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Weathervane Newsletter Summer 2002
The Hurrah Game captures glory that was Hamp Baseball PART II
"The Hurrah Game" is laced with great expressions like that, the fruit of sports- writing's storied excesses. The touring team of the House of David, a Michigan Christian sect that wore long beards, was described at the time as "barberless pill smackers." Pill, of course, was a nickname for the ball.
Nothing sears things in the public mind like a public loss. The phrase, "Brattleboro finish" came to mean an opponent's late-innings rally for years. Turner and Bowman, while keeping their focus on Northampton rosters, chronicle the times when big league teams came to play exhibitions. They detour briefly into the sensational story of catcher Marty Bergen, who murdered his wife and two children in North Brookfield in 1900, seven years after playing in Northampton. They cite examples of odd behavior he'd shown back then.
While most anecdotes have local history's quaint ring, the authors do devote space to a Meadowlarks' manager's decision in 1913 not to take the field against a Bellows Falls, Vt., team with a black pitcher -- a move that a Gazette account tacitly defended. The authors describe the outwardly racist attitudes held by some.
"The Hurrah Game" blends the accessibility of a scrap book with the intimacy of a long lost ancestor's letter. A big story about games and sheer getting-by nestles between its lines. "The Hurrah Game" is available at local bookstores and at Historic Northampton for $12.95.
Contents Historic Northampton.