Vintage Baseball Comes Back to the Rock Ledge Ranch on Labor Day.
For over a century, baseball has been a popular sport in Colorado Springs and across the state. In fact, at one point, there were several baseball teams across Colorado and even smaller cities such as Cripple Creek and Victor had teams and fields where games were played.
America’s Favorite Pastime
The game that is known as America’s favorite pastime still exists locally, but it is not nearly as popular as it once was. According to Roger Hadix, the author of “Baseball in Colorado Springs: Images of Baseball,” the reason for the sport’s decline in local popularity is mainly due to timing.
“You didn’t have the competition with the other sports as you do now,” Hadix explained. “When baseball progressed, college football was around in the late 1800s, but the NFL and professional football didn’t come around until the 1930s. And same thing with basketball, it didn’t develop until much later when they started getting organized. They could all owe the success in their organizations from looking at how the baseball leagues operated. The National League was started extensively in 1876 while the American League started in 1901.”
Hadix said that the first organized baseball games started in the 1860s. During that time the only other sports were boxing and rodeo, and there were no other team sports around.
Even more recently, the decline in popularity of local baseball can be attributed to the restructuring of the team. The Colorado Springs Sky Sox at one time were a local favorite when they were the Triple-A farm team for the Colorado Rockies. Fans would go to games to see which players would be moved up to Denver and play in the major leagues.
But when the Rockies decided to make the Albuquerque Isotopes their Triple-A farm team in 2015, their fan based dropped. Then in 2018 the Milwaukee Brewers moved the Sky Sox to San Antonio due to Colorado Springs having a high altitude and it not being close enough to a major airport. Therefore, the city lost their Triple-A team and gained a rookie league team, which also decreased its fan base.
The History of Vintage Baseball in Colorado Springs
According to Hadix’s book, the first word of Colorado Springs getting an organized baseball team came in the Colorado Springs Gazette in 1873, where it was reported that a team was coming to the city. The next year, the IXL Club sponsored by the IXL Creamery was the first named and organized team to play ball in the Pikes Peak Region.
Then in 1880, General William Jackson Palmer, who founded the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad and the City of Colorado Springs, was part of an effort to establish a state league. The Denver & Rio Grande Reds (aka Colorado Springs Reds) played teams from Denver and Leadville.
After the turn of the century, the Colorado Springs Baseball Club known in the newspapers as the “Millionaires” was the first professional baseball team in the city. The Millionaires played from 1901 to 1905 and then had one more season in 1916.
After that, a Colorado Springs Millionaire player Burt Jones ran a city league that lasted through the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. In the 1940s, the city even had a black semipro team called the Brown Bombers.
According to a post on the Colorado Springs Pioneer Museum website, in 1950, professional baseball returned to the city when the Sky Sox were formed as a Class-A minor league affiliate team for the Chicago White Sox. However, the team only lasted until 1958 and then there were almost 30 years with no professional team in the city.
Then in 1987, the owners of the Pacific Coast League affiliate the Hawaii Islanders decided to move to the mainland. The team took on the name of the Sky Sox and they played half of their first season where the older team played at Memorial Park before the stadium on the east side of the city was built.
The Sky Sox played as a farm team for the Cleveland Indians until 1993 when they signed a partnership with the Colorado Rockies. Then in 2015, the Rockies made the decision to use the Albuquerque Isotopes as their AAA affiliate team instead.
The Rocky Mountain Vibes
The Sky Sox continued as an AAA team for the Milwaukee Brewers until after the 2018 season when they made the decision to move the team to San Antonio. In 2019, the Helena Brewers (part of the Pioneer league) relocated to Colorado Springs and took on the name The Rocky Mountain Vibes.
In 2019, the Vibes played in the Pioneer league with players straight out of high school. They took the year off in 2020 for the pandemic and then the MLB restructured its league and the Vibes now play in an MLB Partnership league.
This season after the league restructured, the Vibes made a partnership to be the farm team for the Acereros de Monclova, which is a team in the Mexican Baseball League. “We are beyond excited to begin a historic, and what we all hope to be a very long, affiliation and relationship with the Acereros de Monclova,” Chris Jones, President of the Rocky Mountain Vibes said at the beginning of the year. “Big thanks to Jose Melendez with the Acereros, the Elmore Sports Group and the great Colorado Springs community. !Nos vemos en el estadio de béisbol esta primavera!”
Vintage Baseball League Preserves the Sport’s History
Every summer the Colorado Vintage Base Ball Association, holds games that play based upon the original rules of the sport written in 1864. The league uses bigger balls and smaller bats that can be any shape. Players dress in clothes that would have been worn in the 1800s and they are all given nicknames.
The players on the vintage baseball team range from old to young and male or female. People who play the old rules of the sport have a passion for baseball and love the game how it was once played. The league is always looking for new players and it is open to anyone who is interested.
According to Hadix, he wrote the book about local baseball to help preserve the sport’s past.
“For me I like to say that it’s hard to appreciate what’s going on now if you don’t know where it has come from,” Hadix said. “You look at how it developed and then you can see how it has progressed and can say these guys are all stars. You have a nice picture of here is how it started and here is how it has changed and it will probably continue to change in the future. But if you don’t realize where it came from then you don’t have that better understanding.”
After taking a year off due to the pandemic the Labor Day Vintage Baseball Game is back at the Rock Ledge Ranch Historic site. The first pitch is at 1 p.m. on Sept. 6.
[…] Baseball has been popular in the Pikes Peak Region for over a century. The city has sported several teams through the years, though many have come and gone. […]