1892 Baseball Team - first intercollegiate team at St. Ambrose

Inducted into Hall of Fame in 2006


All available records indicate that a nine man baseball team formed during the 1892-93 academic year was the first athletic team to represent the college in intercollegiate competition.

Rev. J.T.A. Flanagan, the president at that time, was so supportive of the team that he had a baseball field built behind Ambrose Hall. Because travel was much different than it is today, the majority of competition was against teams from town rather than other colleges. Newspapers from that era show that the St Ambrose baseball diamond played host to opponents from Rock Island, Moline, Muscatine, LeClaire and other towns. The newspapers also show that the team had great success, winning most of their games.

The team rarely played games out of town, but Monsignor John Walsh, a member of the original team wrote in 1950: “The team traveled one time to DeWitt in a van drawn by four white horses, and a great celebration was held in conjunction with the event.” As you can imagine, this was probably an all-day event because of the travel time.