By Shen Wu Tan (Special to The Denver Gazette)

FORT COLLINS – “Take me out to the ball game. Take me out to the crowds.” 

The 1908 song by Jack Norworth and Albert Von Tilzer, the iconic song of North American baseball sung at every game, lives on more than a century later, immortalized in history. 

Betty Aragon-Mitotes, president of Mujeres de Colores (Women of Colors) and a Wellington, Colo., resident, is striving to do the same for the Hispanic baseball players and teams that overcame challenges and helped racially integrate America’s favorite pastime and the communities of northern Colorado. 

Earlier this month, an exhibit celebrating the history of Hispanic baseball players and teams, an effort spearheaded by Aragon-Mitotes, opened at the Center for Creativity in Fort Collins and will be on display through Sunday, Sept. 28.

“We are preserving the history, the very important rich history of the early Hispanic baseball players and the Mexicans who came out of the [sugar] beet fields and wanted to play ball,” said Aragon-Mitotes. “And this is about educating our community about the contributions and our place in history.” 

The exhibit, called “From Sugar to Diamonds” and named after a book written by Jody L. Lopez and Gabriel A. Lopez, primarily highlights the history of early Hispanic baseball teams and players in parts of Colorado, including Fort Collins, Greeley, Erie, Longmont, Milliken, Eaton, and Fort Lupton from the 1920s through the 1960s. 

In addition to the exhibit, efforts are underway to designate City Park’s baseball field in Fort Collins, where many of the early Hispanic baseball teams played, as historical and add it to the Colorado State Register of Historic Properties. The nomination of the baseball field was unanimously approved at the Colorado State Register Review Board meeting Sept. 18. The History Colorado Board will review this nomination on Sept. 24. 

“The City of Fort Collins values the many ways our community’s history is reflected in the places around us,” said William Bevil, spokesperson for the City of Fort Collins. “We support efforts to recognize historic sites that tell the stories of Hispanic and Latino residents and their contributions to our city’s heritage.”

Aragon-Mitotes has plans to try and erect a baseball monument in City Park as well and eventually produce a full-length documentary about Fort Collins baseball teams that formed between the 1920s through the 1950s, including the Legionnaires and the Merchants. 

Kenny Cordova, a former player for the Merchants and Legionnaires who attended the exhibit’s reception on Sept. 12, said: “I come in here and see these pictures and look around, and I’m taken back 60 years.”

He hopes that people take away “the promise of community” from the exhibit.

“If you come and look at this, that’s what you’re going to see. That’s what the community really was back then,” Cordova said. “The way people came together at least once a week, the pride of that, the family, the camaraderie of it all. It was fabulous. And that’s what I want people to see.” 

Louis Suniga, another exhibit reception attendee, is a former player of the Fort Collins Legionnaires and the son of Lee Suniga, who was a baseball player, coach, and manager of the Legionnaires baseball team. 

“Every Sunday in the summertime, since I could remember, I was involved with baseball,” Suniga said. 

“This is really something that should’ve been done a long time ago, and I’m glad there’s a push to make this known for the people that played the game, for the people that watched the game, and for generations that my grandkids’ grandkids might be able to see,” he said of the exhibit. “I’d really like to see a plaque or memorial at City Park recognizing the people who played in those diamonds in the 50’s and 60’s. I’d like to see that.” 

Baseball eventually transformed into a “cultural outlet” for many Hispanic laborers and helped foster community identity, according to Colorado State University’s History Matters. Greeley and the Fort Collins’ Tres Colonias – the sugar factory neighborhoods of Alta Vista, Andersonville, and Buckingham – among others formed their own baseball teams and helped break down racial divides characteristic of early games. 

Various factors during the early 20th century contributed to the migration of Hispanic laborers to the sugar beet industry in the United States, per CSU’s History Matters. The annexation of Texas in 1845 spurred some migration northward, although more Mexicans departing annexed territories resettled in Mexico. However, after the Mexican Revolution ended in 1920, war refugees and exiles increasingly migrated to the U.S. in search of work and stability. Mexicans also were exempted from immigration policies that capped the number of migrants in the 1920s, allowing U.S. farmers to hire Mexican laborers as temporary workers. 

And after a long week in the sugar beet fields, baseball became a weekly respite, often on Sundays, from the labor-intensive agricultural work for many Hispanics. 

“It was nice [going to the baseball games],” said Isabelle Martinez, who attended the exhibit reception. When she was a young child and teenager, Martinez said she, her brothers, and parents worked in the sugar beet fields six days a week. But every Sunday afternoon, her mom and dad would take Martinez and her siblings to the baseball games at City Park. 

Baseball teams mostly made up of Hispanic players, including the Greeley Grays and one of the Fort Collins teams, the Legionnaires, eventually integrated with white players, assisting with the desegregation of the sport and the different communities.  

“They just wanted to be able to play the game and enjoy a Sunday afternoon,” Aragon-Mitotes said. “It was about the community coming together…. It’s possible for us to come together and work together, play together, you know, fight for what’s right together. And it shouldn’t matter what color we are.”