03/29/2026
With the baseball season now upon us, we are back for part 2 of our series on Rochester/Avon baseball history.
In the early 1920s, an informal baseball field sprung up on land once owned by the Detroit Sugar Company on Woodward Avenue near today’s Rochester Municipal Park. In 1925, the lot was groomed and turned into a full-fledged athletic field. The field opened in June 1925, when the Rochester Independents defeated a team from Armada by a score of 4 to 2. In 1936, civic leader and Detroit Edison employee Fred Halbach “led a community drive to add lighting and a new grandstand so that evening games could be played.” City leaders named the field Halbach Field in his honor. The field is still in use today.
On August 5th, 1946, famed boxer Joe Louis and his Brown Bombers played a 9pm game at Halbach Field. The African-American softball team was comprised of Louis’s boyhood friends from Detroit. The Brown Bombers played Rochester Potere (a team comprised of local gas station workers). Admission cost 50 cents for adults and 12 cents for children. The Brown Bombers won the game 5-0.
In 1945, when the town, and the world needed a laugh near the end of the Second World War, a donkey baseball game was played at Halbach Field.
Among those to play in the bigs from Rochester was Jim Burton, a Rochester High graduate and southpaw pitcher who played for the Boston Red Sox and New York Mets in the 1970s. He is perhaps best known for pitching in Game 7 of the 1975 World Series in the Red Sox loss to Sparky Anderson’s Cincinnati Reds.
Another Red Sox star, Jason Varitek, was born in Rochester and lived here until he was seven years old. Varitek was a three time all-star, two time World Series champion, and a Gold Glove Award winner. He holds the distinction of being one of three players to have played in the Little League World Series, the College World Series, and the Major League World Series.
Andrew Good, who played for the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Detroit Tigers in the early 2000s, was a part of the 1998 Rochester High team that hit a whopping five consecutive home runs in a game against Troy.
Art Houtteman joined a World War 2 and injury-depleted Detroit Tigers roster in 1945 at the age of only 17. He represented the Tigers in the 1950 All-Star Game where he played with the likes of Ted Williams, Yogi Berra, and Joe DiMaggio. Houtteman had a 12 year career and pitched in 325 games with Detroit, Cleveland, and Baltimore. He lived in Rochester Hills for many years after his baseball career ended and is buried in Guardian Angel Cemetery.
Zach Putnam, Shawn Hare, Joe Ayrault, Jay Gibbons, and others also found their way to the top tiers of professional baseball.
But perhaps Rochester’s most well-known connection to Major League Baseball involved donuts. In 1979, Former Tiger All Star and MVP of the 1968 World Series, Mickey Lolich went into business running a donut shop at the corner of Main and University. Lolich played an active role in the shop’s operations and could be found in the shop making donuts and chatting with fans regularly. In 1984, he sold the business to Gordon Knapp. It still operates as Knapp’s Donuts to this day.
