page_title: Chatham Anglers
section_title: The early Cape League era (1923–1939)
hierarchical_section_title: Chatham Anglers / History / Pre-modern era / The early Cape League era (1923–1939)
caption_attribution_description: Veteran's Field, Chatham, MA Home of the Chatham Athletics www.capecodbaseball.org www.chathamas.com/
context_page_description: The Chatham Anglers, more commonly referred to as the Chatham A's and formerly the Chatham Athletics, are a collegiate summer baseball team based in Chatham, Massachusetts. The team is a member of the Cape Cod Baseball League and plays in the league's East Division. Chatham plays its home games at historic Veteran's Field, the team's home since 1923, in the town of Chatham on the Lower Cape. The A's have been operated by the non-profit Chatham Athletic Association since 1963.
  Chatham has won five CCBL championships, most recently in 1998, when they defeated the Wareham Gatemen in the championship series. The team has been led since 2017 by former Oklahoma State University field manager Tom Holliday.
context_section_description: In 1923 the Cape Cod Baseball League was formed and included four teams: Chatham, Falmouth, Osterville, and Hyannis. This early Cape League operated through the 1939 season and disbanded in 1940, due in large part to the difficulty of securing ongoing funding during the Great Depression. Chatham competed in the Cape League from the league's inaugural 1923 season through the 1926 season, then from 1927 to 1929 competed as a combined Chatham-Harwich team with home games split between Veterans Field and Harwich's Brooks Park.
  Chatham's 1923 team included CCBL Hall of Famer Merrill Doane. Doane, a 1924 graduate of Chatham High School, would remain involved in the Cape League and Chatham baseball for over 60 years. One of the longest-tenured general managers in Cape League history, Doane was instrumental in the league's transition to an NCAA-sanctioned collegiate league in the early 1960s, and helped build the powerful Chatham teams of the 1960s. In 1925, Brockton High School star Pat Creeden played third base for Chatham, and went on to play briefly for the Boston Red Sox in 1931.
  In the 1927 season, the combined Chatham-Harwich team finished fourth in the five-team league, but nevertheless was described as "the hardest hitting team in the league." 1927 Chatham-Harwich first baseman Jack Burns went on to play in seven major league seasons for the St. Louis Browns and Detroit Tigers. In all three seasons of the joint Chatham-Harwich team, the club featured Boston College batterymates pitcher Pete Herman and catcher George Colbert, as well as flashy infielder Artie Gore. The trio of Herman, Colbert and Gore later teamed up again with Barnstable to bring that club multiple Cape League championships in the 1930s. Gore went on to a major league umpiring career, working ten years in the National League, including two World Series assignments.
  In 1930, Chatham again fielded its own team, as Harwich split off and became a separate club. Pete Herman remained with the Chatham team as its player-manager in 1930 and 1931, leading the team on an exciting stretch run and second-place finish just two games behind pennant-winning Wareham in 1930.
  Chatham withdrew from the league prior to the 1932 season as a result of the town's decision not to appropriate funds for the team. Throughout the rest of the 1930s, Chatham's town team competed in the Cape Cod Twilight League, winning that league's title seven consecutive seasons from 1933 to 1939.
caption: Veterans Field has been home of Chatham baseball since the 1920s.
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