Early baseball in Colorado/Game 1

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Location Colorado
Year 1862
Month 4
Date 26
City Denver
State CO
Country US
Was NY rules baseball Likely
Played by Locals
First in Colorado Yes
Found by Larry McCray

"The first baseball games in Colorado Territory occurred in March 1862, when the Base Ball (two words back then) Club was formed. The first recorded contest happened on April 26, 1862."[1]

Richard Hershberger, in an email of 1/19/2009, writes that on April 29 the (Denver, Colorado) Daily Evening News reported on intramural game played by the Denver Base Ball Club, a likely reference to the games cited by Werner. He also notes that a March 12 issue of the Evening News referred to a "game played yesterday [that] went off well, considering that there were but two or three persons engaged who had ever played the game before, according to the New York rules, and it will take but a few more meetings to enable them to become proficient."

Sources

  • Protoball Entry #1862.8 – Base Ball in Colorado Territory

Footnotes

  1. Rocky Mountain News, March 13 and April 29, 1862. Cited in Brian Werner, "Baseball in Colorado Territory," in Thomas L. Altherr, ed., Above the Fruited Plain: Baseball in the Rocky Mountain West (SABR Convention Publication, July 2003), page 71. Werner identifies the game as the New York game.
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