Wednesday, March 26, 2008

BASEBALL!



After watching this movie from Thomas Jefferson (from this Metafilter thread), I got curious about the defunct league that was playing (the Atlantic League's Newark Colts, though I can't tell who they were playing against), and stumbled onto this explication of minor-league baseball in Danbury, Connecticut (the one state that I always have trouble spelling). Or "Hat-town" as it was apparently known, in that time before catchy nicknames.
There's also this neat chronology of the year that Edison filmed the game, which briefly mentions Lizzie (Arlington) Stroud, who was the first woman to play professional baseball, albeit only for one game (she pitched).

And if the focus isn't narrowed enough, there's the Minor League Baseball Researcher, which has a bunch of California League stats and some interesting descriptions. Too bad it's not regularly updated, but we're all in the long tail here.

2 comments:

Geoff said...

That's cool, man. Old obscure baseball teams intrigue me too. I found this old photo that's now framed in my basement of my grandpa's world war II baseball team. It is a photo of the whole team and shows their old equipment and stuff. I've always wondered how that league worked, and if there were some minor leaguers or even major leaguers who were forced to enlist, and having those teams was a moral booster that got 'em through the war.

Unknown said...

What team did he play on?

I mean, he was straight, obviously, but do you even know what league or where? That could be fun to find out.