City's rich baseball past

Big leaguers have come from Denver since late 1800s

Kevin Vaughan And Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News

Published October 20, 2007 at midnight

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Major League Baseball may have been late in coming to Denver, but Denver was not late in coming to baseball.

Long before the Colorado Rockies or this year's late-season run to the World Series, fans were turning out to see future Hall of Famers - and baseball history - on the city's ball fields.

Denver was where Joe Tinker played before becoming part of the most famous double-play team of all time. Where Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig barnstormed in the 1920s with teams composed of local players. Where guys with names like LaSorda and Herzog got their careers going, and Billy Martin made his management debut.

"It was a great baseball town," said Arvada mortgage broker Jay Sanford, a historian of the national pastime.

22 early big leaguers

The first recorded game in Denver occurred in 1862, and among the players in it were brothers who started Porter Memorial Hospital, a sheriff, a future mayor and a future senator.

Through the 1870s, the sport grew and spread. It was played in the mountain mining camps and in the small towns on the plains.

Those early teams didn't even have nicknames. Their monikers were given by sportswriters in other towns. At one point, the Colorado Springs paper referred to Denver's team as the Giants.

And Colorado produced an astonishing 22 big leaguers during the late 1800s.

One of those was George "White Wings" Tebeau, who played on Denver's Western League team, known as the Mountain Lions, and won a pennant. The following year, on April 16, 1887, Tebeau made his big league debut with the Cincinnati Red Stockings and promptly hit a home run in his first major league at-bat.

Another was Hall of Fame player John "Bid" McPhee.

Howsams build stadium

In the 1890s, baseball languished as a depression gripped the region, and no organized teams existed.

Then, in 1900, Tebeau was back in Denver, starting a team that some called the Grizzlies and others called the Bears. The Bears name would stick.

A 20-year-old on that team was Joe Tinker, who two years later teamed with Johnny Evers and Frank Chance in Chicago to form the famous Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance double-play team for the Cubs.

The Bears played until 1917, then prowled again from the end of World War I to 1932. After 1932, Denver's baseball fortunes languished for a time.

In 1947, the Bears returned as part of the revived Western League. They played that first season at Merchants Park along South Broadway, just north of present-day Interstate 25.

"I called it splinter haven," said Bob Howsam, who, along with other members of his family, owned the team at the time. "It had been a fine park at one time, but it had gotten old and all the wood had splintered," he said from his home in Sun City, Ariz.

So the Howsams built a new, 16,000-seat Bears Stadium in west Denver. The Bears moved in in August 1948, and among those who played there were a young pitcher named Tom LaSorda; a young outfielder named Dorrel Norman Elvert Herzog, who acquired the nickname "Whitey"; and a young first baseman named Marv Throneberry, who went on to be "Marvelous."

'You never give it up'

In 1984, the Bears became the Zephyrs, and after the 1992 season, the team left for New Orleans to make way for the Colorado Rockies in 1993.

And now the Colorado Rockies are the toast of the town.

Bob Howsam is 89. He doesn't come to Colorado anymore because of health problems.

He's got an impressive resume. He was one of the men who started the American Football League. He served as general manager of a St. Louis Cardinals team that won a World Series in 1964 and spent a decade as the general manager of the Cincinnati Reds.

But even with all that in his background, he loves what he is seeing out of the Rockies.

"Once you have baseball in your blood, quite frankly, you never give it up," he said.

Kinda like Denver.

A strong tradition

• 1862: The first recorded baseball game in Denver is played. Games are often played in a ballpark at Broadway and Colfax - the area now home to the RTD bus station - known as Broadway Grounds.

• 1886: The Denvers join the Western League and promptly win a minor-league pennant.

• April 28, 1922: The Denver Bears' opening day in Merchants Park.

• Oct. 19, 1927: Babe Ruth leads a team, the Bustin Babes, against Lou Gehrig's Larripin Lous in an exhibition game at Merchants Park.

• 1947: The Bears professional baseball team is revived with help from Sen. "Big Ed" Johnson.

• Aug. 14, 1948: Bears Stadium opens near West 17th Avenue and Federal Blvd.

• 1968: Bears Stadium is expanded and renamed Mile High Stadium.

• 1984: The Bears become the Denver Zephyrs.

• July 5, 1991: Major League Baseball owners approve Denver and Miami as the locations for two expansion teams.

• April 9, 1993: 80,227 jam Mile High Stadium to watch the Colorado Rockies.

• Oct. 3, 1995: The Rockies reach the playoffs for the first time.Sources: Colorado Rockies, Rocky Mountain News Archives, Jay Sanford, Milb.Com, Bob Howsam, Places Around The Bases, By Diane Bakke ...

vaughank@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5019

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