Fast Day: <i>Boston's Original Opening Day</i>

Abstract

In 1623 the Pilgrims at Plymouth were struggling to survive. They hadn't been warned ahead of time about the New England winters, and since they had not yet developed a taste for cranberries, clams, and lobster, they scanned the horizon for that long-overdue supply ship. Despite an encouraging spring planting, a drought had virtually wiped out the corn and bean crop. Three months passed, and bleak turned to bleaker. Still, lobster didn't yet look palatable, and the Pilgrims yearned for the taste of English salt beef and beer. Our Plymouth forefathers did what any good Pilgrim of the day did in moments of such desperation and declared a Fast Day-a day to humble ourselves together before God with fasting, humiliation and prayer because our trials and tribulation most decidedly must owe to some shortcoming, some oversight of conscience on our part. And thus they did. They fasted, felt humiliated, and prayed as they continued to scan the horizon for that supply ship.And lo! Their prayers were answered; Myles Standish, returning from the Weymouth settlement up north, brought the good news that the supply ship had arrived and would be in Plymouth within a day or two. This, then, ended the fast and the first Thanksgiving Day was held in the Plymouth colony. Thanksgiving Day needs little introduction; we all know about that one-that's the football holiday, with food, celebration, over the river and through the woods to grandmother's house, and tailgate parties. Yet there was that other holiday, the opposite of Thanksgiving, known as Fast Day.There were numerous Fast Days in New England history. The colonial clergy and colonial authorities often invoked one whenever the need arose. In the nineteenth century an official proclamation from the Governor set the first Thursday in April as the annual Fast Day, a day for government-enforced (or strongly encouraged, at least) fasting, humiliation, and prayer. To call this day a was really stretching the definition. Holidays imply something fun-like the Thanksgiving feast, Fourth of July firecrackers, Christmas gift-giving.Out of this Puritan tendency came the traditional Fast Day. As the Boston Globe said in an editorial in 1889 (by then the observance had inspired cynicism more than humiliation):-Our forefathers thought that if they made themselves miserable enough God would be kind to them. People really tried to keep it; the dinner was a little poorer than usual. A few people did go to church, but the day was a sort of scrap-bag into which the minister threw the side subjects that were hardly Sundayish enough for the regular service, subjects more concerned with political or social problems than theological.But what could happen to a holiday that gave no reward to its celebrants-especially a that was held coincidentally just as spring was about to spring up? New Englanders found a reward for Fast Day in field sports. Track and field events, horseracing, boating on the Charles and Mystic Rivers, shooting matches, and cocking mains hidden away in the woods-they all found their opening events of the season on Fast Day, and baseball quickly took on a greater importance than the church services.Despite the unreliability of the weather, rarely did it deter New Englanders from the first game of the season. Professional baseball made its debut in Boston on Fast Day, 1871. The public got its first look at the players-a team that included immortals like George and Harry Wright, Al Spalding, Cal McVey, Harry Schafer, and Ross Barnes- in a game played with a picked nine in the bitter cold, and on a soggy field with basepaths still slippery with ice and mud. There was no going down south back then for spring training (the Chicago White Stockings' southern jaunt of 1870 was in search of paying opponents, not enhanced physique). The players came together around March 15 at the old Eliot Street gymnasium and put in a couple weeks of playing handball and running around inside. …