THE DERBY BAT TROPHY
Awarded Annually to the Green Mountain Baseball Association Champions
2020: Essex Bombers
2021: Enosburg A's
2022: Missisquoi Mets
2023: Missisquoi Mets
2024: Essex Bombers
Green Mountain Baseball Association players and managers — many of whom are also local youth and high school baseball coaches — are dedicated to continuing Vermont’s centuries-old baseball tradition.
In that spirit, the GMBA Champions are presented annually with an antique baseball bat manufactured by the Derby Made Company in Waterbury, Vermont in 1935.
The Derby Made company was originally founded in 1857 in Barre, Vermont as The Frost & Derby Corporation. They specialized in originally manufactured scythe snaths — the long wooden handles attached to scythe blades.
By the 1930s, scythes had been phased out in favor of more modern harvest machinery. The company relocated to Waterbury, Vermont in 1933 to focus exclusively on the manufacturing of baseball bats as the Derby, Ball, Edwards Corporation.
An advertisement from that era (shown above) illustrates that scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology had determined:
"The Derby Made bats have MONTAN Wax around the cells ...a new process which makes the Derby Made bats the best —stronger and snappier than untreated ash." Derby Made’s patented "Mountain Treatment" (stylized "MONTAN") was a unique way of “integrating materials into the cells of the wood of the bat.”
The Derby, Ball, Edwards Corporation was purchased by J.A Hellerich, makers of Louisville Slugger, in 1938.
The GMBA trophy bat is presented to the league champions annually with a championship pennant attached.
The bat stays in possession of the winning team until the following season, when a new pennant is attached and the bat is presented again to the new league champs in September.