Even after the worst season in franchise history, I still miss baseball.
There are plenty of other sports to watch during the offseason to keep you busy, but it’s not the same as baseball.
This year, about two months after the Rockies 2025 season ended and about four months before the 2026 season begins, I’m thankful for Rocky Mountain PBS and the recent “Colorado Experience” episode, United through baseballwhich looks at the valuable and diverse history of baseball in the Centennial State.
If you’ve never seen “Colorado Experience,” the series consists of amazing 30-minute mini-documentaries spanning 12 seasons that explore different parts of Colorado’s past: from “South Park City” And “Camp Hale” Unpleasant “Palisade peaches” And “Return of the Buffalo,” I’ve never seen one that wasn’t interesting.
When I heard there was a new episode about baseball, I couldn’t wait to watch. And United by Baseball did not disappoint.
If you were wondering what it looked like at the time, said Paul Langendorfer, the commissioner of the Colorado Vintage Base Ball Associationgives the details. Formed by a group of Civil War reenactors who decided to combine their passion for history with their love of baseball when creating the league in 1993, they play by the 1864 rules, which means no gloves, a ball with a “lemon peel” stitch pattern, underhand pitching, beautiful cheering and much more.
Featuring commentary from historians, generations of baseball families and people of all ages who love the game, it was a beautiful tribute to America’s pastime in Colorado. The game covers the slow development of the game West, which was accelerated by the Civil War, and came to Colorado with the gold rush in 1858 – 18 years before the area even became a state.
The show then highlights the diversity of teams that popped up in mining towns (such as the Leadville Blues), farming communities (such as the legendary Greeley Grays) and by companies around Denver (such as the renowned White Elephants).
It also shows newspaper clips and photos of the famous Denver Post Tournament, which was known as the Small World Series of the West because it attracted the best non-MLB teams from around the country at a time when the MLB did not extend beyond St. Louis. In 1934, the Kansas City Monarchs (pictured above) were out of the Negro Leagues invited to the tournamentmarking the first major tournament where black and white teams played together.
According to historian Jay Sanford, the tournament attracted press from across the country and left an important mark on the baseball world.
“Without the Denver Post Tournament, Jackie Robinson would not have broken the color barrier in 1947,” Sanford said in the episode. “It would have been later. It’s a crowning achievement for this city to have done something like that.”
In 2022, when the lockout delayed the start of the MLB season, I took the opportunity to explore the history of baseball in Colorado in a five-part series. It was so fun to learn more about the game that brought people together from all walks of life.
While it was great to see photos and hear experts talk about the teams I highlighted in that series, United by Baseball also taught me a lot more. As difficult as it was to see images and hear stories of Japanese Americans being rounded up and placed in internment camps in 1942, it was powerful to see photos of the baseball teams they formed after being removed from their homes with only what they could carry and sent to Amache and other camps across the country.
Thousands of Japanese Americans were forced to live in military barracks Hammocksnear Granada in southeastern Colorado, from 1942 to 1945. An expert on the show, April Kamp-Whittaker, co-director of the Amache Community Archeology Project, says that Amache “has historically been talked about as a relocation center, but this is really a euphemistic term for what is essentially a concentration camp for about 8,000 legal U.S. residents and citizens of Japanese descent.”
When Japanese Americans played baseball in the United States beginning in the late 19th century, they formed teams and established leagues for a sense of community and joy in terrible circumstances.
“The Japanese and Japanese-Americans thought baseball was their show of loyalty to the United States,” Millie Kenko Morimoto King, board member of the Japanese American Resource Center of Colorado, said in the episode. “They did everything they could to prove that they were loyal American citizens.”
For those who subsequently moved to Denver after the internment camps closed, Japanese-American baseball became a staple at Sonny Lawson Park in 23rd and Welton streets on the edge of Five Points in Denver.
The show then flashed forward to today, spotlighting immigrants from Venezuela who are able to coach and play on youth teams as a way to honor their former home and their new home by playing a game loved in both places. Even at a time when politics is deeply divided, the show was a testament to the fact that we are all people with more in common than we have differences – and that baseball can be one of the best ways to unite us.
“Baseball is just a really beautiful lens through which to understand our shared history together and how we got to this point,” Jason Hanson, the chief creative officer and director of interpretation and research at History Colorado, said in the episode. “This is what the game can do for us. It can take us out of our daily worries and help us appreciate these special moments. And they are moments that just come, and then they are gone. That’s another beautiful part of the game, you can’t look away.”
During this holiday of gratitude, I am grateful to PBS for telling this story, for the power of the game to bring people together, and for the amazing past, present and future of baseball in Colorado.
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