‘BASEBALL CAPITAL OF THE WORLD’
City’s history on diamond rooted in generations of exceptional players, coaches
STAMFORD — When I was in high school my father told me Stamford was the baseball capital of the world.
I felt an eyebrow go up. “Huh?” I thought.
“You mean because it’s so close to New York City?” I said. He shook his head. “It has nothing to do with New York,” he said. “It has to do with Stamford.”
I said maybe Stamford just seemed like the capital because he played so much baseball growing up on the West Side.
“Nope,” he insisted. “Baseball capital of the world.”
He said it was the case then — I think the year was 1975 — the same as it was when he was a boy in the late 1930s, sharing a glove with his friends and roughing out a baseball diamond in a
field that became Mickey Lione Park.
But now, after more than three decades of reporting for The Advocate, I find out it’s true — Stamford has been a bona fide baseball hub.
It happens
“I’m not sure who came up with ‘baseball capital of the world’ — it was never official,” said Dan Burke, who curated an exhibit on baseball and football for the Stamford History Center. “But there certainly was a lot of good baseball played here. It was really big forever.”
“It was the unofficial title of the city, the one the locals used,” said Tony Pavia, former Stamford High School principal and author of two histories on the city. “There was a culture of baseball based on generations of good players. It happens in certain places — certain sports become very important to a community.”
Stamford History Center researcher Ron Marcus said it would be difficult to come up with criteria for naming a global baseball capital, but in Stamford “It was so in people’s minds.”
That mindset is part of Stamford going back 150 years, Marcus said. Burke found a newspaper account of one of the city’s first games, Stamford vs. Norwalk, in 1865.
Baseball helped fuse Stamford, Marcus said.
“It took off with the vast waves of immigration that began around 1890. Sports was a venue of acceptance for people of different backgrounds,” he said. “My father was about eight when he came to Stamford from Romania, not knowing any English. For the rest of his life he had Stamford friends of virtually all nationalities, because of sports. The attitude was, if you can play ball, you’re in.”
Company teams
Burke’s research shows that Jimmy Giblin, considered the father of city baseball, started the Stamford Baseball Club in 1899.
The Stamford Industrial League was formed in 1916. That was huge, Marcus said.
“Once upon a time, manufacturing was the industry of Stamford, and most companies had a baseball team,” he said. “It was an incredible meeting of people from different neighborhoods and professions, and from mixed educational backgrounds.”
At Machlett Laboratories, once in Springdale, “radiological engineers were on the same team with the guys who swept the floors. They all played ball together,” Marcus said.
In the 1930s, games at Cummings Park drew huge crowds. Among the standouts was Stamford High’s Johnny Scalzi, who broke into the big leagues in 1931, when he signed with the Boston Braves.
In the 1940s, Stamford’s baseball venue was Mitchell Field on Magee Avenue, where spectators filled the 5,000 seats to watch outstanding play.
That’s when Stamford baseball hit its stride, said Bobby Valentine, a Rippowam High School graduate who played in the Major Leagues for 10 years with the Los Angeles Dodgers, California Angels, San Diego Padres, New York Mets and Seattle Mariners, and managed the Texas Rangers, New York Mets and Boston Red Sox.
The coach effect
Some of the city’s star players of the World War II decade, including Mickey Lione Sr., Sharkey Laureno and Eddie Hunt, became stellar coaches in the 1950s, Valentine said.
“They were extra special,” Valentine said. “They gave a darn about Stamford and Stamford youth, and they taught baseball the right way.”
It put Stamford on America’s baseball map. A city team won the Little League World Series in 1951 . City teams won Babe Ruth Baseball championships for 13- to 15-year-olds in 1952, 1953 and 1954. During that decade, Stamford got its own baseball stadium, Cubeta in Scalzi Park.
By the time Valentine started playing Little League in 1960, there were legends to emulate, he said.
“These kids from Stamford were known all around America for playing baseball. The city would have parades down Atlantic Street when they returned from tournaments,” Valentine said. “It became folklore … I was dreaming to be like them.”
His baseball training in Stamford was top-notch, Valentine said.
“The things I was taught in Little League and Babe Ruth League were all the things the guys were taught by the Dodgers and the Angels and the Mets, almost verbatim. It was incredible,” Valentine said. “(Former Dodgers Manager) Tommy Lasorda was saying things that I heard at 12.”
Play all day
In 1968, the year Valentine was drafted by the Dodgers, a Stamford team won the Babe Ruth Baseball championship for 16- to 18-year-olds. A team won again in 1971, when the championship was played in Cubeta Stadium.
Art DeFilippis, who pitched in the Minor Leagues and in Major League spring-training camps from 1970 to 1978, remembers playing in Cubeta Stadium.
“I was in awe of it. I thought, ‘Is this what professional baseball looks like?’ It was so manicured. It was under the lights. It was kind of like a dream,” said DeFilippis, a lefty who pitched on Minor League teams for the Texas Rangers, Cincinnati Reds and Minnesota Twins. “I remember that title, ‘baseball capital of the world,’ was on the scoreboard and banners in the stadium.”
It was warranted, DeFilippis said.
“There were Major League scouts in the stands. We knew they were following us,” he said. “There were so many talented players. We just loved the game and wanted to be the best we could be.”
Steve Buckett remembers the joy of baseball.
“We would play all morning, stop to have a sandwich, then go back and play some more,” Buckett said. “I lived on Seaside Avenue in the Cove. We would walk all the way downtown to Stamford High to play.”
Title is legit
In 1964 Buckett played on a 13-15 Babe Ruth team that competed in the league world series in Woodland, Calif. Valentine was on the team, too.
“It was the first time any of us had been on an airplane — even our parents had not been on an airplane,” Buckett said. “It was something you never forget. The friendships from that team continue today.”
“Baseball capital” is legitimate, Buckett said.
“I was proud to play baseball in Stamford,” he said. Valentine agreed. “I traveled around the country, and when I said I was from Stamford, people knew it was a city that played baseball,” Valentine said. “I thought that was really cool.”
So maybe I should not have raised an eyebrow at the “baseball capital” thing.
Maybe it’s time, four years after my father’s death, to say something he would love to hear: “You were right, Dad. I should have listened to you.”