After eleven innings, the home team had captured the Middlesex County League championship! "Pandemonium" broke out when Concord scored the winning run, the paper reported. "Auto horns, yells, whistles, shrieks, hats in the air, handshakes, and hugs" all manifested "delirious joy."

Intertown semipro baseball games drew thousands of loyal spectators to Emerson Playground on weekday evenings and Saturdays. "If it rained, the whole town went into mourning because everyone looked forward to the Saturday games," said Brick MacWilliams, an avid fan. He described how the ladies would "bring their camp stools and parasols and line up on the base lines." A band played, and, for some games, mounted police were present.

Baseball fever had first infected Concord shortly after the Civil War and raged for decades stretching into the twentieth century. The names of the leagues shifted with time, as did names of players, but enthusiasm never flagged. On occasion, Concord men played with big-leaguers. A local team representative would travel to Fenway Park to see whether the Red Sox or the opposing team had pitchers or catchers who weren't scheduled to play. For $100, future Hall-of-Famers such as Tris Speaker, Harry Hopper, and Ty Cobb came out to Concord to contribute their talents to the team's efforts.

Apart from the semipro games, teams organized by neighborhoods or church affiliation faced each other. Players in the Asparagus League had no uniforms, just identifying caps. Their teams had names such as the Depot, Sleepy Hollow, Hubbardville, and Holy Name Society of St. Bernard's, and admission to their games was free. Men like Terry McHugh, one of the stars of Concord's semipro town team in the 1926 season later switched to playing on this league and stayed with the sport until he was nearly fifty.

Love for the Great American Pastime naturally extended to the major leagues. To hear almost up-to-the-minute Red Sox scores, folks gathered at the railroad station. "If the telegrapher wasn't too busy taking instructions for the trains," explained Archie Ferran, "we would get the scores by the innings and [learn] what happened." The information was behind two or three innings, but that was better than waiting until the next day's newspaper story, he added. The biggest crowds descended on the depot for the World Series games when one can only hope the trains stopped running so that play-by-play accounts could be passed along as quickly as telegraphy allowed.

Photos: Courtesy of Art Today
Backgrounds: Hometown Websmith.