Pinckneyville native chronicles history of Connecticut ballpark in debut book
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ When names like Babe Ruth, Vince Lombardi, Don Hutson, Warren Spahn or Satchel Paige are spoken in the town of Bristol, CT, chances are a broadcast is going on at the ESPN studios on Middle Street.
However, if you travel just a few short miles to the northwest towards downtown Bristol, in the midst of a ring of tall pine trees that line the outfield wall, you'll come across one of sports' most well-hidden gems as far as ballparks are concerned. It's a place where those legendary athletes, among many other Hall-of-famers and World Champions, have set foot in the past and played the games they love: Muzzy Field.
So many little-known facts about the ballpark itself and about the teams and players that graced it and residents of Bristol with their presence remained unearthed, for the most part, until a Pinckneyville, IL native named Douglas Malan decided to give Muzzy Field the attention it deserved in his 2008 debut book, Muzzy Field: Tales From a Forgotten Ballpark.
Malan, 34, grew up in Pinckneyville and graduated from PCHS in 1994 before getting into journalism and eventually landing a job with ESPN around 2000 working on the Sunday night NFL telecast. The son of Susan and Steve Malan and the grandson of Hugh Malan, Doug and his wife Allison have one son, Alexander (3 yrs.), and are expecting his brother to arrive this October.
"I didn't really know anything about Connecticut outside of that it was the home of ESPN," Malan said of his initial time in the northeast. He is now the managing editor of the Connecticut Law Tribune, which covers the state's legal industry (www.ctlawtribune.com).
"The apartment I moved into was a few blocks away from (Muzzy Field)," Malan continued. "One of those first few nights I was in town, I was trying to figure out where I was living, what was going on around me, that sort of thing, and there happened to be a game (at Muzzy Field) going on one of those nights."
Much like the bright lights of a Friday-night high school football game, the lights of Muzzy Field led the way for Malan to investigate further.
"You can sort of see the lights, they kind of hover up in the sky, it looks pretty cool," he said. "I just started driving towards the lights, and the field kind of opens up as you come upon it, and I remember thinking 'well that's a really beautiful ballpark."
Later on, Malan would hear a story about Babe Ruth playing an exhibition game at that same location back in September of 1919. Ruth reportedly hit a mammoth home run in that contest that is still regarded as one of the farthest-travelling balls ever struck at Muzzy Field, and the first to clear the right field wall. Not only that, but it would be one of Ruth's final appearances in a Red Sox jersey before his trade to the New York Yankees in January, 1920.
"This ballpark is really small, the town isn't all that big, so what was Babe Ruth doing playing this game at Muzzy Field?" Malan asked himself.
It was the search for the answer to that single question that led Malan to an abundance of historical information at the Bristol library, mostly old newspapers from the time period. "This guy at the library pulled out all this stuff about Babe Ruth's appearance in 1919 with the Boston Red Sox ...he started showing me more and more of this history, and I started digging into it deeper and deeper," Malan said. "After two or three months of casually looking into (all of the history of the park), I said 'hey, somebody has to write this down."
Malan did all the work for his book (which he says he began writing around 2003) in his spare time - at night after his day job, and on weekends. With usually only old newspapers with short write-ups, and if he was lucky a box score, Malan started uncovering more and more significant appearances at the old ballpark, commonly featuring a "barnstorming" team consisting of many professionals against a local semipro club in exhibition.
"Barnstorming" in athletics refers to sports teams or individuals that travel to various locations, usually small towns, to stage exhibition matches.
Ruth would make a second appearance with one such team in 1920, after his trade to the Yankees. Martin Dihigo, nicknamed "El Immortal," a legendary Cuban ball player who like Ruth excelled both on the mound and at the plate, paid a visit with the Cuban Stars team in 1925. The Pittsburgh Pirates, the 1925 World Series Champioins, took the field for an exhibition against the local semi-pro team in 1926, a game Malan refers to as the greatest game in Bristol history. Other notable names that followed included Paige, Spahn, Johnny Mize, and even softball great Eddie Feigner and his attraction, "The King and His Court."
The sport of football also had it's share of notable apperances at Muzzy Field, perhaps the most memorable being an exhibition in 1943 between a powerful semipro club called the New London Diesels and the Green Bay Packers, featuring one of the finest wide receivers in the history of football, Don Hutson, and their head coach Curly Lambeau. Lombardi, another legendary coach for the Packers, appeared at Muzzy Field as a player in 1936 along with the rest of Fordham University's team for a benefit game.
"I felt like I needed to (go through everything) in order to make sure I wasn't missing any sort of significant news or person that came to the field, because these games that right now I say, 'man, this is really historically significant.' Well at the time, it wasn't necessarily that big of a deal, it was just another barnstorming team coming through town," Malan pointed out.
"It was through my research that I realized that certain guys were on that team that were incredibly important. But at the time, there wasn't the knowledge of those players, people didn't know who those guys were, and so sometimes the local paper didn't spend a whole lot of time telling you about the visiting team."
In more modern times, Muzzy Field was home to the Bristol Red Sox (Boston's AA affiliate) from 1973-1982 before the team relocated to New Britain, and their lineup saw baseball greats like Jim Rice, Fred Lynn, and Wade Boggs during their decade at the ballpark.
The Big East Athletic Conference also hosted its baseball conference tournament at Muzzy Field from 1985-1995, but that relationship ended when Bristol again lost out to a newer, more modern facility in Thomas J. Dodd Stadium in Norwich.
Today, mostly high school and American Legion level games are played at historic Muzzy Field, which still does not have a tarp to cover the infield with in case of rain.
"The game has changed with how you market the team," Malan said. "Accesibility to the stadium is an important issue, that ballpark is an old-time ballpark set right off of downtown, it's not like you can just take the interstate and boom, you're there. You have to get off the highway and navigate through two-way streets, and the parking isn't great, it's pretty restricted."
None of that can erase the history that took place at Muzzy Field, which is one year older than Chicago's Wrigley Field and one year newer than Boston's Fenway Park.
"It's been in existence for almost 100 years and it's really unchanged, and that's what's cool about it" said Malan. "You can go there now and sort of walk out to the same area where all these guys played baseball and football back in the day."
Muzzy Field: Tales From a Forgotten Ballpark is filled with stories and statistics sure to keep the sports enthusiast entertained and leave them well-informed on the history of one of America's oldest ballparks. The book, which was a finalist for the 2009 ForeWord Book of the Year Award, is available at most retailers like Barnes & Noble and Borders, or online at websites such as amazon.com.