Walpole Wild Blue Baseball

Walpole Wild Blue Baseball is a member of the Connecticut River Valley Baseball League (CRVBL) and plays competitive teams from up and down the valley, including Keene, Putney, Brattleboro, Saxton's River, Sunapee, Claremont, Newport and Chester.

When Frank Brown and Gary Dennis got together in January over a beer to talk baseball, it just made sense to kick around bringing a solid men's baseball team to Walpole.

After all, the town was already buzzing about the new baseball field complex off Route 12 -- a multi-millon dollar venture of the Hubbard family that included three ballfields -- one of them with major regulation dimensions. It includes stadium seating for all fields, a high-end timber-framed concession area, paved walkways between the fields, bullpens, hitting cages.

For any ball player lucky enough to plod through the grass here in cleats, the feeling of playing the country's favorite pastime sport has never been greater.

Last year, in the fields' first real use to local ball players, the Saxtons River Pirates -- the team Brown and Dennis played for over the last three seasons -- more-or-less called the new field home base.

"But we knew Walpole had a good base of hometown ball players and we know this town is filled with awesome folks who like to rally behind hometown causes," Dennis said.

So with a toast over Dennis' dining room table, the two men embarked on creating Walpole's new home team. Generous sponsors jumped on board, solid players came out of the woodwork. The "Wild Blue" name angled off the town's propensity for blue uniforms in sports teams past. Brown, who manages the Walpole Youth Foundation ballfields, got his new team on the diamond as soon as the March and April weather allowed.

Meanwhile Dennis marketed the team to the small, Connecticut River valley town. And he marketed some more.

"I was shameless. I vowed to get all the press I possibly could so there wouldn't be anyone in town who could say 'Oh, I hadn't heard about the team'," Dennis said.

Features in local newspapers -- dailies and weeklies -- as well as in the monthly town mailer "The Walpole Clarion" got the word out. As did handsome posters he hung in any window where he could convince business owners to let him hang them in.

The result: On a pleasant sunny day on April 15, the Walpole Wild Blue home opener was played in front of more than 200 people. That's one of the bigger crowds drawn to a Connecticut River Valley Baseball League game in any recent memory.

Into the season now, it's apparent Walpole has some major bats at the plate and good defensive field play. The Wild Blue has exploded onto the scene and shows all the signs of becoming a stand-by entertainment choice for Walpole folk in the months ahead and years to come.

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