Sports in Connecticut

also see The Hartford Dark Blues.

By Janice L. and Jerrold B. Trecker, West Hartford, Connecticut

Connecticut residents have long enjoyed sports and games.

Even in colonial days, races, tests of skill, and outdoor sports were popular. Hunting was both a pleasure and a necessity, while fishing was an activity for both sexes and all ages. But the development of teams, especially professional and semi-professional organizations, had to wait until communities with fairly large populations, wealth, and leisure existed. It was not until 1862 that the Hartford Courant announced the formation of the Charter Oaks, a professional baseball team.

After the Civil War, Connecticut saw the development of a lively sports scene, with what then was "big time" football at Yale and a wide range of professional as semi-professional sports—harness racing, boxing, baseball, football, tennis, golf and roller polo. The twenty-five years on either side of 1900 can be considered the "golden age" of sports in Connecticut. Then, southern New England was very much in big leagues.

Hartford was a charter member of the National Baseball League in 1876 with Morgan G. Bulkeley (1837-1922) as head of the new sport. Hartford did not last long at the top level, but Eastern League baseball was of the highest class in its  "golden age." Besides these games, the state saw lively football, particularly in the great 1888 season at Yale where the Blues posted thirteen wins with a team including Amos Alonso Stagg (1862-1965) and Pudge Heffelfinger (1867-1954).

Football was to persist, once at the National Football League level, but usually at the collegiate and minor professional levels, often with Yale in the ascendancy. There were brief periods of local interest in teams such as the Hartford Knights, which dominated the semi-professional Atlantic Coast League in the mid 1960s.

Then there was boxing, the sport that attracted a number of Connecticuters, especially from the lower weight ranks. Louis (Kid) Kaplan was featherweight champion of the world from 1925 to 1927, while Guillermo Papaleo, who fought as Willie Pep, is regarded as one of the finest boxers ever to grace the ring. He reigned as champion in his weight class from 1942 to 1948 and from 1949 to 1950 and fought epic battles against Sandy Saddler, fights which helped to make the sport a popular television spectacle after World War II. Christopher (Bat) Battalino (b. 1908) was also a world champion from 1929 to 1932 and attracted large crowds to his bouts in the state. These fighters were followed avidly by fans.

Also popular were the many harness racing tracks such as Charter Oak (West Hartford) and Sage Park (Windsor). The 1920s and early 1930s were the Damon Runyan years of colorful sporting personalities and promoters.

Completing the cast were the professional bicycle racers, who competed on the top level. A. W. Lonnie Warren defeated then-world champ Arthur Zimmerman at a race in Birmington, Connecticut, in 1892, and the sport attracted crowds as late as the 1930s at the East Hartford Velodrome. Also popular were the players of roller polo, a game played on roller skates with hockey (outdoor field hockey) sticks, a well-supported spectator sport at the turn of the century. Still popular in Spain and Portugal, the game is a mere memory in Connecticut today.

This diverse and vigorous sporting life was hurt by the financial woes of the Great Depression of the 1930s and the dislocations of World War II. It was the automobile culture of the post-war era, however, which really spelled the end of the professional era in Connecticut. Smack between Boston and New York, the Connecticut cities found themselves unable to compete with the well-financed urban teams of their larger neighbors.

In baseball, the New York Yankee fans now seem to hold the southern half of the state, where New York City-originated telecasts of their games were available long before the cable revolution. The Boston Red Sox made their mark on the northern part of Connecticut as early as the post-war era, with their policy of marketing their radio and television networks as New England-wide media.  It is not insignificant that the state's most powerful AM radio station, the 50,000-watt WTIC signal, has been voice of the Red Sox for the past twenty-five years. Such identification with the team indicates how strong area interest truly is.

Similarly, when the National Football League gained prominence in the early 1960s, the York Giants were recognized as the most popular team in New England. Allegiance to the Giants has endured, even after the addition of the New York Jets and the New England Patriots as rivals for spectator attention.

In collegiate sport, the decades since World War II have also seen a decline in national importance of the state's schools, including the once-dominant Yale football team. Yale once practically defined college football, and, with its 63,000-seat Bowl, owns the largest private stadium in New England. This facility enabled college football to develop as a major sport during the 1920s. At that time, Yale was led by the legendary Albie Booth, (1908-1959); defeated teams of national stature; and produced its own All-American players. It was Yale's Walter Camp (1859-1925) who selected the first All-American teams, a practice continued by the Walter Camp Foundation to this day and mimicked by countless other sports organizations and media associations.

But Yale's contribution to collegiate sport ranges far beyond football, even if that is the most noticeable area of its achievement. The New Haven school has long been a leader in the number of sports offered and the standard of academic excellence demanded of its athletes. Along with the other Ivy League schools, Yale has proved that it is possible to compete at the highest levels without professionalizing college sport or diluting the quality of student-athlete attracted to a particular program. Ivy League teams have successfully challenged for the NCAA basketball, ice hockey, and baseball championships down to the present, and Yale has sent 116 alumni (accounting for nine medals) to the Olympic Games.

It is to the social aspects of sport, however, that Yale has contributed even more. Incorporating the British attitudes of fair play, which dominated amateur sport at the turn of the past century, Yale and its fellow Ivy institutions have successfully maintained an attitude of healthy competition built upon a base of strong alumni support.  Hence, the annual Yale-Harvard competitions have significance well beyond the games themselves, serving as reunions for college classes.

In the face of the Ivy League tradition, reflected as well by the small, high-prestige, private Connecticut colleges, the development of sport at the state universities in Connecticut has been difficult. Although the University of Connecticut at Storrs has competed in inter-collegiate football competition since 1896, it has often lived in the shadow of its New Haven rival. It was not until 1982-1983, for example, that a Connecticut football team was able to score successive victories over Yale.

Nonetheless, UConn has carved out an athletic tradition of its own, being particularly successful in basketball, baseball and soccer. More recently, with the prominence of women's athletics, UConn has quickly demonstrated its national strength by winning a championship in field hockey and challenging as well for the national championship title in soccer. In women's athletics, the state institutions have proven far more successful than either the Ivy or Little Ivy schools.

At the state university level, Central, Eastern, Southern and Western have competed at the Division II or III levels. Three of the schools have achieved national prominence, but usually in only one sport per school. Central, for example, has long excelled in basketball, Southern in gymnastics, and Eastern in baseball.

The sports programs at Connecticut and New England high schools have long been regarded as first-rate, particularly in terms of student participation and in finding a balance between athletic and scholastic values. The secondary schools in the state fall under two sporting umbrellas: the public and parochial schools are administered by the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference (CIAC) and the independent schools adhere to the athletic regulations set by the Western New England Secondary Schools Association (WNESSA).

The CIAC began its practice of tournaments in 1920 with boys basketball and conducts championship events in a wide range of sports for both sexes. In addition to statewide competition, the CIAC allows some regional championship events, although the most popular of those competitions, the New England basketball tournament, was abandoned in the 1960s after complaints about overemphasis and the high pressure atmosphere of the finals. Glamour high school sporting occasions, although common in other parts of the nation where high school tournaments attract crowds comparable to professional events, have never proved popular in Connecticut or New England, perhaps because of the region's strong educational values.

School sports have grown rapidly since World War II both in numbers of participants and in variety. But the most significant change came in 1972 when Title IX of the National Education Act mandated equal opportunity for women and girls in educational institutions receiving Federal funds. At a stroke, teams for high school and college women were either created or strengthened in softball, field hockey, basketball, volleyball, gymnastics, swimming, and track and field. In recent years, schools have seen the number of women athletes nearly double. In addition, the growing interest in women's sports has spawned summer leagues in soccer, field hockey, and softball; opened Little League baseball to both sexes; and encouraged participation by adult women in sport. With these developments, women's sports have come a long way.

If Connecticut's home-grown professional and spectator sports have experienced a decline in recent decades, the reverse is true of participation in sports. While professional soccer teams like the Connecticut Wildcats, Connecticut   Bicentennials, and Hartford Hellions all failed financially, along with minor league professional football teams, adult recreational and semi-professional teams have thrived. The history of modern immigration to the state could well be written in the changing teams of the Connecticut Soccer League, as Scandia has given way to Bridgeport Vasco de Gamas and Hartford Inca, and players from Latin America and the Far East have joined Italians, Poles, Germans, Greeks, and Americans on the playing fields.

Similarly, the arrival of a large Spanish-speaking population has meant thriving adult baseball leagues, providing urban recreation. Area West Indians compete at cricket, the game of the British Empire, now well established from Washington, D.C. to Boston.

In more rural areas, hunting and fishing are still immensely popular; with the state's roughly 175,000 acres open to hunting and fishing—attracting in recent years over 200,000 residents per year.

When one adds the joggers, golfers, bowlers, softball players, and lacrosse, tennis, and karate fanciers, Connecticut is clearly a highly sports-conscious state. In recent years, with the Hartford Whalers and the New Haven Nighthawks hockey teams, the jai alai players at the state's three frontons, and the opening of modern indoor areas such as the Hartford Civic Center (1975) and New Haven Coliseum (1972), the state has added its claim to professional major and minor league sports.

But it is in its athletes that Connecticut still bears its greatest claim to fame. In baseball, Naugatuck's Frank (Spec) Shea, with the New York Yankees from 1947 to 1951, was the major league's first relief-pitching specialist. Boston Red Sox fans spent seasons cheering Connecticut natives Walt Dropo and Jimmy Piersall. Lindy Remigino was a gold medal winner in the 100-meter dash at the 1952 Helsinki Olympic Games before devoting his life to teaching and coaching at Hartford High School. Golfing great Juluis Boros apprenticed at Connecticut clubs and amateur standout Dick Siderowf combined a successful business career in the state with conquests of the United States and British Amateur championships.

We also watched Dorothy Hammill win Olympic gold in figure skating in 1976 and Calvin Murphy, at less than six-feet tall, prove as a player for twelve years in the NBA that a great basketball player need not be seven-feet tall. Charlie Sticks wrote football history at Trinity College in the 1950s and Nick Pietrosante made it with the professional Detroit Lions. Charlie McCully came from Scotland to Meriden and professional soccer fame in North America, playing fifty-nine NASL games from 1968 to 1975.

Even now a Hartford lad, Marion Starling, is bidding for a world boxing title, while the University of Connecticut has joined one of the most prestigious of all collegiate basketball conferences, the Big East. At the same time, the average fan may be as interested in his or her local high school, softball team, or midweek soccer contest, not to forget the ever-present lure of the outdoors.

For Further Reading

There are few readily available secondary sources. As part of its Bicentennial publications, the Hartford Courant published a number of essays in the November 1, 1964 issue of the Courant Magazine on Hartford sports and on famous Connecticut athletes. Some printed material is available from Yale, and other educational institutions probably have some information about the history of their sports teams.

Otherwise, material on the sporting history of Connecticut must be obtained from primary sources of the state’s newspapers; from the memories of sports writers, athletes, team organizers and promoters; and from such sponsors as clubs, fraternal organizations, and ethnic social clubs.

* Entry under revision.