The Magnolia, the Knickerbocker, and the Age of Flash

Abstract

Last year, rummaging through classified advertisement section of New York Herald of November 2, 1843, I was astonished to find a notice for a baseball club unrecorded in annals of sport.1 Moreover, notice made clear that this city-based club played its games across North River at Elysian Fields of Hoboken, almost two full years before advent of pioneer club, Knickerbockers.That notice in Herald has yielded clues to a much larger-and largely untold- story about how early game was in fact shaped, not only by young bachelors looking for a game to rival cricket, but also by working class, sporting culture, and teeming political factions of New York City in 1840s. Of particular relevance to this story has been an information source little used until recently by scholars of urban history, let alone those seeking to document earliest days of our passion for sports: sensationalist or flash news weeklies, racy papers of day intended for sporting men and those who loved them.Populated by some truly fascinating characters, including Mike Walsh, George Wilkes, David Broderick, and Walt Whitman, what follows is a rambling tale-an impressionistic prospectus for articles and books to follow on several issues treated lightly here. My hope is that this journey into New York underworld of 1840s will encourage scholars to reevaluate, if not entirely discard, gentrified accounts of baseball's rise and flower that have for so long been accepted without challenge.Only recently, with Randall Brown's unearthed account of birth of Gotham Ball Club in 1837,2 have roles of Alexander Cartwright and Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in creating New York Game come in for reexamination. Because Knicks left a documentary trail for scholars to follow, their exploits have bestowed upon them a founder's status. With Henry Chadwick's support for their gentlemanly game, Knickerbockers shaped still pliant history of infant game and, thereby, its future. Now discovery of Magnolia Ball Club opens us up to a quite different overall impression of how (and by whom) early game was played before Knickerbockers.The Advertisement and Its AssociationsThe diminutive ad in Herald, which also ran in New York Sun and perhaps other daily papers, read in full:NEW YORK MAGNOLIA BALL CLUB-Vive la Knickerbocker.-A meeting of members of above club will take place this (Thursday) afternoon, 2nd instant, at Elysian Fields, Hoboken. It is earnestly requested that every member will be present, willing and eager to do his duty. Play will commence precisely at one o'clock. Chowder at 4 o'clock.JOHN McKIBBIN, Jr., President.JOSEPH CARLISLE, Vice PresidentANDREW LESTER, Sec.n2 1t*mThe coding at bottom signaled that ad was to appear one time only (1t) and that on game day, November 2 (n2). While this may strike modern eyes as a late date for a baseball game, baseball season of this era typically ran to very end of month.Of named officers, Irish-born president, 29-year-old John McKibbin Jr., was a U.S. inspector-a patronage position perhaps obtained through good offices of his father, who in a stroke of aldermanic fortune in 1835 had been named city's first Superintendent of Pavements.3 Seven years after calling Magnolia Ball Club to muster and chowder, McKibbin found himself a resident of Sing Sing, convicted of bigamy.4The vice president and actual leader, Joseph Carlisle, was 26-year-old proprietor of Magnolia Lunch and Saloon at 74 Chambers Street, corner of Broadway, offering the best of Wines, Liquors, Segars, and every other requisite.5 Why was this New York eatery named Magnolia Lunch? Perhaps to signal to sporting crowd that this was a full-service house of sort pleasing to Southerners in New York on business; when Carlisle and partner Silas Chickering purchased saloon in 1842 they advertised fact, suggestively, in New Orleans Daily Picayune of July 16, 1842. …