The Cincinnati Game: <i>Townball in Cincinnati, 1858-1866</i>

Abstract

On May 14, 1858, the Cincinnati Daily Commercial reported an unusual event. The day before, 25 men from the Cincinnati Young Men's Gymnastic Association played townball-a children's bat-and-ball game. William Denison Bickham, the Commercial's city reporter and the article's presumed writer, participated in the game. The 31-yearold Bickham reminded readers that the players had not handled a bat for ten or twelve years before he described what happened when grown men tried to play a child's game. A good-looking young lawyer, wrote Bickham, who, in former times was reputed an excellent batsman could not hit a foot ball with a ten foot pole. He conceded that newspapermen proved equally adroit with the most awkward in missing the ball and being caught out. Despite their mishaps, Bickham and his friends vowed to play townball until they became weary with it. A few weeks later, Bickham reported that the young men were rapidly improving and would soon attain the skill of schoolboys.1When Bickham and his friends began their townball adventures, schoolboys probably were Cincinnati's best townball players. Since colonial times, children in America had played informal bat-and-ball games with names such as townball, rounders, old cat, and baseball. Many publications and diaries from the period contain references to batand- ball games. The popular McGuffey Reader series, published in Cincinnati since the late 1830s, included woodcut pictures of children playing with a bat and ball.2By 1830, young men in larger northeastern cities like New York and Philadelphia began creating formal clubs to play their once-informal boyhood ball games. During the 1850s, the number of these sports clubs grew at a faster rate. Nationally circulating sporting newspapers such as the Spirit of the Times and the New York Clipper spurred this trend.3This growing interest in team sports resulted, in part, from a mid-19th century shift in how Americans viewed themselves and their cities. About 1840, many Cincinnatians, like other Americans, began seeing themselves as part of a new and distinct culture removed from its European origins. This idea of a unique culture inspired attempts to define, among other things, forms of literature, music, visual art, religion, and even an American system of manufacturing. Groups, not individuals, became society's basic unit-namely those who conformed to the new cultural ideal and those who did not. The perception of cities changed from places where individuals could pursue their own economic interests to places whose residents were expected to form homogenous groups in which everyone behaved like good Americans.4Increased focus on behavior led city people to redefine old urban problems. Crime, filth, and disease had always troubled even newer cities like Cincinnati, and soon came to be viewed as evidence that a group of citizens-mostly foreigners and other newcomers- did not know how to behave in an urban setting. Cincinnatians took several steps to protect the city from these troublemakers and to instruct them in the ways of proper urban living. The municipal government met this problem with a range of new services, including a full-time police force, a professional fire department, and a public health board. A boom in the number and variety of voluntary associations such as lyceums and temperance societies indicated private responses to this new problem of teaching and maintaining proper behavior.5Whether directed toward citywide reform or self-improvement, voluntary associations allowed ambitious citizens to demonstrate their leadership skills. Belonging to exclusive clubs conferred a certain status upon participants. Becoming an officer in such a club granted yet a higher status. Newspapers in Cincinnati often reported the activities of these groups and published their officers' names. Participating in voluntary associations provided a way to hone the skills to succeed in an urban environment and to be seen doing so. …