Colorado’s rich minor-league baseball history is represented in a new book called “Tales from the Dugout: 1,001 Humorous, Inspirational and Wild Anecdotes from Minor League Baseball” by veteran broadcaster Tim Hagerty.

Before the Colorado Rockies there were the Denver Zephyrs, and before that there were the Denver Bears, and before that there were the Denver Grizzlies. And in 1911, President William Howard Taft became the first sitting president to attend a minor-league baseball game when he attended a Grizzlies game at Broadway Park at Sixth Avenue and Acoma Street.

“The driver actually parked on the field so that Taft would have an unobstructed view of the game,” said Hagerty, who is presently broadcasting for the Triple-A El Paso Chihuahuas in this, his 19th season as a broadcaster. There’s a good chance the home team (who were ironically named the Bears/Grizzlies in honor of Taft’s predecessor, Teddy Roosevelt), won that day, as the Griz ran away with the 1911 Western League title on the strength of a 111-54 record.

Fast forward to 1970, when the Denver Bears put a live bear in a cage in a right-field box for all home games at Mile High Stadium. (What could go wrong?) “An employee was always stationed there to make sure fans didn’t reach into the bear cage,” said Hagerty. “Luckily, there were no injuries.”

Hagerty has always loved baseball research, and the idea for the book struck when he came across a wild piece of minor-league history in 2011.

“It was a story from 1888 about a wild bull running onto the field and delaying a game in Austin, Texas,” he said. “I soon learned how many stories there are from the past and present that a lot of baseball fans don’t know about.”

Like when Pat Seerey, a hulking outfielder for the Colorado Springs Sky Sox, literally had a cow in 1950. Why?

“In 1950, a steakhouse in Colorado Springs offered a free steak to any Sky Sox player whenever he hit a home run,” Hagerty said. “Pat Seerey hit 44 home runs that season – so the club owed him a lot of steak. Rather than giving him 44 steaks, the restaurant just gave him a live cow” (and the Oklahoman gladly accepted.)

“Tales from the Dugout” is published by Harper Collins and available from amazon.com.