Just Someone’s Old, Worn Out Pasture

1874 had been a banner year for “Base Ball” in the small river town of Saugerties, New York. The local newspaper accounts told often ball clubs from the central village and surrounding rural hamlets, playing “matches” among themselves and against opponents from as far distant as 70 miles. That excursion, a significant trip in those times, was undertaken by the Sunny Sides of Sing Sing, who made the day worthwhile by playing (and losing) a split double­header against two different local teams. Lost in the mists of time is whether the Sunny Sides was a team of guards from Sing Sing Prison, whose warden was from Saugerties, or simply represented the town, that being its name rather than the present Ossining.

Indeed, since the game had tested the Knickerbocker Rules at Hoboken’s Elysian Field in 1846, it had quickly spread the 100 miles up the Hudson, and by 1860 Saugerties was rooting for its first organized baseball club, the Ulsters. Yet despite having a history here, the intense diamond activity in the Summer of ’74 was such as to inspire Edward Jernegan, editor of the Saugerties Telegraph, to pen an editorial in the September 18, 1874, issue which cloaked the diamond sport with a virtual quasi-reli­gious aura. The emotional prose went like this:

The game of baseball has been a rage in Saugerties during the past season as, indeed, it has been throughout the country. During the day time, in the.fierce July and August suns, our middle-aged men, our young men and boys of tender years have practiced the manly game; and at even-tide when, in a village like ours, the laboring man, the man of business and the professor assemble in sociable knots on the streets, the favorite subject for discussion has been the base ball game. It is a grand old sport, savoring of the athletic games of Ancient Greece. It does a good thing for our middle-aged men, bringing back fresh to their memo­ries the days of youth, making them young again and lifting for a time, if not permanently, the cares which necessarily attend their business or profession. It does a better thing for our young men, making them strong and manly, and taking from them the desire to prac­tice other games which, with their associations, tend to weaken their intellects, destroy their bodies and waste their souls.

It took, however, little time to become quite clear that the editor’s view of “the grand old game” (of 28 years’ vintage) was not shared by all of the township’s residents. That revelation came about when a group came together in October of ’74 to organize a new and superior ball club to represent the town. These were obviously baseball purists who preferred quality to quantity, their goal being a “first class ball club” in the tradition of teams of the past which had been recognized as “Champions of the Hudson River” by no less than the baseball Bible of the time, the New York Clipper. It would seem implicit in their planning that they were not at all impressed with the past summer’s “quantity” of ten ball teams in town, the best of which being endowed with dubious diamond skills.

The innovators christened their creation with the storied name of past glories, that of both the 1860 Ulsters and a later organization of the same name that came into existence in 1869, filling the baseball void brought about by the Civil War. The new group agreed at their very first meeting that a “first class base ball club” required “a ground suitable for playing on.” Thus, a committee of three was appointed for the pur­pose of solving this need and went about their assignment with both speed and vigor. It was, however, the contacts made in this pursuit that brought to light the fact that not everyone embraced The Game with the same ardor as the newspaper editor. The committee’s report was published in the Telegraph’s December 4, 1874, issue and, permeated with chagrin, read:

To the Chairman, Saugerties B.B.C.:

Sir, Having been appointed a committee to pro­ cure suitable grounds for the use of a Baseball Club, we submit the following report, via: We have applied to different persons with unvarying (lack of) success. We found a number of suitable grounds but no disposition on the part of the owners to hire them on any consideration whatsoever, although they were offered more than their land was worth to them for farming purposes. We were told that baseball playing was wicked, hence we conclude that the spirit of the age is too moral for the game, or that when men grow old they out-grow an appreci­ation for the manly games of their youth, when they are no longer able to participate in them. Although our efforts have been in part a failure, we think our wants might be laid before the public by advertis­ing, as it is not generally known that we boys have been trying for more than ten years to beg the privi­lege of playing ball on somebody’s old worn out pas­ture field and paying well for it at that; we therefore suggest that the Association advertise in the Saugerties Telegraph for a man with public spirit enough to furnish the five hundred ball players of Saugerties with a ball ground at a reasonable price.

s. Mynderse Freligh
Frank Pidgeon, Jr.
John C. Davis

Despite the committee’s discouraging experience, the playing field problem was solved by the spring of 1875. Ironically, that was largely due to the apparent failure of a harness racing facility on the southeast edge of town named the Glasco Driving Park. Newly constructed and commencing business with its Fall Meeting on October 10, 1874, after this initial compe­tition, racing results never again gained mention in the Telegraph. Instead, for the next couple years, the Ulsters and other local ball clubs were reported as playing their matches on the site. It appears likely, however, that by 1877 the driving park owner had put his land to another use, as for the next eight years the ballgames were reported as taking place at a variety of locations, all of which seemed to be makeshift.

But at long last the problem with which the 1874 Ulsters committee had wrestled, and which they bemoaned had existed for a decade prior, was solved in the fall of 1884. The September 11, 1884, issue of the Telegraph reported an enthusiastic organizational meeting at which the Saugerties Driving Park Association was founded with the goal of securing grounds for a “trotting course, base ball park, fair grounds, etc.” The very next edition told of speedy progress, namely the leasing of a 15-acre “piece of ground from Captain Finger” on the northeast edge of town. Just a week later came news of the “dire speed” with which the half-mile track was being constructed, and by the second week in November the Telegraph announced that “people are pleasure-driving” on the track.

In the midst of the construction a prophetic line appeared in the newspaper which stated, “The owners anticipate a great deal of pleasure to our people in dif­ferent ways on their park in the next season.” By the spring of 1885, the old committee of Freligh, Pidgeon, and Davis must have been wearing broad smiles as the first baseball game took place on the site.

As the years passed by, trotting races disappeared, the plot underwent changes of ownership, and its name evolved from the Driving Park to Shults’ Park to the Athletic Field, but the ball games continued and newer sports utilized the grounds. There was even professional baseball on the site from 1903 thru 1905 as Saugerties had an entry in the Class C Hudson River League. By 1934 it was owned by the father and son duo of Martin and Holley Cantine. Both had been catchers in their youth, and Martin had played on the very first ball club to use the grounds. Their paper mill was a major employer in the town, and as early as 1911, Martin had been described in a publication as “one of the most public-spirited men of our village.” This rep­utation was surely reinforced when, in impressive cer­emonies in November 1934, they deeded and donated to the town what was then officially called Cantine Memorial Field.

There were ceremonies also on May 8, 1938, to cele­brate considerable improvements to the facility result­ing from a WPA project. In 1967, the town purchased a large field adjoining it on the west, thereby doubling the park’s size. As time went on and athletic programs multiplied, dedicated volunteers added additional facilities, and yet another ceremony was held on May 13, 1979, to mark further enhancements to the grounds, accomplished by $200,000 in government grants. In 1991, the town took out of its checkbook once again and acquired a sizable plot adjoining it on the north. The result was another doubling of the park’s acreage.

One cannot view the present facilities without thinking of the Messieurs Freligh, Pidgeon and Davis and their search for just “somebody’s old worn out pasture” in order to allow Saugerties’ 500 ballplayers to do their thing. The trio would now be viewing a complex that could and often does accommodate 500 athletes all cavorting at the same time. And then there was the Driving Park Association’s thought that their venture would afford “great pleasure to our people in different ways.” The ways in which the people of Saugerties now derive pleasure at the expanded grounds of the Driving Park are via 11 baseball, softball, and Little League diamonds (five lighted), four soccer fields (one lighted), four lighted tennis courts, three basketball courts, four pavilions, three playgrounds with a children’s pool at one, a band stage, two sets of horseshoe pits, and the latest addi­tion, an indoor ice arena that accommodates both youth and adult hockey leagues as well as open peri­ods for public use. Nor has the “fair grounds” aspect vanished. Thousands visit the grounds for the annual 4th of July celebration, and some 30,000 attend the Annual Garlic Festival on the last weekend in September.

It would indeed appear that the negative attitude toward sports encountered by the 1874 Ulsters ball­ field committee has mellowed with the passage of the decades. It might, in fact, be near impossible to find a soul in Saugerties these days who would assert “that base ball playing was wicked.”

JACK KEELEY, a retired parole supervisor, is one of three Cub fans in Saugerties, New York. He dotes on local baseball history and those bygone years when the Cubs won games.