Baseball League of New England
Unlike many of the other leagues that sprang up in the first decade of the twentieth century, the Baseball League of New England was not a pioneer circuit expanding into an unknown territory. Baseball had always been a Northeastern sport. Teams in Boston, Hartford, and Providence had figured in the major leagues, with varying levels of success, for a decade.
Granted, those towns are all in the more populated and concentrated south of New England, where queenly cities with enough population to keep a baseball team via gate receipts could attract thousands of people for the Dark Blues, the Red Stockings, or the Grays. Throughout much of the north, where timber and stone provided the major drivers, the highest level of competition were company teams.
To the bigwigs of Caribbean baseball, this was an opportunity on which to pounce. Setting up various shell companies through their allies, the Cubans and Puerto Ricans who had just thrown off the American yoke devoted sizable sums of money to establishing franchises across the great woods. When some of the existing major American teams struggled, those same companies swooped in to buy them out, move or rename them, and so sever their link to any baseball history in the United States.
One day, this bit of petty financial trickery would ensure that the BLNE was available when the LNP needed space for its higher-level minor leaguers. In the meantime, however, it also meant that the Northeast played host to an integrated league that played in towns linked only by railroad and riverine traffic.
Northern New England Association
Maine Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- NNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
Not many cities throughout the years have specialized in the manufacture of shoes, but even fewer ones have the unique distinction of playing host to a shoemakers’ strike.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1905, 1906, 1908.
- NNEA pennants: 1906.
- Championships of New England: 1906.
Up the river from Bangor, the North Maine Woods are lovely, dark, and nebulously owned at any given time, which helps maintain their profit margins in the timber industry.
- Wild card berths: 1905.
- Circuit titles: 1907.
- NNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
Halfway between the urban centers of Augusta and Portland, modern Lewiston still boasts the largest numerical Francophone population in the United States.
- Wild card berths: 1908.
- Circuit titles: 1903, 1904.
- NNEA pennants: 1908.
- Championships of New England: 1908.
While Waterville is an important stop on the Maine Central Railroad that connects the state to New England, their team is named after the local wood used for their bats.
New Hampshire Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1903, 1904, 1905.
- NNEA pennants: 1904.
- Championships of New England: None.
Without the innovative Concord coach—a rugged and dependable vehicle for moving goods and people—the United States’ alleged destiny would have remained unmanifest.
- Wild card berths: 1903.
- Circuit titles: 1906, 1907, 1908.
- Association pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
Sometimes, history writes the jokes for us: not only was Derry a center of Scots-Irish settlement, but the very first potato in United States history was panted there.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- NNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
Once upon a time, Manchester did have a number of small-time illegal rackets, but the team name appears to be hyperbolic self-effacement more than anything else.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- NNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
The second-largest city in New Hampshire, Nashua serves as the throughway between the Boston metropolitan area and the northern reaches of New England.
Vermont Circuit
- Wild card berths: 1904, 1906.
- Circuit titles: 1907.
- NNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
Given that it calls itself the Granite Capital of the World, no one is surprised that Barre’s Hope Cemetery is adorned with truly masterful examples of the form.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1905, 1908.
- NNEA pennants: 1905.
- Championships of New England: 1905.
When Jacob Estey began work in a Brattleboro plumbing shop, he could not have imagined the side benefits of his existing expertise with tubular objects.
- Wild card berths: 1907.
- Circuit titles: 1904, 1906.
- NNEA pennants: 1907.
- Championships of New England: 1907.
Thanks both to its position on Lake Champlain and the proximity of various commercial canals, Burlington was at one point a center of lacustrine trade.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1903.
- NNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
Once upon a time, Rutland was one of the world’s leading producers of marble, high-quality deposits of which were found and traded along the Northeastern railroads.
Southern New England Association
Connecticut Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1906, 1907, 1908.
- SNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
Modern New Englanders are gruff realists, but as Griswold resident John Barber would have found out (had he not been dead when he was decapitated) it was not always so.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- SNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
Some teams are named after long-ago legends, others for bygone local industries, and some after historical figures. For the Mystics, there are bridges to honor.
formerly Hartford Dark Blues
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1903, 1904, 1905.
- SNEA pennants: 1905.
- Championships of New England: None.
Neither Whalley nor Goffe nor Dixwell had anything to do with the name “New Haven,” but it is surprisingly apropos that the town hid them all until their deaths.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- SNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
While Stamford does not play host to Yale University, it is an open question whether its own contribution to the Connecticut economy has proven more enduring.
Massachusetts Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1904, 1906.
- SNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
Falmouth itself is a nice Cape Cod town, but nationally, it’s most famous for the outsized contributions its residents have made to oceanography and marine climatology.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: None.
- SNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
Most towns would consider being the basis for a fairly racist short story a sore point that should go unmentioned. Give Newburyport this: they are, as they say, built different.
- Wild card berths: 1906, 1908.
- Circuit titles: 1903, 1905, 1907.
- SNEA pennants: 1907.
- Championships of New England: None.
Even for New Englander team names, this one has proven especially inexplicable. It is generally assumed that Templeton’s team is named after their old watering hole.
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1908.
- SNEA pennants: 1908.
- Championships of New England: None.
To this day, Winchendon is quite proud of their history as an early center of industrial toy production, including everything from simple tops to giant, well, rocking horses.
Rhode Island Circuit
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1907.
- SNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
When Cranston built a stadium in Knightsville, the city’s Italians (many from Itri, where St. Mary’s Feast rules supreme) requested and received naming rights.
- Wild card berths: 1903, 1904, 1907.
- Circuit titles: 1906, 1908.
- SNEA pennants: 1906.
- Championships of New England: None.
Newport’s prosperity owes much to whalers and to its prominent Portuguese Jewish community, but these days whales are more beloved in their own right.
formerly Providence Grays
- Wild card berths: None.
- Circuit titles: 1903, 1904, 1905.
- SNEA pennants: 1903, 1904.
- Championships of New England: 1903, 1904.
Once upon a time, nearly a quarter of American jewelry production took place in Providence—some of it even traveling to regional stores with the local baseball team.
- Wild card berths: 1905.
- Circuit titles: None.
- SNEA pennants: None.
- Championships of New England: None.
The exact Nipmuc etymology of “Woonsocket” is disputed enough that the team’s first sponsors selected the name that had both plausibility and mascotability as advantages.