The Asylum Base Ball Club: <i>Middletown's Crack Semi-Pro Team, 1888-1894</i>

Abstract

In 1888, Middletown, New York, was a rural community of about 13,000. A part of Orange County, it lay along one of the main routes from New York City to the Catskill Mountains, which were becoming a major recreation area for New York residents at the end of the 19th century. The village was home to the Orange County Brewery, several foundries, a hat factory, a local bottling plant, and some popular hotels. It was also a hub for the New York & Erie Railroad, as well as the New York, Ontario & Western Railroad. It was and remains today the home of the Orange County Fair, a popular yearly event since the early 1880s.For New Yorkers, 1888 may be best known as the year of the great blizzard, which dropped three-and-a-half feet of snow and paralyzed the Northeast for days. For Middletown residents, 1888 was the year their village became a city, and for those local folks who recall years by happenings in baseball, it was also the year the Asylum Base Ball Club was organized.Treatment for the mentally insane had undergone a major transformation during the first half of the 19th century. Resulting from the actions of social reformers like Dorothea Dix and others, patients were no longer being housed in jails or poorhouses. Promoters of more humane treatment believed that restful care in rural settings was the most effective treatment environment for the mentally ill. Such efforts led to a rise in the number of mental hospitals in the United States from 18 in 1840 to 139 by 1890. The population of hospitalized mental patients increased from 2,561 to 74,000 during the same period.As early as 1838 in New England, baseball was one of the recreational activities offered to physically able mental patients. However, despite its name, the team we will be following was not comprised of the patients themselves. It was initially composed of hospital employees and local residents, as the formation of the Asylum BBC took a slightly different tack.Like other institutions of the era, patients at the State Asylum in Middletown were offered baseball as a recreational activity. But in addition, Hospital Superintendent Dr. Selden Haines Talcott believed that baseball could be therapeutic to all the patients, including those who were not capable of playing, but who could be devoted fans of a highly competitive team. So on game days, not only were the patients outdoors to watch their team play, but all those who were too ill to come outside were brought to pavilion windows so that they could watch and root for their baseball club.The rise of the Asylum Club and its stunning success is the story of an unlikely relationship between a hospital chartered to treat the mentally ill and a group of talented young men-some of whom would go on to careers in the major leagues, including) Hall of Fame pitcher Jack Chesbro.An Unlikely MarriageThe Asylum Base Ball Club took its name from its sponsor, the State Homeopathic Asylum for the Insane at Middletown. Homeopathic medicine was started by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann in the late 18th century. Homeopathy is a therapeutic medical science based upon the notion that substances able to cause certain symptoms of disease in a healthy person can, in turn, heal those same symptoms in a sick person. By the late 1860s, homeopathy had spread throughout America, and was being considered as a treatment for the mentally ill. New York State agreed to provide funding for the first homeopathic hospital for the insane, contingent upon the homeopathic physicians contributing a matching amount.After five years of fundraising, planning, and construction, the State Homeopathic Asylum for the Insane at Middletown opened to patients in 1874, and became the largest such institution in the United States.Dr. Talcott served as the Superintendent of the State Homeopathic Hospital from April 1877 until his death at age 59 in June 1902. After fighting in the Civil War, he had graduated from Hamilton College in 1869 and from the New York Homeopathic Medical College in 1872. …