Tag Archives: Baseball

Institution of the Block C award by the Athletic Advisory Council (p. 260)

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Sweet, ’01, and the manager was J. Ambler Williams, ’01. The first intercollegiate game was with the University of Vermont at Burlington on January 25th which Colgate lost 6 to 8, and the first home game was with Hamilton College February 2nd which Colgate won by a score of 20 to 19. From 1902 to 1905 Walter Runge matched his football accomplishments with those of equal skill on the basketball court. By 1908 enthusiasm for basketball in the winter and spring seemed to equal that for football in the fall.

The fine cinder track facilities of Whitnall Field aroused a new interest in field sports in which Colgate began to excel. The versatile Frank Castleman was as outstanding a sprinter as a football star and set four Colgate records which stood for at least twenty years. In 1903 the team won the New York State Intercollegiate Track Association pennant for the third straight year and in 1904 Castleman and the captain, C. Roy Nasmith, ’04, earned gold and silver medals at the St. Louis World’s Fair.

Baseball seems to have declined in popularity, though good teams represented Colgate, especially in 1900 and 1901. One observer attributed the lack of interest to the competition of other springtime activities such as track, tennis, and final examinations. To these might be added poor baseball weather and Junior Prom.

To recognize excellence in sports, the Block “C” annual award by the Athletic Advisory Council was instituted in 1900. The first recipients were members of the baseball, track and football teams with the latter being entertained at dinner at the President’s home by Dr. and Mrs. Merrill.

O. & W. Depot, Hamilton, N.Y., c. 1910. Colgate University Postcard Collection.
Hamilton Railroad Station c. 1910

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Posted in Chapter 12, p. 260, The Merrill Presidency, 1899-1908, timeline

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First football and track teams (p. 238)

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scholarship and intellectual interests both in the classroom and in their own literary exercises which were still a feature of fraternity life. He saw them also as instruments for supporting high standards of discipline and developing among their members manners, courtesy and gentlemanly conduct.

In athletics, as in fraternity life, Colgate reflected developments to be found in other American colleges. Baseball continued. to attract support; the first track team was organized in 1892; and basketball began as an interclass sport in 1899. But it was the introduction of football, which had been rapidly gaining popularity throughout the country, that marked a radical departure from the old pattern. John W. Peddie, ’94, a freshman who had played the game in preparatory school, is credited with organizing the first team in 1890. It was difficult to find eleven men willing to join in the new game since probably no more than three among all the undergraduates had ever played it before, he recalled nearly 40 years later. The first season two games were scheduled-Hamilton College and St. John’s Military Academy at Manlius. Colgate lost to Hamilton, 14 to 28, a score one spectator interpreted as most encouraging since the losers had little over two weeks’ practice and no “trainer” while their opponents had played all fall and under a coach’s direction. Colgate won the St. John’s game by 14 to 6. The captain was Charles de Woody, student in the Seminary in the Class of 1892.

The 1891 season saw a decided improvement with Colgate winning all five games scheduled. They included the first encounter with Syracuse University with a score of 22 to 16. Contributing in no small measure to the team’s success were the efforts of Samuel Colgate, Jr., the first coach. He had graduated in 1891 from Yale where he had been on a class football team and had come to Colgate that autumn to study in the Seminary. During the 1896 season the team had its first professional coach, Aaron J. Colnon, Cornell, ’93; a training table was provided and athletic tax to defray expenses was introduced.

Control of athletics had rested with the specific teams and their managers and the Athletic Association. In 1893, however, the Association, apparently in a move to re-allocate responsibility, established an Advisory Committee consisting of representatives of faculty, alumni, residents of Hamilton, the three upper classes of the College, and the managers of baseball, football, and track. They were to raise funds,

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Posted in Chapter 11, Colgate in the 1890's, p. 238, timeline

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p. 213 – Student Life, 1869-1890

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dents accustomed to manual labor, as most of them were, many having come from farms, lack of exercise often led to impaired health. An adequate gymnasium, a required physical education program and a competent teacher should be provided, the editors asserted. The faculty and trustees acknowledged the validity of these points but action had to wait until the 1890’s.

To be sure, there was a dilapidated wooden gymnasium, so called, of an earlier time which, despite occasional repairs, was little more than a barn. President Dodge in 1886 became genuinely interested in seeing it replaced with a suitable structure and the undergraduates, themselves, launched subscription campaigns for a building fund which were to bear fruit in 1894.

Madison students, like those in other colleges, believed that physical exercise should be made a pleasurable experience in the form of athletics. In 1880 they formed the Madison University Athletic Association to promote various campus sports and intercollegiate competition. Interest in athletics, however, was intermittent, a condition which critics felt a new gymnasium would remedy.

The most popular of the sports was baseball which had been played on an organized basis since 1863 though support for it had fluctuated. In the 1870’s the players had difficulty in finding a suitable spot for the diamond. One location, north of the present Huntington Gymnasium, was plowed up in the spring of 1875, despite their objections. In retaliation, students made an evening’s escapade of turning the sod back into the furrows and thus ruining the field for immediate replowing and planting. They also put the plow on the roof of Alumni Hall and the harrow on the roof of East Hall, emptied a manure wagon on village gardens and dismembered its parts which they distributed on the village green and the “Ham Fern Sem” grounds.

A revival of interest in baseball occurred in the spring of 1880, seemingly inspired by Henry C. Wright, a senior who was the pitcher and the first student to be designated “captain” of a team of any kind. The recently formed Athletic Association sent delegates to Syracuse to join those from Union, Hamilton, Cornell, Syracuse and Rochester in establishing the New York Intercollegiate Baseball Association. This group worked out an elaborate schedule of thirty games to be played in less than a month which was not a success since many games were canceled. All the members of the Association were criticized for hiring

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Posted in Chapter 10, p. 213, Student Life, 1869-1890

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