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Sports

Centerfield in the Town Center?

Perrault property may have been the site of a baseball field.

Grafton and the Red Sox go way back.

It was Sox utility infielder Hugh Bradley, born in Grafton, who hit the first home run at Fenway Park in 1912. And in about 1900, the Red Sox came to town and played an annual exhibition game in front of 5,000 people, according to a book published for Grafton’s 250th anniversary in 1985.

Now the Grafton Historical Society is trying to learn more about the field that the Red Sox played on that day that was also home to an amateur baseball team known as the “Graftons.”

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An 1899 atlas places the “Base Ball Ground” on the present-day Perrault property, a 12-acre piece of land at 4 and 6 Upton St. that was purchased by the town of Grafton for $837,875 last month. 

“I think there’s some baseball history here,” said John LaPoint, a member of the society’s History and Research Committee.

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With the help of the Society of American Baseball Research, the Grafton Historical Society has tracked play on the ball grounds back to August of 1860, almost a year before the Civil War.

LaPoint believes that the Graftons played up until about 1910 on the grounds, which according to old newspaper records researched by the society may have been called “Hassanamisco Park.”

The Graftons were not a professional team — one newspaper account describes a game of theirs that was delayed because someone forgot to bring the ball — but they were good. Five players made it to the major leagues in the 1880s and the team won the Massachusetts amateur baseball championship in 1875, according to the society.

So far, no physical evidence of a ballpark’s existence has been discovered in the area.

“It’s sort of like this thing has disappeared in the fog of time,” LaPoint said. He has reached out to experts about searching the area for remnants of the field, but said the likelihood of finding anything may be low.

“I certainly don’t expect to find home plate out there,” he said.

LaPoint is not a “baseball nut” but said he filed away the item about the Red Sox playing in Grafton when he read about it in the town’s anniversary book.

For about a year he has been scouring microfilm at the Worcester Public Library and a little searching on Google Books showed that information on the grounds was available in books that the society already had in its possession.

But there are still relatively few primary sources documenting the ground’s existence and LaPoint hopes that publicizing his findings will inspire others in town to share any information they might have.

“We don’t have all the answers,” he said. “We’re hoping that some people will come forward.”

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