From the 1887 "Medics" to the 2003 "Scrubs," baseball lives on at DMS
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Baseball was as popular 116 years ago (above) as it is today (right). | |
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Rebekah Kim '05 |
Tom Kesman '05 |
For well over a century, DMS students have enjoyed swinging a bat and chasing line drives. The photo at the top is of an 1887 DMS baseball team known as the Medics, and the lower images depict the DMS Scrubs in action this spring.
Second-year student Ben Mailloux is captain and pitcher of the Scrubs, the Class of 2005's intramural softball team. The Scrubs won the Dartmouth-wide intramural championship last year and this year made it to the semifinals but lost by three runs. Mailloux says that 23 of his classmates are on the squad—about a third of the class—and that leading the team has been a lot of fun.
While the Scrubs play all their games in Hanover, back in the 1880s and 1890s, the Medics played at other schools, traveling by train to Laconia, N.H.; Barre, Vt.; and Marlboro, Mass. They had uniforms emblazoned with red crosses and the letter "D." Players were chosen by competition, and practices were held daily.
Many players, like those pictured in practice regalia in the photo above, went on to notable careers. Julius Haynes, Class of 1888 (front, far left), was a surgeon in Toledo, Ohio, from 1890 to 1941. Edward Hallett, Class of 1887 (back, third from the right), was the oldest practicing physician in Gloucester, Mass., at the time of his death in 1939 at age 75. And from their jaunty poses, it looks as if the Medics, like the Scrubs, enjoyed playing ball. M.C.W.
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