The game of baseball has been joined at the hip with Arizona since the state’s territorial days, when small mining towns and frontier forts dotted the landscape, and baseball was the favored pastime.
It was a game played by soldiers and miners, and even a few newspapermen, on rough-cut fields carved from hillsides and company land. Coverage of those games filled the pages of early newspapers like the Tucson Citizen, the Tombstone Epitaph, the Arizona Silver Belt, and the Bisbee Daily Review.
“Early fields for the mining camps were limited in size because most of these mining towns and camps were built into hillsides,” wrote author John Tenney in Baseball in Territorial Arizona. “Bisbee, Globe, Jerome, and Clarksdale would all have fields made available to the clubs that were scratched together as a direct result of mining company support.”
As early as 1884, baseball was already described as a popular pastime in the Globe area. By 1892, employees of the Old Dominion Mining Company were reportedly playing loose pickup games against the boys in town before eventually adopting the name “The Walkers.”
In the decades that followed, baseball “nines” representing Globe, Miami, Safford, and Copper Hill regularly made their way into local headlines, along with the occasional squabble over who would foot the bill to maintain the field that “belonged” to Globe.
Tenney recounts how “Sunday Fever” swept Miami, with barber shops reportedly closing during games. Wanted ads appeared seeking talented players to represent Globe, and former semi-professional athletes from the Arizona-Texas League surfaced in small-town box scores. Baseball wasn’t just recreation. It was civic pride. It was identity. It was community.
This year’s Old Dominion Cup Tournament brings the excitement of old school baseball back to the community on April 25 and 26, during Globe-Miami’s annual Old Dominion Days.
The history of the copper trophy awarded in today’s Old Dominion Cup Tournament stretches back to 1946, when Charles Bidwell, then president of the National Jockey Club, presented it to the winner of the Chicago Tribune Charities Handicap race. Over time, the trophy slipped into obscurity until it resurfaced in the dusty archives of an Arizona antique dealer. It was purchased and repurposed for the Old Dominion Cup Tournament, a fitting tribute to Globe’s copper mining heritage and the territorial ball clubs once sponsored by the mines themselves.
Now known as the Capstone Copper Cup, the trophy sits atop a rotating mahogany pedestal, engraved each year with the names of champions who earn the right to claim it.
Defending champions, the Mesa Miners, return this year after last season’s nail-biting 10-inning finish against the Globe that secured their first title. They’ll be joined by the Higley Haymakers, the Bisbee Black Sox, and the Tucson Saguaros, established teams whose players have honed their vintage craft for years.
New to the roster are the Bisbee Copper Queens, who join the Mesa Maidens this year to represent two strong all-women’s teams, bringing both competitive fire and historic significance to the field.
Their presence is a reminder that while territorial baseball honors the past, it continues to evolve — welcoming new players, new stories, and new chapters.
And that is exactly what makes this weekend in Globe something special.
For two days, the crack of the bat will echo once again against our hillsides. Players in period uniforms will take the field, and fans will settle into lawn chairs and bleachers to cheer on the players. Between innings and beneath Arizona’s wide blue sky, history won’t just be remembered, it will be played.
Territorial ball returns to Globe not as nostalgia, but as living heritage. And by Sunday afternoon, another name will be engraved on the Capstone Copper Cup, adding one more chapter to a story that began on dusty mining fields nearly 140 years ago.
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