This summer marks the first state baseball tournament in Farmington’s history, but when 15-year-old All Stars from around the state play ball here this week, they will continue a longstanding baseball tradition at Hippach Field.

In the 1923, Farmington had its own semi-professional baseball team.

Hippach Field was alive with young men eager to play the game and fans of all ages eager to support their team. Games were at three in the afternoon, stores would close early, and hundreds of fans would flock to the ball park on the Intervale to cheer on their team. Dick Mallett, now age 94, remembers those times well.

“I remember thinking at the time that this is the most perfect life I will ever lead,” he recalled recently. Every afternoon he shagged flys and grounders for his heroes at town team batting practice and then kept score during the games.

In 1923 the Farmington boys played forty-one games and suffered only eleven losses. Eighty years later, Mallett still remembers the impression these athletes made on an eager young baseball fan.

Drew Stearns played short stop. “He was the most remarkable athlete of them all,” Mallett recalled. Stearns was captain of the University of Maine hockey team and winner of the state-wide pole vault event in track and field.

That summer in Farmington Stearns was courting a local girl, Aura Gamin. Any time he made an error in the field, fans would call out “You were out too late with Aura last night!”

Other players are sharp in Mallett’s memory as well. There was Archie Dostie, a Franco-American from Farmington, who distinguished himself on the football field too. When Mallett was five years old, he watched the local high school team play Waterville. The final score was 120-0, and Archie Dostie scored 54 points. By the time Dostie was playing town team baseball, he had graduated from Bowdoin College.

And then there was center fielder Joe McGlone, a Harvard man who had enlisted in the army to fight the Great War in 1917 before he was even out of high school.

First baseman Dick Field was also on summer vacation from Harvard when he played for Farmington in ’23. When his baseball days were over he would become a law professor and a speech writer for President Truman.

But the most valuable player, and probably the biggest character on the team, was pitcher Sully Sullivan, a little rough around the edges next to some of the college men.

“He came from South Boston, and you would know it,” recalled Mallett. Along with a thick Boston-Irish accent, Mallett remembered a detail about Sullivan’s pitching. “He had a patch on his trousers. He roughed the ball on it. This was strictly, illegal,” Mallett recalled, “but it added zing to his curve.”

They were diverse bunch, this semi-pro team of 1923. “They went from A to Z,” said Mallett, but they all got along.” Young and high-spirited as they were, they managed to stay out of trouble that summer. “They all behaved themselves,” Mallett said, “There was no criticism about the way they behaved after hours, which was quite unusual.”

The memories are still fresh in Mallett’s mind. Easy to access perhaps because they are so sweet. Was that 14-year-old summer the best time in his life? “Certainly one of the best,” Mallett answered quickly, and then paused. “Maybe THE best.”

Additional research for this column by David Farady.