Muzzy Field

Tucked away in the woodsy corner of a public park within the once-gilded boundaries of a great manufacturing city, Muzzy Field's illustrious history began as a charitable land donation in 1912. With the financial backing of the sports-minded management at New Departure Manufacturing, the field became home to one of the area's strongest semiprofessional baseball teams that welcomed some of the greatest athletes who ever played the game-from Ruth to Martín Dihigo and many others. The surging popularity of football in Bristol brought to town the legendary Lombardi and a handful of future Hall of Famers who helped shape the sport in the 1930s and 1940s. From the earliest days, the colorful stories of the great barnstorming era of professional sports defined what has become the grand old dame of New England ballparks. In Muzzy Field, Douglas S. Malan relates many little-known tales from a time when it was a bustling epicenter of superb drama and a destination for the immortals of sport.