The Hartfords (more commonly called the Hartford Dark Blues because of their uniform color) were a 19th-century

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding t ...

team. The team was based in

Hartford, Connecticut Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since t ...

History

In 1874, baseball in

Hartford, CT Hartford is the capital city of the U.S. state of Connecticut. It was the seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960. It is the core city in the Greater Hartford metropolitan area. Census estimates since t ...

was being played in a fever pitch. As talk of forming a national professional league was going on, Morgan Bulkeley, Gershon Hubbell and Middletown native Ben Douglas Jr. leased land from Elizabeth Colt to build a base ball field and stadium with a covered grandstand, and set about forming a team, The Hartfords. Located on the corner of Wyllys and Hendrixsen Streets next to the Church of the Good Shepherd, the Hartford Ball Club Grounds was the finest in the country and saw the team come in second to Chicago in base ball's first professional year, 1876. That team that was led by Captain Bob Ferguson and was rounded out by pitchers Candy Cummings (purported inventor of the curve ball), Tommy Bond (the only pitcher in baseball history to have three 40-game winning years in a row), Tom Carey,

Everett Mills Everett Mills (January 20, 1845 – June 22, 1908) was an American Major League Baseball player from Newark, New Jersey. He played in all five seasons of the National Association of Professional Baseball Players, National Association (&ndas ...

Bill Harbridge William Arthur Harbridge (March 29, 1855 – March 17, 1924), also known as "Yaller Bill", was a Major League Baseball player who split his playing time between catcher and in the outfield for five different teams during his nine-season career ...

, Tom York, Dick Higham, Jack Burdock,

Jack Remsen John Jay "Jack" Remsen (April, 1850 – After 1884), was an American Major League Baseball player who played mainly in center field for eight teams in nine seasons, from 1872 to 1884. He played for the Brooklyn Atlantics, New York Mutuals, ...

and Doug Allison. The Hartford Dark Blues were a member of the

National Association of Professional Base Ball Players The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), often known simply as the National Association (NA), was the first fully- professional sports league in baseball. The NA was founded in 1871 and continued through the 1875 se ...

in 1874 and 1875 and the

National League The National League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the National League (NL), is the older of two leagues constituting Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, and the world's oldest extant professional team s ...

in 1876 and 1877. In 1877 the team played in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

as the Brooklyn Hartfords. Playing at the Hartford Ball Club Grounds, in 1876 they joined the

as a charter member. The team's owner, Morgan G. Bulkeley, was also the first president of the National League. Managed by their third baseman, Bob Ferguson, the Dark Blues went on to finish third in 1876 with a record of 47–21. Hartford Dark Blues by Prescott & White, 1875

Hartford Dark Blues by Prescott & White, 1875

The team's strong suit was pitching, with both Tommy Bond and future Hall of Famer Candy Cummings finishing with an

earned run average In baseball statistics, earned run average (ERA) is the average of earned runs allowed by a pitcher per nine innings pitched (i.e. the traditional length of a game). It is determined by dividing the number of earned runs allowed by the numb ...

under 2. The pitching staff recorded the most complete games (69) and allowed the lowest number of home runs throughout the 70-game 1876 campaign (the Philadelphia Athletics also accomplished this feat that season). The team's best hitter was right fielder Dick Higham, who led the team in most offensive categories. The team left Hartford and moved to

for the 1877 season to become the Brooklyn Hartfords. Managed again by Ferguson, the team finished in third again, with a record of 31–27. With Bond, Cummings and Higham all having left the team, the team's best player this year was undoubtedly right fielder John Cassidy, who batted .378 and also led the team in many other categories. The team disbanded after the 1877 season and was replaced in the league with the Providence Grays. Author

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by his pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, entrepreneur, publisher, and lecturer. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has pr ...

was a fan of the team.Burton, Rick
"Australia, Baseball's Diamond in Rough"
''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', 09 March 2014. Retrieved on 14 March 2014.

Notable alumni

* Lipman Pike, major league baseball; first Jewish base ball player; home run champion * Tom Barlow, pioneer of the bunt, suffered from morphine addiction, mentioned in Ken Burns' Baseball * Joe Start, a 27-year veteran who spanned the pre-professional to the professional era, and is credited with developing off-bag positioning of the first baseman

Baseball Hall of Famers

External links

Major League Baseball in Gilded Age Connecticut: The Rise and Fall of the Middletown, New Haven and Hartford Clubs
(Complete history of Hartford Dark Blues)
Team index page
at Baseball Reference

by David Arcidiacono (''Hog River Journal'' 2003)
Hartford Dark Blues Vintage Base Ball Club

Bibliography

*Arcidiacono, David (2003) ''Grace, Grit and Growling: The Hartford Dark Blues Base Ball Club, 1874–1877''

References