Sports

August 26, 2022

Kids Page: Jackie Robinson Changes the Game

Welcome to our page for young readers! Connecticut Explored is turning 20. We’re celebrating game changers. A game changer is a person, event, or idea that changes how we do things or think about something […]
July 13, 2021

The Baseball Playograph

By Gregg Mangan (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2013 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In an era before the Internet, television, or even live radio broadcasts, fans of professional baseball watched re-creations of games around the country […]
September 28, 2020

Connecticut’s Lost Ski Areas

By Diane Pflugrad Foley (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The 10-year-old New England Lost Ski Area Project, or NELSAP (www.nelsap.org), lists 60 spots in Connecticut where people could, at one time […]
September 28, 2020

A Family Affair: The Manchester Road Race

By Christopher Pagliuco (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! The Manchester Road Race, held each Thanksgiving in Manchester, Connecticut, can lay claim to all sorts of historically significant superlatives. First run in […]
September 28, 2020

The McCook Boys Collect Baseball Cards

By Beverly Lucas (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Kids have been collecting baseball cards for nearly as long as baseball has been played professionally. This all-American endeavor is well represented in […]
September 25, 2020

Whaler Mania

By Brian Codagnone (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! June 19, 2006 was a bittersweet day in Hartford. The Carolina Hurricanes, the team that until 1997 had been the Hartford Whalers, won […]
September 23, 2020

How ESPN Came to Bristol

By David Nagle (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! It is hard to imagine that today’s leader in sports entertainment rose from the shadows of South Mountain in sleepy Bristol, Connecticut. That […]
September 23, 2020

Marshall “Major” Taylor & William Fenn: The Fastest Men on Two Wheels

By Bill Pierce (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! Monday, October 5, 1900 was a fair Hartford evening. The intersection of Blue Hills and Albany avenues glittered with the glare of incandescent […]
September 14, 2020

Destination: Ingalls Rink and the Yale Bowl

By Patrick Pinnell (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Fall 2009 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! For structures designed to house athletic events, Yale University’s Ingalls Rink and Yale Bowl have exerted influence beyond the sports arena. Both have […]
August 31, 2020

Cricket Comes to Hartford

By Stan Walker (c) Connecticut Explored, Spring 2003 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! In the collection of the Cricket Hall of Fame, located in Hartford, this photo is of Jerine “Jerry” Thompson (1940 – 1994), one of […]
August 19, 2020

Workers: Play Ball!

By Laura Smith (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Winter 2013-2014 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! All images from the Connecticut Business History Collections at Archives & Special Collections of the UCONN Libraries. READ AS A PDF From baseball games […]
November 2, 2018

The Old Connecticut Game of Wicket

By Alexander Dubois (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2018 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! By the end of the 19th century baseball was quickly becoming a national obsession. Baseball games materialized on every street, field, and patch […]
November 2, 2018

Walter Camp, The Father of American Football

By Warren Goldstein (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2018 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! This story is adapted from Goldstein’s “Walter Camp and the Bureaucratization of the Strenuous Life,” in A Brief History of Sports (with Elliot J. […]
November 2, 2018

African American Greats in Connecticut Baseball

By Steve Thornton (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2018 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! For generations sports writers and novelists have waxed philosophical about how baseball reflects the American spirit and sense of fair play. But our […]
November 2, 2018

Snappy Style from Beacon Falls: The Beacon Falls Rubber Shoe Company

By David Corrigan (c) Connecticut Explored Inc. Summer 2018 Subscribe/Buy the Issue! After Connecticut native Charles Goodyear invented vulcanized rubber and in 1844 patented its manufacturing process, rubber manufacturing companies using the process quickly proliferated, […]
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