The Cumberland Colts Baseball Team
As the baseball game drew to a close on the afternoon of August 27, 1917, the Frederick (Md.) Hustlers had managed to pull away from the Cumberland (Md.) Colts due to some questionable calls by the umpire. After the Hustlers pitcher Bill King allowed only eight hits, the final score was 5-3.
The Cumberland fans weren’t happy.
“Almost 2,000 Cumberland rooters rushed to the field after the game was over to get a carck at the ump, but the Queen City police force was on the job and the crowd was kept back. League President J. V. Jamison was present at the game and it was through his efforts that the umpire was seen safely back to the city. He escorted the ump to his automobile and took him to a place he could rest peacefully,” the Frederick Post reported.
This was the early days of professional baseball in Allegany County when the county had not one, but three professional baseball teams that fans could turn out to cheer on.
The Potomac League
Fuller Barnard, Jr.
Fuller Barnard, Jr. was a Cumberland lawyer and a big baseball fan. He formed the Potomac League in 1916. This was a Class D professional baseball.
“It was entry level baseball,” says Robert Savitt, author of The Blue Ridge League and a Myersville resident. “Even though the players got paid, they still needed to have other jobs.”
The league was composed of four teams – the Cumberland Colts, the Frostburg (Md.) Demons, the Lonaconing (Md.) Giants and the Piedmont (W. Va.) Drybugs. Though the Drybugs were technically a West Virginia team, they played their games on Potomac Field in Westernport, Md.
Unfortunately, the league struggled from the start. The Giants disbanded in July after having played only 44 games. The Demons quit the league in August due to financial problems. With only two teams left, the Potomac League was forced to disband as well.
“At the time the league stopped, Frostburg was leading in the standings with a 33-25 record, six games ahead of 2nd place, Piedmont (26-30). Cumberland was 23-35,” according to Baseball-Reference.com.
Although Allegany County’s own professional baseball league had folded, opportunities still existed for the teams to play professional baseball.
The Blue Ridge League
Further east, in Washington County, Charles Boyer, a former president of the South Atlantic League, had moved back to the Hagerstown area in 1914. He watched the town teams playing against each other and saw that there was talent among the players that deserved to be rewarded.
He had purchased the Hagerstown team and set to work forming a new baseball league that would soon be named the Blue Ridge League. It was made up of six teams from Maryland, West Virginia, and Pennsylvania.
The league started playing in 1915 and was subject to the same financial pressures that had faced the Potomac League. However, as teams dropped out, other teams found a home in the league, which allowed it to continue.
When the Chambersburg (Pa.) Maroons quit the league, the Colts sought to replace them. “One of the sticking points in Cumberland’s efforts to join the Blue Ridge League was its desire to schedule games on Sundays to attract fans,” Savitt wrote in The Blue Ridge League. The team finally was able to enter the league in 1917 when it agreed to take over the debt of the Maroons.
“Until Cumberland came on, no one played Sunday in baseball in the Blue Ridge League,” said Mark Ziegler, who runs the website, BlueRidgeLeague.org.
Game card showing a match-up between the Cumberland Colts and Piedmont Drybugs
Sunday games were controversial and outside of Allegany County, there were incidents where the police would arrest the players before a Sunday game for violating the community’s Blue Laws. They were usually taken into the nearest police station and booked. Then when the police released the players, they returned to the field to play the game.
The Drybugs also entered the Blue Ridge League the following year in 1918, though by this time they recognized their affiliation with Allegany County and were called the Piedmont-Westernport Drybugs.
However, the Blue Ridge League faced two major problems in 1918. The World War I draft continued to make soldiers of many of the players, making it hard to field a team. In addition, the Spanish Flu sickened and sometimes killed both players and fans. The Drybugs’ official scorer, Walter Biggs was one of the flu’s many fatalities, according to Savitt. Because of these problems, the Blue Ridge League’s 1918 season ended after only three weeks.
Though league play would resume in 1920, neither Allegany County team would be a part of it.
The Middle Atlantic League
While the Drybugs disbanded after 1918, the Colts actually took a step up in its professional status by joining the newly formed Middle Atlantic League, a Class C professional baseball league in 1925.
The Colts thrived in the Middle Atlantic League and were the league champs in 1927 and 1928.
Once the Blue Ridge League resumed its play, it pioneered a couple of changes that affected the Colts in the Middle Atlantic League.
“The Blue Ridge League was a pioneer league in the formulation of the farm system,” Savitt said.
As Major League teams recognized the opportunity to develop future Major League talent by buying lower-class teams, the Colts eventually became a farm team of the New York Yankees. This allowed Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to come to Cumberland in 1932 as part of an exhibition game between the Colts and Yankees.
The Blue Ridge League was also one of the first leagues to introduce night games, but the Middle Atlantic League added them shortly thereafter.
Cumberland’s first night game was played at Community Baseball Park on August 4, 1930. Not only was it the introduction of night play, but the Williams Piano and Furniture Company supplied broadcasting equipment “for the broadcasting of music with special microphone attachment for the speakers and amplifiers that will make the music and announcements audible all over the park,” according to the Cumberland Evening Times.
Though the Middle Atlantic League continued until 1951, the Cumberland Colts left in 1932 and the era of professional baseball in Allegany County ended as well, though fan enthusiasm continues just as strongly today.
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Time Will Tell 