Radio will remember “Johnny Dollar” an insurance investigator working out of a fictional Hartford-based insurance company.

Next year The Hartford will celebrate its 200th anniversary. There is more to Hartford than the insurance industry, but page in a coloring book devoted to an insurance policy must tell us it’s at least as important as a cowboy or a Minuteman. Probably not as much fun to color, though.

Jim Rice - Baseball Hall of Fame

Jim Rice in a photograph from a 1976 Boston Red Sox official scorebook magazine.

Congratulations to Jim Rice of our Boston Red Sox for his election to the Baseball Hall of Fame. The ceremony will take place this coming July in Cooperstown, New York.

Pudge Fisk Historical Marker

As you can see by the photo above taken in Charlestown, New Hampshire, it’s not always about Colonial battle sites or the spot of the high water mark in the last flood, or even about where George Washington might have or might not have slept. Sometimes, every once in a while, the road markers are about baseball.

The hometown of Carlton “Pudge” Fisk, who played catcher for the Red Sox (any other teams he played for are irrelevant), who is inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and who is probably most fondly remembered by Red Sox fans for one anxious moment of attempting to fan a homerun ball into fair territory with his failing arms, decided to plunk a sign down to let the world know he went to the grammar school in the front of which this sign is posted. Well, not the world maybe, but at least the people driving down this road. If you drive down this road, stop and have a look at this sign, and maybe get somebody to take your picture standing by it. It is historical. The sign says so.

Been there? Done that? Went to school here, too? Let us know.

Opening Day - Fenway Park

Can it really be spring, time to work in the green fields again? Centerfield, right field, and left field? Another winter has passed, and heroes return. To everything there is a season. Welcome, Detroit Tigers. Play ball.

Skiing in New England

This shot taken is from the ski lift chair at Ski Butternut in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. There are nearly 70 ski resorts in New England, some larger operations with more challenging conditions, and a share of smaller ski areas that are less challenging to the advanced skier, but just fine if you rarely ski.

Ski areas in New England, particularly southern New England, were hit hard in the years of warmer temperatures and less snowfall, and some, like Mt. Tom in Holyoke, Mass., went out of business. These were neighborhood ski areas. Not the grand resorts with challenging slopes one might find in the western states, but the kind where from the top of the hill you can see the grammar school you attended.

New Hampshire leads among the New England states with the most ski resorts, followed by Vermont of course, and then Maine. But you can find skiing in all six New England states, as even Rhode Island, where the highest elevation in the state is only 812 feet, has one ski area.

For more on the early days of skiing as an American popular pastime, have a look at “Skiing in Massachusetts” by Cal Conniff and E. John B. Allen. It can be obtained from the publisher’s website.


Been skiing in New England? Let us know.

Ice Skating in New England

This photo was taken in the 1930s, and it could be any pond anywhere in New England, anywhere on the continent where it gets cold enough to skate. This old family photo was not taken by me, but I wish it had. I wish I had been there for at least that afternoon, my skate laces tied together, and skates suspended over my shoulder on the walk to the pond.

This used to be a universal scene in the winter. Skating was not just for kids on double runners being toted to indoor rinks by dads who used to play hockey in college, who zoom around like sharks among the minnows, proving they’ve still got it.

Skating was a social activity, like a town picnic in summer or an ice cream social. It was about community, and was a cheaper way to fight cabin fever in January than flying down to the Caribbean.

Also, since TV was not around when these good folks took to the ice, they had no reason to stay home and become couch potatoes. It was sunny, and evidently not too bitter, so they took themselves to the pond to skate with neighbors. He’s wearing a tie. She’s wearing a skirt. They weren’t athletes. They had no pretensions to speed and nothing to risk or prove by turning a Sunday afternoon diversion into an extreme sport. They linked arms and took a proper turn around the pond while a loudspeaker played “The Skater’s Waltz.” They stopped at the warming house for cup of hot chocolate and a bit of gossip. It was all very polite and very social.

New England has its share of Olympic figure skating heroes, and an important innovation in figure skating was developed by Everett H. Barney of Springfield, Mass., whose Barney & Berry company manufactured early ice skates. Mr. Barney invented the little metal clamp devices that would allow you to clamp your skate onto your shoe, relegating the old cumbersome leather strap to history. His invention helped ice skating become an extremely popular winter pastime in the late 19th century.

Later on the boot as part of the skate was developed. As you can see, the lady wears black skates, similar to the gentleman’s. It wasn’t until Sonja Henie’s flashy adoption of skates with white boots that led to their popularity for women and girls.

Been there? Done that? Able to skate backward? Let us know.

Red Sox World Series Souvenirs

From the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, here are a few mementos:

The program of the 1912 World Series, won by the Boston Red Sox.



The program of the 1915 World Series, won by the Boston Red sox.



A display of memorabilia from the 2004 World Series champions, the Boston Red Sox.



Time to make room for more World Series souvenirs.

For more information on the Boston Red Sox, have a look at this website.

Been to Fenway? Bought the T-shirt or the cap? Remember the Curse of the Bambino? Let us know.