Sox were Springfield’s pulse for decades

Hugh Putnam has written and published a book about the Springfield Blue Sox baseball team that played in Springfield from 1925 to 1966.
http://rutlandherald.com/article/20140626/SPORTS02/706269906

Published June 26, 2014 in the Rutland Herald Sox were Springfield’s pulse for decades By Tom Haley STAFF WRITER Andy Bladyka was sorting through old blueprints in the Springfield Community House a few years ago. One really grabbed the attention of the town’s Director of Parks. It was a drawing of the 1934 grandstand that used to be packed by about 2,000 fans during the halcyon days of local baseball in the community. It was a vestige of a time when the Springfield Blue Sox were a focal point of the town. It was an exciting discovery for Bladyka. “It opened my eyes. I thought it was pretty interesting,” Bladyka said. “I shared it with some people like Hugh Putnam and Richie Wyman.” Wyman is the former legendary Springfield High School baseball and basketball coach. Finding the blueprint was a special moment for Bladyka, but Putnam, a 1960 Springfield High School graduate, was about to experience a lot of thrilling moments. Putnam was writing a book about the Springfield Blue Sox and it turned out to be a one whale of a ride. His wife Bunny writes historical pieces for the weekly Springfield Reporter. She found a team photo of the Blue Sox and asked her husband to provide some information for a caption. The more he researched the more intrigued he became about this team. Soon, a photo caption grew into a 217-page book in 2011 with another printing in 2012. The book has photos and that architectural rendering of the grandstand that Bladyka plucked from the discarded blueprints. But mostly it is packed with colorful game accounts and anecdotes about a team that was the pride of Springfiield. The Blue Sox began in 1925 and its last season was 1944 when Putnam was 3 years old so he has no memory of watching them. But he heard plenty about them. His father Hollis Putnam was the team’s scorekeeper. “I remember him talking about the Blue Sox,” Putnam said. “He was a great sports fan: Red Sox and Bruins.” Putnam recalls the 4-foot high Philco radio in the living room that provided the descriptions of the games for his dad. He dedicated the book to his father. Putnam did exhaustive research for the book. He pored over old game stories of the Blue Sox from the Springfield Reporter. But he also went to Rutland as well as Keene and Claremont, N.H., to read about the Blue Sox in their daily newspapers as opponents included the Rutland Mercury Club, the Keene White Sox and Claremont Cardinals. They played teams from places like Barre, Randolph, Proctor, West Rutland, Woodstock, Fair Haven, Brattleboro, Windsor, Granville, N.Y., and numerous locations throughout New England. But what makes for some of the best reading is the exhibition games the Sox played against colorful barnstorming teams like the Georgia Chain Gang, The House of David, the Mohawk Colored Giants and the Florida Colored Hoboes. They also played against the New York Bloomer girls, billed as the best women’s team in the country, in 1926. Putnam’s research tells us that the Florida Colored Hoboes were one of the most popular travel teams on the New England circuit in the summer of 1941. They really were black hoboes from places like Orlando, Jacksonville, Miami, Tampa and other locations in the Sunshine State. Some played in bare feet and their uniforms were adorned with rags and patches of different colors. Putnam takes us through each of the seasons and we find that the Sox fared pretty well, especially when it is considered they were guys working in the Springfield shops — thriving at the time — who were not paid to play baseball as many of their opponents were. One thing that drew Putnam’s attention was the sports writing of the era. “The writing fascinated me,” he said. It was colorful and some might say in today’s world “over the top.” He points to a favorite excerpt on page 41 of his book to illustrate the brand of sports writing at the time: ... “Day stepped up in the second and banged Yesman’s first offering squarely on the proboscis in the direction of ‘Ernie’ and his landscape garden. ‘Ernie’ dug in his toes and started after the soaring sphere in the same manner he proposes to go after violators of the law. Head in the air, his eyes glued to the ball, the old warhorse struck that mud puddle like a tarpon goes after bait and just as his outstretched hands were spread to receive the ball his cleats failed to make contact with solid ground in the center of the puddle and down he went like a submarine in a dive while the ball sailed over his recumbent form and landed with a sickening ‘plunk’ in the center of the weed clump board pile decorations and Day raced around the bags to be given credit for a homer. An exhaustive examination of the jungle failed to disclose the ball.” The Blue Sox also played what is said to be the first night game in Vermont. It was on Aug. 29, 1930 at 7:30 p.m. against the California Owls. This was another of those exhibition games that Putnam chronicles. The Owls had a woman playing first base who was said to be “the best of her sex in the country.” The Owls beat the Blue Sox in the game that the newspaper called “the first nite-lite game in Vermont.” The Blue Sox also have a major league flavor to their history. “Sad Sam” Jones, who pitched 22 years in the majors with the Indians, Red Sox and Yankees, coached the Blue Sox in 1941 and even pitched a couple of games for them. He had been on the mound for the Yankees in 1923 when they won the World Series. The book will enthrall longtime Springfield people for it contains numerous names that they will recognize. Older Springfield folks went through Bo Birsky’s math classes or had him as a coach. He coached the Cosmos to state titles in baseball and basketball. Birsky pitched for the Blue Sox in their final season. Springfielders young and old know the name Curt Dressel. That is because his name adorns the current gymnasium where the Cosmos play. Dressel began playing for the Blue Sox in 1926 at the age of 16 and went on to become an extremely successful coach at his alma mater after graduating from Springfield College. His Cosmos were 58-18-2 on the football field where two of his championship teams went unbeaten. His basketball teams went 119-52 and his Cosmos fashioned a 52-35 record on the baseball diamond. He left Springfield for a coaching job in Pennsylvania where he was in an automobile accident. The Springfield Reporter wrote on Oct. 1, 1942 that he was “recovering well.” It was believed he had a concussion. Dressel died in October of that year, leaping head-first from the sixth floor of an apartment building in Upper Darby, Pa. Putnam said there were rumors circulating around Springfield that things had not been going well for Dressel in his personal life. But Putnam’s theory is that his dive through the window had something to do with what the car accident had done to his brain. “I could be totally wrong,” Putnam said. Putnam’s book contains a description of all the tributes paid to Dressel after his death including the closing of school with students lining the streets, as well as a touching eulogy by Birsky. Putnam went to Vermont Tech for two years and Northeastern University for five years. His degrees in electrical engineering and business led him back to Springfield and a position at Jones & Lamson. He started his own company, Precision Contract Manufacturing. It went on to employ a hundred people. Now, he and Bunny are retired and sharing their passion for history. The book was a labor of love, not about making money. There were only 100 copies from the first printing and 40 from the second. But the project that he worked on “off and on” for two years was fun and rewarding. “It was a lot of time in libraries. I just wanted to know more about it. I always wanted to get to the next paper,” he said. The people who knew some of the players or who had family members on the Sox are especially fond of the book. One woman bought 12 copies, giving one to each child and grandchild. Putnam has only found one living member from the Blue Sox. He is Charlie Magwire who played on the 1944 team as a 15-year-old. Magwire told Putnam that he was heckled the first time he came to bat as people asked, “Who’s the kid?” He lined a single to left. The next time he came up the pitcher took him much more seriously and Magwire told Putnam that he never saw any of the smoke the pitcher threw him the second time up. Now, Putnam is working on another project that involves Springfielders in World War II. He also hopes that will grow into a book. That will take more time than the baseball project, Putnam said. But it is doubtful it can be any more fun than bringing back to life an era before television when live baseball was the pulse of a community.