1921-1940  |  1941-1960  |  1961-1980  |  1981-2000  |  2001-2015

As the Northeastern baseball team prepares for its 95th all-time season this coming spring, take a stroll back through time and join the Huskies as the program reflects on 95 years of history on the baseball diamond. During the week of Jan. 12, "Ninety-five years of Northeastern baseball" will highlight a 20-year period of NU baseball history, beginning Monday with its inaugural season in 1921, and ending Friday with the upcoming 2015 campaign.

BOSTON – In the year 1921, the city of Boston was in the midst of ushering in the Roaring '20s, an era that brought the New England town tremendous growth and prosperity in nearly everything from the arts to baseball. Three years removed from winning their fourth world championship pennant in seven years, the Boston Red Sox were looking to return to glory coming off a 72-81 season. Fenway Park was celebrating its ninth birthday as the city's ballpark, a 24,000-seat cathedral tucked away on Jersey Street just outside of downtown. Fans were still abuzz about Babe Ruth being sold to the New York Yankees the previous year, and tickets to a professional game were available for less than one dollar.
 
The year 1921 also marked the inaugural season of the Northeastern baseball team, known then as the Northeastern Engineering School. Following the Red Sox' departure to Fenway Park in 1912, the Northeastern baseball team inherited the Huntington Avenue Grounds as its home field. Head coach Arthur Duffey placed an advertisement in a February edition of the Northeastern Tech, the school newspaper, encouraging baseball candidates to try out for spots on the team. In his first season as the team's skipper, Duffey had nine players interested in becoming Northeastern's starting pitcher on opening day.
 
On April 2, the Northeastern Engineering School took the field for the first time in program history against Harvard. Although Harvard walked away with a 16-4 victory, Northeastern managed to smack 12 hits off Harvard pitchers Goode and Russell, and scored all four runs during a third-inning rally at Soldiers' Field in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Shortstop and team captain I. Rosenblatt (1921-22) led Northeastern with four hits in five at-bats, while second baseman B. Brown (1921) belted three hits in four trips to the plate.
 
After going 0-5-1 during the program's first six games, Northeastern would earn its first all-time win later that season at home on May 21 when the team defeated Middlebury, 11-7. Northeastern opened the game's scoring with a five-run second inning courtesy of a two-RBI triple by T. Kelley (1921). Trailing 8-4 entering the eighth inning, Middlebury scored three runs on a hit-and-run play, pulling the score to within one at 8-7. Rosenblatt, however, would help Northeastern win its first game of the year in the bottom half of the inning when his bases-clearing triple made it 11-7. The team captain rounded third base in an effort to leg out a home run, but was thrown out at the plate. Northeastern would also defeat Clark, 7-2, in the final game of the 1921 campaign, finishing its inaugural season with a 2-6-1 overall record.
 
Following four seasons at the Huntington Avenue Grounds, Northeastern moved its home field in 1925 to a seven-acre property in Brookline, Massachusetts that was purchased by the YMCA for use by both Northeastern and Huntington Prep School. Rufus Bond, who became the program's third coach at the beginning of 1924, coached Northeastern to only one win in 1925, but led the team to its first winning season the following year with a 7-6 record. In 1927, Bond would guide the newly nicknamed Huskies to two more wins and a 9-5 record, including a 5-2 victory against Massachusetts in the regular-season finale.
 
As the stock market crash of 1929 triggered the end of the Roaring '20s and the start of the Great Depression, Northeastern baseball also hit a low point during the 1930 spring season. In his first year as head coach, Alfred McCoy managed a Husky team captained by Warren Nutter (1929-31) to a 2-13 record, the lowest winning percentage the program had witnessed in five seasons (.133). However, McCoy was determined to transform the Huskies into contenders once again, and by 1932, had Northeastern back above .500 with a mark of 8-7. Two years later, the Huskies won 12 of their 14 games, winning each of their final 11 contests of the year. Edward Murray (1931-34) was captain of the 1934 Northeastern squad that, to this day, holds the highest single-season winning percentage in program history (.857).
 
McCoy would manage three more seasons before handing coaching duties over to Huskies baseball alum Herbert Gallagher in 1938. Gallagher was an All-New England selection as a student-athlete in 1934, and would coach both men's ice hockey and baseball at Northeastern for 15 years. In 1938, he became the first NU manager to earn 10 or more wins during his first season (10-7), and led the Huskies to 11-6 and 10-3 records in 1939 and 1940, respectively.  During the 1940 season, NU won seven straight games, the longest in a single season since winning 11 straight in 1934.
 
Several Northeastern baseball Hall of Famers were student-athletes during the 1920s and 1930s. Curtis C. Brooks (class of 1924, inducted 1981) was considered one of the nation's top athletes in baseball and track and field, displaying a strong defensive glove at first base for the Huskies. William Lee Carter (class of 1932, inducted 1979) played every game at shortstop between 1929 and 1932, and led the team in hitting with a .345 average in 1930. A star catcher for Northeastern, James J. Connelly (class of 1940, inducted 1983) was awarded the Kontoff Cup in 1937 as the school's most outstanding student-athlete. An extra-base hit specialist, Alex Struzziero (class of 1940, inducted 1981) captained the 1940 baseball team to the New England title, and was also well-known on campus for hitting two triples to down Harvard, 10-8, on May 23, 1938.


1921-1940 STATISTICS

Largest win: 20-0 vs. Upsala (1934)
Largest defeat: 0-20 at Harvard (1931)
Most combined runs in a game: 33 (W, 23-10 vs. Colby, 1939)
Record during the 1920s: 41-67-1 (.381)
Record during the 1930s: 80-81-1 (.497)
Highest single-season winning percentage: .857 (12-2, 1934)
Lowest single-season winning percentage: .083 (1-11, 1925)
Longest single-season winning streak: 11 (1934)
Longest overall winning streak: 11 (1934)