The Next Chapter

A team photo of the Hagerstown Owls in the 1940s. (From the Washington County Historical Society)

As the Flying Boxcars take the field, can baseball slide into a spot as an economic driver of downtown Hagerstown’s revitalized economy?

By Jeff Thoreson

If ever a Major League baseball player achieved nothing more than footnote status, it was Thomas Charles Lipp. He made his Major League debut for the Philadelphia Phillies on September 18, 1897, and his final Major League appearance, well, less than an hour later that same day.

The brash 27-year-old righty took the mound that Saturday afternoon at Union Park in Baltimore as the starting pitcher and got rocked by Orioles hitters. In three innings he faced 19 batters, gave up eight hits, five runs (all earned), walked two, and his lone Major League highlight was his only strikeout. He left the game as the losing pitcher with an earned run average of 15.0 and never tasted the sweetness of a Major League field again. 

Flying Boxcars former Major League player Abiatal Avelino.

The high hopes Lipp must have had for the day were well-founded. He was coming off a 10-2 season pitching for the Hagerstown Lions in the Cumberland Valley League, which he led in both wins and winning percentage on the strength of an impressive 1.54 ERA. And though his Major League career was as undistinguished as it could possibly be, he was one of the first of many players who came through the Hub City on their way to the Major Leagues. 

Hagerstown’s romance with professional baseball spans almost the entire history of the sport, and like most romances it has had its ups and downs. But the one thing that is undeniable is that the relationship has been colorful, entertaining, and vitally important to the community. In the periods when baseball is absent from our city, our community is less vibrant, both socially and economically. 

Local baseball historian and author, Bob Savitt has researched how important baseball has been to Hagerstown. 

“A theme of mine has been that baseball in areas like ours was more than a game,” Savitt said, who wrote the 2011 book The Blue Ridge League, in which Hagerstown had a team from 1915 to 1930. “It was part of our culture—an activity to view, discuss, argue about, cheer over, and, if you were skillful enough, to play. Moreover, in small communities like those of the Blue Ridge League, having a professional team was a source of communal pride that validated importance and standing.” 

As time distances us from our history with the sport, important people, players, and facts about Hagerstown’s baseball history fade. 

Forget that we no longer remember Lipp. Who remembers that Hall of Famer Willie Mays played his first professional game in Hagerstown? Or that Hagerstown’s James V. Jamison was an early executive not only in local baseball but on the national scene, serving on the commission that named Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis the first commissioner of Major League Baseball? Or that night baseball was played under the lights in Hagerstown five years before the first night Major League game? Or that the Blue Ridge League run by Jamison and another Hagerstownian named Charles Boyer sent more players to the Major Leagues than any other Class D league? 

There is no way to say for sure, but likely there is a very legitimate argument to be made that Hagerstown’s historical influence on baseball reaches far past that of any other city its size. And it goes beyond argument to become fact that baseball’s influence on Hagerstown has been essential to the way the city has developed. It seems abundantly clear that as the Flying Boxcars begin the next incarnation of professional baseball in the Hub City, the sport’s influence on the city’s future is essential. 

Looking Back 

The Western Maryland Historical Library tells us the Hagerstown Base Ball Club was holding meetings and playing “spirited contests” against teams from rival towns as far back as the Civil War. From those loosely organized teams, semi-professional teams established themselves in the later part of the 19th century and early 20th century in fledgling leagues like Tri City and Cumberland Valley. These teams established the city’s relationship with professional baseball, and stars like Lipp and his teammate John Gochnaur—who had a lengthier but no more exceptional Major League career—helped tie baseball to the community. 

A game scorecard from the 1951 Hagerstown Braves when the team was an affiliate of the Boston Braves. (From the collection of Bob Savitt)

As the Flying Boxcars start to write the next chapter in the Hub City’s history with the sport, the team and the community owe a debt to the players of a previous era, when teams like the Lions, the Hagerstown Terriers, Hagerstown Champs, and Hagerstown Hubs established Hagerstown as a baseball city. The groundwork they laid has endured for more than a century, providing residents with a community focal point and the city with the elevated status that comes with being a professional baseball city. 

That status has been missing for the last three seasons, though no fault of the community or its leadership. The Hagerstown Suns 40-year association with minor league baseball ended after the Covid-canceled 2020 season when the Washington Nationals did not renew their affiliation with the Suns. Then, Major League Baseball restructured its minor league system and did not invite the Suns to be an affiliate at any level. 

From the 1948 season, an official scorecard. (From the collection of Bob Savitt).

In the last three years, the city has felt somewhat naked, losing its identity as a professional baseball town. That hurts from a status and social perspective, but it hurts even more from an economic perspective. 

“It was devastating to fans,” says Dan Spedden, president of the Hagerstown/Washington County Convention and Visitor’s Bureau. “Not only did we lose the team, we lost the sense of community we experienced every night at the ballpark. The immediate loss was social and economic. Hotels, restaurants, food and beverage distributors, gas stations, and convenient stores all lost customers or clients. The biggest blow was to the city’s reputation. When you lose a coveted minor league baseball team, as a city, are you moving forward or moving backward?” 

Clearly the city is again moving forward, but would Hagerstown be in this position without players like Lipp and Gochnaur and even more so without executives and visionaries like Boyer and Jamison? As baseball’s popularity grew, not only locally but throughout the county, the sport became more formalized, and no individual was more important to that process in Hagerstown than Jamison. He was a natural athlete who gravitated to tennis, football, and baseball. He lettered in all three at St. John’s College in Annapolis, and his classmates named him the best athlete of the 1905 class.  

Jamison had moved to Hagerstown with his family when he was 12 years old, and he returned after college to establish Jamison Cold Storage Door Company with his father in 1906. The success of the company, which is still based in Hagerstown, afforded Jamison the resources to take professional baseball from its loosely organized teams to quality leagues.  

He was elected president of the semi-pro Tri-City League in 1914, then in 1916 became president of the Class D, Blue Ridge League, a league started by Boyer, who owned the Hagerstown franchise. Jamison developed the Blue Ridge League into one of the finest Class D minor leagues in the nation, and he guided the league until its end in 1930. 

The Flying Boxcars have nine former Major League players on their roster, including Edubray Ramos and Mike Kickham. 

Though his influence on the national level was significant, Jamison considered himself a local baseball man. He was the driving force behind building Municipal Stadium in 1930, although it coincided with the demise of the Blue Ridge League and the Depression, a double-whammy that must have left a collective feeling of helplessness. Without a professional team, Municipal Stadium hosted several Negro League games in the early 1930s, but that didn’t provide a rallying point for the community. 

In 1941, Jamison came to the rescue when he persuaded Oren E. Sterling to move his Class B Interstate League franchise from Sunbury, Pennsylvania, to Hagerstown. Jamison eventually served as president of that league which gave Hagerstown new life in professional baseball. The Hagerstown Owls played in Municipal Stadium as an affiliate of the Detroit Tigers or the Chicago Cubs from 1941 to 1949, and then from 1950 to 1953 the Hagerstown Braves played as an affiliate of the Boston/Milwaukee Braves. 

On June 24, 1950, the Trenton Giants were in town for a series against the Braves. A young player who skipped his senior prom in Alabama to take a train to Hagerstown showed up at Municipal Stadium to join the Giants and that day Willie Mays played in his first game as a professional. 

When Hagerstown’s affiliation with the Braves ended, a team from the Piedmont league moved to Hagerstown for two seasons, giving local fans a chance to see a pitcher named Pedro Ramos, who went 4-2 for the Hagerstown Packets in 1954. Ramos went on to win 117 games in a 16-year Major League career. The next season Bob Allison was Hagerstown’s star. He later hit 30 home runs for the Washington Senators in 1959 and was named American League Rookie of the Year. 

Mike Kickham

But the Packet’s run in Hagerstown was short-lived, leaving the city without a minor league team for the next quarter-century. 

The Suns Also Rise 

After 25 years in the baseball wilderness, minor league ball returned to Hagerstown, although this time it was an out-of-towner who came to the rescue. Lou Eliopulos bought the Rocky Mountain Pines, a Class A franchise in the Carolina League, and moved the team to Hagerstown to play in Municipal Stadium. That began a lengthy, although somewhat turbulent, 40-year association with Major League baseball. 

Throughout those four decades, owners and leagues came and went with regularity, but the Suns, regardless of leadership or league, remained in Hagerstown for four decades without a break in their tenure. 

The Suns brought more baseball firsts to Hagerstown. In 1983, Jim Palmer made a start for the Suns on a rehabilitation assignment and remains the only Hall of Famer to play in Hagerstown. Although that may eventually change because in 2011, during the Suns’ affiliation with the Washington Nationals, the much-celebrated draft pick Bryce Harper made his minor league debut at Municipal Stadium—an unceremonious 0-for-3 night that included two ground outs, a strike out, and a walk. 

In 1990 President George H.W. Bush attended a Suns game on the way to Camp David for the weekend. Bush, a huge baseball fan, was the first sitting president to attend a minor league game. 

Professional baseball was again solidly a part of Hagerstown—until the pandemic. When the 2020 minor league season was canceled, everyone in Hagerstown thought it was just a temporary disruption. But at the end of that year the Nationals didn’t renew their affiliation with Hagerstown. Municipal Stadium was aging and in bad shape, which helped precipitate the final blow: Major League Baseball downsized the number of minor league teams and did not invite Hagerstown to affiliate with any team at any level. 

“There was an impact to the economy when the Hagerstown Suns ended,” says Jill Thompson, director of the City of Hagerstown Department of Community & Economic Development. “However, community efforts continued to bring baseball back with a new downtown facility.” 

Adds Spedden: “There are maybe 140 minor league cities in America. It is a very elite fraternity and belonging paints a picture of a vibrant community. The commerce generated is worth millions.” 

And Now for Something New 

As much as baseball has meant to Hagerstown, the city is on the eve of what might be its greatest relationship yet with the sport. The Flying Boxcars take the field in the spanking new downtown ballpark as a member of the Atlantic League, a different version of minor league baseball. The league’s teams aren’t affiliated with a specific Major League team, meaning any team could buy the contract of any Atlantic League player. 

“This will be the highest level of baseball that we’ve ever had in Hagerstown,” says Greg Snook, president and CEO of the Washington County Industrial Foundation (CHIEF). “A lot of players have prior Major League experience. Some may be working their way back from injury. Others didn’t make a Major League roster and are trying to play their way back to the big league.”  

The sun sets over the new Meritus Park where the Hagerstown Flying Boxcars begin the next chapter of professional baseball in the Hub City. (Jamie Turner) 

Nine of the Flying Boxcars players who started the 2024 season have Major League experience, including infielders Abiatal Avelino and Curtis Terry, outfielders Eury Perez and Magneuris Sierra, and pitchers Mike Kickham, Jose Lopez, Parker Markel, Joe Palumbo, and Edubray Ramos. 

While that will make for great evenings at the new Meritus Park, almost everyone associated with business and development in Hagerstown sees the Boxcars and the new stadium as one of the catalysts of the city’s current economic expansion. 

“There has been momentum on downtown redevelopment for many years with projects like the University System of Maryland investment, the new construction of the Washington County Free Library, The Maryland Theatre expansion, and the Barbara Ingram School of Arts expansion,” says Thompson. “Since the announcement of construction of a new stadium, we are seeing growth in upper-floor housing and retail/restaurant development. The ballpark is contributing to new investor confidence in downtown.” 

A 1991 team photo of the Hagerstown Suns. (From the Washington County Historical Society) 

The $90 million ballpark adds fuel to private-sector downtown investment. It has helped spurt residential projects like the redeveloped Updegraff Building, once a manufacturing site that now includes 21 urban-chic one- and two-bedroom apartments with street-level commercial space, that along with several other residential redevelopment projects underway or in the planning stages are changing the face of downtown life. 

“When we announced the new stadium was being funded and built, the private investment really started pouring in,” says Jim Kercheval, executive director of the Greater Hagerstown Committee. “The stadium was done by the private sector by working through community business groups and state funding. This project was 100 percent funded by the state, which was the only way this project was going to happen.” 

The stadium was a combination of hard work and good timing. For more than a decade there had been a movement to figure out how to replace the aging Municipal Stadium. While Covid canceled what would have been the Suns final season, it was also responsible for huge amounts of federal funds flowing to the states. Bonds for the Orioles’ and Ravens’ stadiums were dwindling, and since most of the Maryland Stadium Authority’s investment was around Baltimore, it seemed like a good time for a project in Western Maryland. 

Clearly it was. Before the season began the stadium naming rights had been sold to Meritus. All eight suites had been sold and almost all of the stadium advertising had been sold.  

So now, the moment of truth is here. The Boxcars are both the latest component of Hagerstown’s vibrant baseball history and the team to write its sanguine future. Let the games—and the writing—begin.