Bridgeport Bluefish - History of Bridgeport Baseball

History of Bridgeport Baseball

The game of baseball was first played in Bridgeport, Connecticut soon after the Civil War ended. Other teams that called the city home were the Victors, Mechanics, Bolts, Americans, and the Bears. Bridgeport was the home of Major Leaguer, James "Orator" O'Rourke, who signed the first African-American to play for a professional baseball team in 1895. Visiting Major League and Negro League teams often played exhibition games in Bridgeport in the shadow of the city's smokestacks. Professional baseball would not be played in Bridgeport for about another half-century, until the arrival of the Bluefish in 1998.

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