Over one hundred and thirty years ago, pioneers arriving in Colorado during the Civil War era brought the game of baseball to the high and dry Rocky Mountains frontier. From the days of games in pastures with no gloves to the high drama of Coors Field and the Colorado Rockies, baseball and Coloradans have had a love affair that has continued to flourish over the decades.

In They Came To Play: A Photographic History of Colorado Baseball, historians and avid baseball fans Duane Smith and Mark Foster have collected the finest historic baseball photographs of teams, players, and games from around the state. They are all here, the town teams, company teams, early professional clubs, and the ethnic teams that made baseball an integral part of the life and times in Colorado's mountain towns, prairie hamlets, and bustling frontier cities. Combined with the wonderful photographs and captions is an essay that brings baseball's rich heritage in Colorado to life for the reader.

Duane A. Smith is a professor of history at Fort Lewis College in Durango, and is the author or coauthor of more than fifty books on Colorado and the West. He also serves as chair of the Durango Parks and Forestry Board and on the Anima School House Museum Board. Mark S. Foster is a professor of history at the University of Colorado at Denver. He is the author of numerous books and articles on Colorado history. His unpromising baseball career was nipped in the bud forty years ago by a sore arm, but he continues to toil on the diamond for the Colorado Vintage Baseball Association.