Baseball
Baseball
In the early 20th century, Morris County boasted numerous semi-professional sports teams, most notably in baseball. Each played dozens of games each year against teams from the National and Eastern divisions. County residents flocked to watch their favorite teams until the expansion of car ownership among residents made trips to the big leagues in New York and Philadelphia more common.
Baseball Game, Morristown, NJ
Circa 1930, Clyde Potts Video Collection
Home baseball game of the Morristown Athletic Association, taken by Clyde Potts, a civil engineer and longtime resident of Morristown who served as Town Mayor from 1921-1934. Other videos from this collection are available on our website under “Digital Collections”.
John M. McDonnell wearing the standard uniform of the Morristown Colonials before the team battled for leadership in the Lackawanna League against the Springfield Club. On this day, the Colonials tied 5-5 with Springfield and were unable to regain their lead in the second half of the ninth inning due to heavy rain. As one reporter wrote, “the last three innings of the game were somewhat thrilling, lightning played around the field accompanied by tremendous thunder and at the end of the game very few fans were left on the field because of the threatening storm…had the storm broke a little sooner Morristown would have won…[but] the local team was cheated out of their bats in the last frame because of a deluge of rain that swept the field.” (Jerseyman July 26, 1926)
Lou Gehrig, of major league baseball fame, once played in Morristown under the aliases “Lou Long” and “Lou Bush”. As a student athlete at Columbia University, Gehrig was barred from playing in any pro or semi-pro capacity. However, the young Gehrig managed to sneak away to spend the 1922 season playing for the Morristown Colonials at the Collinsville field. In the photo, Lou Gehrig is the third player from the left in the back row.
Lou Gehrig played first base for the Morristown team, as he did later in his career for the New York Yankees. In this game on May 29, 1922, Gehrig hit two home runs, including “the prettiest home circuit clout over the right field fence seen in years”. Known at the time as “the Babe Ruth of the semi-pros”, “Long” was a local sensation and star of the Morristown team.