Review by Ed Quillen
Colorado history – May 1997 – Colorado Central Magazine
They Came to Play – A Photographic History of Colorado Baseball
by Duane Smith and Mark Foster
Published in 1997 by University Press of Colorado
ISBN 0870814338
Colorado’s baseball history goes back almost to the formation of Colorado Territory in 1861 — just about the same time that the game began to catch on in Civil War army camps as “the national pastime.”
The first recorded game was on April 26, 1862. The 20-7 score resembles one from a modern Rockies outing, and then as now, sportswriters provided analysis: “The positions of some of his men in the first game were not well selected.”
Baseball did not arrive in the mountains with the prospectors — they were too busy, as prospectors tended to prospect to the exclusion of all except liquid forms of recreation.
But once the mines were running regular shifts, and there was an associated population of store clerks, teamsters, engineers, hostlers, and the like, then there were not only athletes but spectators, and baseball flourished for a few years in the high country.
Best among these teams were the Leadville Blues of 1882, which won the state league’s title. Dave Foutz, the team’s star, went to the major leagues of the day, playing for St. Louis and Brooklyn, and winning 41 games as a pitcher in 1886.
Other mountain teams mentioned include a Fairplay nine in Breckenridge, a dapper Silver Plume squad, an Alamosa team sporting bats the size of aspen saplings, a 1905 women’s team from Gilpin County, and Slattery’s Invincibles, who “upheld Silverton’s honor against other San Juan towns.”
The book observes that “A mining town without a baseball team was a rarity — high elevations and short seasons did not deter the faithful.” By the turn of the century, though, most town teams were semi-pro, sponsored by a railroad or bank, and the mountains were depopulating.
Thus baseball pretty much moved out of the mountains, but its story continued in Colorado.
This is primarily a photo book, not an exhaustive or scholarly history, and as such, it’s a lot of fun. Even if you’re not a baseball fan, the pictures are interesting.
Some of the captions under the pictures are a little thin — rather than deal with the picture, they offer baseball quotes from elsewhere — but otherwise, I had no complaints. Like the game it celebrates, They Came to Play offers a pleasant hour or two, and there are a lot of worse things to do on a spring afternoon.
–Ed Quillen
