Looking Back: Dorchester Baseball A Century Ago

Now that baseball and softball season are underway, so are the sounds of children's laughter and the cracks of the bat coming from Dorchester's Nerud Field.

Dorchester is home to rich baseball history. Our community was known as a baseball town as early as the start of the 1900s, as the rough-and-tumble young men of Dorchester gained a reputation for beating teams from towns much larger in population than the village. 

Town-team baseball -- played by teens and men in their 20s, 30s and 40s -- was a main attraction for many eastern and central Nebraska towns in the first half of the 20th century, until the 1950s, when youth baseball gained in popularity. Dorchester was a hot spot for town-team ball.

In those early days, most games were played during free time on Sundays, according to old timers. By 1905, the teams from Dorchester became more organized and well-practiced.

Readers will recall a while back, we stumbled upon a photo taken by Russell Freidell (DHS Class of 1907) who captured a perfect image of the 1909 Dorchester baseball team -- one of the best baseball teams in southeast Nebraska at the time, according to records.

Thanks to an e-mail tip from a reader, we've discovered one of the uniforms worn by a member of the 1918 Dorchester club.  

The nearly century-old jersey (pictured above) is in perfect condition. It was worn by the Dorchester team from 1918 through the early 1920s.  

This particular jersey, housed in the Saline County Museum, was donated by the late Thomas Jarrett, whose parents owned Jarrett Hardware and sponsored the jersey. (Each uniform was sponsored by a different Dorchester business of that era.) It sports the big, black letter "D" -- similar to those on the uniforms worn by the 1909 club in Freidell's photograph.

Also stored in the museum is the succeeding jersey of Dorchester's baseball club, worn from the mid-1920s through the start of the Great Depression. It is fancier in its design, with the town's name spelled out and donning flashier colors on the thick wool material.

Check out these jerseys at the museum. And be sure to catch every Dorchester baseball and softball game at Nerurd Field -- and root, root, root for the home team!