History of Bridgeport Baseball
The game of baseball was first played in Bridgeport, Connecticut soon after the Civil War ended. Other teams that called the city home were the Victors, Mechanics, Bolts, Americans, and the Bears. Bridgeport was the home of Major Leaguer, James "Orator" O'Rourke, who signed the first African-American to play for a professional baseball team in 1895. Visiting Major League and Negro League teams often played exhibition games in Bridgeport in the shadow of the city's smokestacks. Professional baseball would not be played in Bridgeport for about another half-century, until the arrival of the Bluefish in 1998.
Read more about this topic: Bridgeport Bluefish
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history and/or baseball:
“The history of modern art is also the history of the progressive loss of art’s audience. Art has increasingly become the concern of the artist and the bafflement of the public.”
—Henry Geldzahler (1935–1994)
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Baseball is the religion that worships the obvious and gives thanks that things are exactly as they seem. Instead of celebrating mysteries, baseball rejoices in the absence of mysteries and trusts that, if we watch what is laid before our eyes, down to the last detail, we will cultivate the gift of seeing things as they really are.”
—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)