Baseball in Colorado Springs

From Boulevard Park and Memorial Field to Security Service Field (formerly Sky Sox Stadium), Colorado Springs is a baseball town. Professional baseball arrived in 1901; the Brown Bombers, a semiprofessional black team, came in the 1940’s; and the original Sky Sox won the Western League Championship in 1953, 1955 and 1958. Local players such as Ed Kent, Bill Everitt, Jim Landis, Sam Hairston, Connie Johnson, Vinny Costilla, and Todd Helton have made it to the major leagues. Rich “Goose” Gossage, a Colorado Springs native, went directly from Class A ball to the Chicago White Sox, starting his hall-of-fame career in 1972.

Colorado Springs sports historian and author Roger P. Hadix has collected rare photographs from each decade of the late 19th and 20th centuries, chronicling the national pastime as played throughout the Pikes Peak region. For the past 19 years, Hadix, has also lived the history by playing vintage baseball with the Colorado Vintage Base Ball Association.