{"id":797115,"date":"2019-06-25T14:32:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-25T20:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/news\/367927\/"},"modified":"2019-06-25T14:32:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-25T20:32:00","slug":"ahead-of-vintage-baseball-game-in-frisco-a-glimpse-into-the-sports-history-in-summit-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/ahead-of-vintage-baseball-game-in-frisco-a-glimpse-into-the-sports-history-in-summit-county\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahead of vintage baseball game in Frisco, a glimpse into the sport\u2019s history in Summit County"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
The Breckenridge Reds and their accompanying band pose for a team photo in front of the town’s old baseball grandstand.<\/strong>
Courtesy Summit Historical Society<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

FRISCO \u2014 To preview this coming weekend\u2019s first Summit Historical Society vintage baseball game, I knew there was one Summit local I had to go to. Luckily, each day she sits about five yards away from me: Susan Gilmore.<\/p>\n

Susan\u2019s our assistant editor by day and the biggest baseball fan you know by night (and, I suppose, for day games, too). A lifelong Coloradan who grew up \u2014 quite literally \u2014 with the Colorado Rockies franchise, Susan\u2019s baseball devotion isn\u2019t tied to just the Rockies. A former graduate student at the University of Michigan Ann Arbor specializing in archives and records management, Susan in recent years dove deep into archives and records, including old copies of the Summit County Journal, to learn the story of Summit County\u2019s baseball history.<\/p>\n

After all the research Susan did \u2014 which she presented at a Summit Historical Society event last Wednesday night \u2014 Susan compared Summit\u2019s baseball history to South and Latin America, of all places. To Susan, the way baseball is the center of communities in countries such as Puerto Rico and Venezuela is similar to how baseball once was the straw that stirred the social sports scene here in Summit County. Way back when, during the sport\u2019s Summit County heyday in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it wasn\u2019t Alpine skiing or snowboarding or mountain biking that brought the people of Breckenridge together. It was baseball.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the biggest thing is that America as a country and baseball have always been tied together,\u201d Susan said. \u201cAnd whoever\u2019s side you are on in terms of the origin story of baseball, the fact is their identities are co-mingled. And a lot of that is because of the communities baseball creates. And you see the same things now where, down in South America, you\u2019ve got a lot of local ball clubs, you\u2019ve got these small teams across the country. It\u2019s just a chance for everybody to come together and see each other and take on a sport together.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhoever\u2019s side you\u2019re on in terms of the origin story of baseball?\u201d At last Wednesday\u2019s presentation, Susan laid out how Colorado actually played a weird part in the incubation of baseball during the late 1900s into the country\u2019s national pastime. Susan says the first date to note is Aug. 10, 1859, the day \u2014 17 years before Colorado became a state \u2014 Reuben Spalding filed the first gold claim. With the gold rush came a mining boom in a much-geographically-larger Summit County that led to evolution in the areas population and culture and, in turn, sports.<\/p>\n

During this same time, in the late-1800s, Susan said baseball leagues began sprouting up across the country, including a more \u201croughneck\u201d version out here in the Wild West of Colorado. Baseball was booming so much so across the country that Spalding hosted a World Baseball Tour in 1888 where Americans showcased the pastime in England, Italy and even in the shadows of the Pyramids in Egypt. In a way, it was a star-spangled sporting ambassador mission for America\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

The only issue was, come 1903 there was skepticism that the game truly was created here in America. A man named Henry Chadwick wrote an article staking the claim that the game, in fact, evolved out of the British game of rounders. Chadwick had his share of dissenters, though, including a man named Abner Graves, which brings us back to baseball in Colorado. Graves, a mining engineer in the Denver area, claimed he was there when the game was drawn up, quite literally, in the dirt by Abner Doubleday in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York. The information was a revelation to some, including some local newspapers that ran with the news. The only problem, ultimately, was that Graves\u2019 recollection was fake news, as the newspapers at the time failed to follow up on such inconvenient facts as the reality that Graves\u2019 was just 8 in 1839 and Doubleday resided in West Point, New York at the time.<\/p>\n

In the end, chalk one up for Chadwick and the Brits. Susan said within the wild west community of Colorado baseball, for many years Graves\u2019 assertion was passed along as the true history, all while upward of two dozen small, local teams formed in the Summit County area.<\/p>\n

\n
\n
The old Slate Creek baseball team poses for a team photo.<\/strong>
Courtesy Summit Historical Society<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Of all of those squads, the evil empire of turn-of-the-century Summit County baseball \u2014 the equivalent of the Yankees joining forces with the Red Sox \u2014 were the Breckenridge Reds. Thanks to the town\u2019s nearby railroad station, Susan said the Reds were able to recruit the best players and the best equipment to beat up on other teams, including outfits based out of Leadville, Fairplay and even such remote locations as Red Cliff, Slate Creek and Montezuma. Whoever ended up trying to conquer the Reds, it was always in a fashion fitting of a frontiersman.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the East Coast, the kind of baseball they are playing is a gentleman\u2019s game,\u201d Susan said. \u201cThey have professional leagues. They\u2019ve got really nice uniforms that they are wearing, nice little top hats. \u2026 There are fines for bad behavior. You\u2019re fined for cursing \u2014 all of this sort of stuff. The version of baseball you are getting in Summit County, that\u2019s not it. It\u2019s more roughneck baseball. And so out here, at our height, about 1892, we\u2019ve got 26 different baseball clubs just in this area. \u2026 Even some of the ranches in the area had teams. Mining companies had teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

Susan said 25 of the 26 teams hated Breckenridge. It even got heated for old sports writers of the day, as Susan said the Summit County Journal would get into making fun of other teams. One day, an editor at a paper in Fairplay got into a fight with the Summit County Journal editor. That\u2019s how much baseball meant to some of Summit County\u2019s earliest locals.<\/p>\n

Though Breckenridge was regarded as the most \u201cprofessional\u201d team in the area, Susan said the Reds and the rest of their teams would fund their 20ish-game seasons with events such as Fourth of July or Labor Day galas. At the galas, members of the community could catch up with players because, for example, one of the Reds\u2019 captain\u2019s owned the local grocery store.<\/p>\n

But once Summit County\u2019s baseball players stepped onto the playing surface, it was all business. To the point where dust-ups were common, especially when Breckenridge was involved. No matter how nasty the fight, making it back home by train was always of paramount importance.<\/p>\n

\u201cBoth teams are squaring up,\u201d Susan said about a game between Breckenridge and Leadville, \u201cbenches cleared, turns into this full brawl. At the same time, the train comes around the hill. And that\u2019s it.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the end, Susan said baseball back in the day was a way for locals to come out of their winter hibernations and catch up with neighbors under summer\u2019s sunshine.<\/p>\n

As for the sport of baseball itself, it also has a lingering legacy and place in Summit\u2019s sports scene.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the guys who came out to my baseball talk last week was one of the former heads of the Summit Youth Baseball program,\u201d Susan said. \u201cAnd he and I got to chatting about Thomas DeBonville, who is out in (University of Nebraska at) Omaha playing baseball. We still have that community. They had a lot of people gather together to watch (Thomas) try to make it into the College World Series. You\u2019ve still got those players that everyone is rooting for.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Summit Daily<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Breckenridge Reds and their accompanying band pose for a team photo in front of the town’s old baseball grandstand.Courtesy Summit Historical Society FRISCO \u2014 To preview this coming weekend\u2019s first Summit Historical Society vintage baseball game, I knew there was one Summit local I had to go to. Luckily, each day she sits about […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[99],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-797115","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 05:15:26","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSMT The Mountain","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=797115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}