One Boy and Baseball

Abstract

Harold Seymour has described in general terms the baseball played by boys in the late 19th century,1 but there is little published information that provides a more specific picture of how youth interacted with the game. This interaction was significant, however, because it nurtured fan interest in baseball at other levels and, for those especially talented, provided experiences that could eventually lead to a professional career. Although they represent only one individual, the 1884 and 1887 diaries of S. Parker Smith of Battle Creek, Michigan, offer insight into the role that the game played in the life of a late-19th century teenager.In the mid-1880s, Battle Creek, located in the southwestern portion of Michigan's Lower Peninsula, was a rapidly growing city with a population of more than 10,000. Not yet the nation's cereal capital, the city at this time was developing heavy industry oriented toward agriculture; its largest business was the Advance Threshing Machine Company, founded in 1881. The city was also adding modern conveniences with the telephone arriving in 1882, horse-drawn streetcars in 1883, electric lights in 1884, and running water in 1887.2 Baseball had come to the city at least by the mid-1860s,3 and over the next two decades several teams with such names as the Columbia, Colored, Crescent, Excelsior, and Monarch functioned at one time or another. According to a local historian, games were played on the flats near the Grand Trunk Railroad tracks and on Merrett's Commons between Mrs. Merrett's woods and her orchards.4 Battle Creek was also home to a large Seventh-Day Adventist community. This young denomination, which had risen out of the Second Great Awakening and more specifically the Millerite movement of the 1840s, had established its headquarters inBattle Creek in 1855. In addition to its General Conference, which administered the church, it had also developed three important institutions. The Review and Herald Publishing Association had been incorporated in 1861 and by the mid-1880s, in addition to publishing denominational periodicals and books, was the largest commercial printer in Michigan. The Battle Creek Sanitarium had been founded in 1866 and under the leadership of John Harvey Kellogg, expanded rapidly in the 1870s and 1880s, attracting a national and international clientele. Finally, the Adventists established Battle Creek College in 1874, which, despite temporary closure in 1881, had nearly 500 students in 1887.5 These institutions were located close to one another in what was known as the West End of Battle Creek and developed around them an Adventist community of more than two thousand people.6Samuel Parker Smith was part of this community, for his father, Uriah, had been an editor of the denomination's general paper, The Review and Herald, ever since the move to Battle Creek. Parker, as he was known, attended Battle Creek College while living at home with his father, mother Harriet, older sister Annie, and younger brother Charles. One older brother, Leon, was living elsewhere while another, Wilton, may have returned to the family dwelling in the late spring of 1887 after having worked in Oakland, California.7 Although his income as a denominational editor was small, Uriah was also an inventor and with money from sales of a folding school desk, the family had built a substantial, comfortable house located at 65 College Avenue.8At age 12, Parker began keeping a diary in 1884 but only maintained it through the month of April.9 In 1887, however, the now 15-year-old boy kept up his diary throughout the year. Pocket diaries, the volumes gave only a small space for recording daily activities and thoughts. Probably because of this physical limitation, Parker's daily accounts are rather cryptic, rarely supplying much detail but giving the highlights of each day's activities. Thus a typical daily entry might include references to a book he was reading, a trip to the store, and his work in the garden. …