Yale Bulldogs baseball Yale Bulldogs baseball The Yale Bulldogs baseball team is a varsity intercollegiate athletic team of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. The team is a member of the Ivy League, which is part of the National Collegiate Athletic Association's Division I. Yale's first baseball team was fielded in 1864. The team plays its home games at Yale Field in New Haven, Connecticut. The Bulldogs are coached by John Stuper. The Yale Bulldogs Baseball program was founded in 1868 as a team to compete with Harvard baseball. Yale played its first baseball game against Wesleyan College in September 1865.
Southern Ivy conference originated during the 1950s. Harvie Branscomb, then-chancellor at Vanderbilt University, originally attempted to establish a rivalry between Vanderbilt and traditional Ivy League schools to foster relationships with academically-oriented schools. The school followed through on this effort and played a game against Yale in October 1948. However, after the Vanderbilt Commodores shut out the Yale Bulldogs, 35-0, Yale said they no longer wanted to play Vanderbilt. This caused Branscomb to call a meeting with the presidents of other Southern private universities in the late 1950s—Southern Methodist University (SMU), Rice University, Duke University and Tulane University— where Branscomb suggested they try