By Diane Hassan for the CTPost.com

Finding an early mention of the game in an 1867 issue of The Danbury Times—the local newspaper at the time—was jaw dropping. In the 1870s, baseball was so popular it made front-page news every day during the season. One of the earliest town directories in the Danbury Historical Society’s collection is from 1874 and includes a listing for the Aetna Base Ball Club with Wallace Curtiss named as the Captain of Nine.

First Game of the Season – The Danbury Times, April 25, 1867 – Danbury Museum & Historical Society

Reading about Danbury’s “colored teams” and discovering that The Cuban Giants, the first professional African American team, regularly played against the Danbury ball club was a thrill. There is even a photograph of an African American team in the Library of Congress, taken in Danbury in the 1880s. It is credited to E.D. Ritton, one of Danbury’s first commercial photographers on Main Street.

Danbury native son, Charles Ives, was a huge fan of baseball and in 1889 he pitched for The Alerts. When he was a boy, he disliked being called a piano player by his peers. When much ado was made about his music and he was asked what he liked to play, he would retort: “Shortstop!” and his love of the game is clearly reflected in his music.

Locals Make it to Major Leagues and Even Head Up Baseball Hall of Fame

Many early Danbury players went on to play in the minor and major leagues. Edward Jaykill Phelps began his career in Danbury in 1896. An article appearing in the Daily Illinois in 1909 explained, “Until 1896 was unknown as a ball player. Then he was first heard of in Danbury, a little Connecticut hamlet that boasted a ball club. Phelps was the catcher of the village prides and the hero of the small boys of that far eastern town.”

Phelps went on to play for a number of major league teams including The Cincinnati Reds, The St. Louis Cardinals, and The Brooklyn Dodgers. During the 1903 World Series, while serving as catcher for the Pittsburgh Pirates, Phelps managed to get a hit off the legendary Boston Red Sox pitcher Cy Young.

Tobacco Card featuring E. J. Phelps of the St. Louis Cardinals circa 1910 – Danbury Museum & Historical Society

Hometown boy, Kenneth Danforth Smith, served as bat boy in 1912 for the Hatters, Danbury’s New York-New Jersey minor league team. In 1920, he was the manager of the Danbury High School team. Smith took a job in 1925 as a baseball writer for the New York Graphic and worked for the New York Mirror from 1941 to 1963. He became a famed sportswriter and covered 38 World Series, traveling with the New York Giants and The New York Yankees between 1927 and 1963. When the Mirror folded in 1963, he was appointed Director of the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York.

Vintage images and other memorabilia from the Danbury Historical Society archives complement a stunning national and local timeline of events. Team photos include hatters, policemen, firemen, YMCA players, and high school students. Early newspaper articles going back to the 1860s reflect the excitement generated by the game of baseball.

Danbury’s historic love of the game runs deep, and, as a noteworthy neighbor, Mark Twain once said at a speech given at Delmonico’s on April 8, 1889: “Baseball…the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive, and push, and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.”

African American baseball team, Danbury, Connecticut, ca. 1880 – Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

Diane Hassan is an independent researcher, genealogist, and writer currently working as a Research Specialist for the Danbury Museum & Historical Society.

© CTPost.com. All rights reserved. This article is excerpted and originally appeared on Archive Archaeology