Ashburnham, MA

A Touch of Yesteryear

Along Ashburnham’s Main Street, past the Village Market, the town hall, the schoolboy statue, and Roger’s Hardware, you’ll see “Go Sox” bumper stickers, retirees sporting Red Sox caps, and children bicycling past wearing Red Sox T-shirts. It’s baseball season, and this town has a case of Red Sox fever, a regional enthusiasm infecting young and old alike.

Then why is this Massachusetts town (pop. 5,521) in the heart of Boston Red Sox country celebrating the founding of the Atlanta Braves?

It seems—a recent discovery revealed—that the Braves’ first owner, Boston businessman Ivers Adams, grew up in Ashburnham and was well-known as a benefactor—he gave Ashburnham its first water system and the famous “Schoolboy of 1850” statue—a barefoot boy carrying a slate and lunch pail. The team Adams founded in 1871 was the Boston Blue Stockings, which eventually became the Boston Braves and later the Atlanta Braves.

“A lot of people knew about Adams but didn’t know the connection with the Braves,” says David Clark, local historian and—like almost everyone else in town—an avid baseball fan. Clark came across the reference to Adams last year while reading a book about the Braves. He and a neighbor, Robert Salo, decided to organize a festival honoring the Braves and Adams. April 28 was declared the “Ivers Adams Baseball Festival,” with a day full of events, including a baseball game—played by 1860s rules—between the Providence Grays and Bristol Blues, semi-professional exhibition teams that tour the East Coast.

To add to the nostalgia, the players not only dressed the part, they played it. The most noticeable change from baseball as most of us know it was that the players, including the catcher, didn’t use gloves—and if a ball rolls foul, it’s still fair, as long as it first landed in fair territory.

The crowd, which brought picnic baskets and lawn chairs to the ball field, was interested, though occasionally puzzled. Runs were not tallied on a scoreboard, and there were no rosters.

When a batter slugged what looked like a hit and the center fielder caught it on the hop, the runner returned to the dugout. Catching a ball on the first hop—back in Adams’ day—was an out.

That such an old-fashioned game was played in Ashburnham is perfectly fitting, for the town embraces old-fashioned values. For instance, the brick building across from the town hall has been a general store or hardware since it was built in 1856. Townspeople still call it the Old Brick Store, its name before Paul Roger bought it in 1976 and called it Roger’s Hardware. He came to Ashburnham in 1955.

“We moved here because of the children, because of the school system,” Roger says. “And we like Ashburnham. This is a very friendly community.”

And it’s a friendly store. When a woman came in holding a damaged gauge and asked, “Do you have anything that looks like this?” Roger disappeared among the thousands of items crowding the store’s shelves and walls and came back with just the thing.

Roger, now 71 and semiretired, still helps out at the hardware store. His son, Daniel, now owns it. In a day when business is dominated by mammoth home improvement stores, Daniel says there’s still a place for a locally owned store in Ashburnham.

“You can still make a living at a business like this,” he says. “I’m not going to get rich, but I can make a good living for my family.”

But today is Ivers Adams Day, and while the Rogers have remained open for their weekend customers, most residents are at the game. At the ball field, Russell Wiswell watches with his sons Kolby, age 4, and Evan, 7. He recently moved to Ashburnham from a neighboring town.

“We wanted to continue living in the country, but we wanted to live in a town with a good school system. That’s why we picked Ashburnham,” Wiswell says.

Evan—who looks like he could have been a model for the schoolboy statue—wears a Red Sox cap, but the town’s connection to the Braves is causing some confused loyalties.

“So you’re a Red Sox fan, huh?”

Evan nods, then adds, “But I like the Braves, too.”

“If the Sox played the Braves, who would you want to win?”

He shrugs. “The Braves, I guess. They’re a better team.”

Martin Laine is a freelance writer living in Lunenburg, Mass.

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