York Game Research Articles

The Great American Baseball Novel: How Literature Invented the National Pastime

Abstract From 1846, when the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club lost their first game under a consolidated set of rules, transforming the “New York game” into “base ball,” and Walt Whitman, then a roving editor with the Brooklyn Eagle, observed neighborhood kids engaged in “a certain game of ball,” to the rise of television and football, literature elevated baseball from another bat-and-ball game to a national institution, a distorted mirror through which the nation identified itself. MLB commissioners and novelists have described baseball as a form of writing and as the literature of their childhoods because the game first achieved national status through writing and literature. From Whitman to Bernard Malamud, American authors turned to baseball to determine the health of the nation, encouraging their readers to invest in the health of the game. First came the great American baseball novel, then the national pastime.Baseball nationalism needed the hard sell of sportswriters and the soft touch of literature.

Baseball, Modernity, and Science Discourse in British Popular Culture, 1871–1883

AbstractBaseball in the United Kingdom has long been considered a contradiction in terms, especially during the nineteenth century, with both the 1874 National Association Tour and the 1888 Spalding Tour viewed as financial and cultural failures in a sophisticated consumer society already dominated by cricket. This article takes a fresh look at evidence from the 1870s and 1880s in order to challenge this perspective. It presents the 1874 Tour as a transnational success, articulating shared Anglo-American assumptions about modernity, science, and social progress. This discourse informed a broad process of technology transfer involving new sources of industrial power as well as the corporal techniques of modern sport. The article also places the tour in the context of a unique historical phenomenon: the transatlantic diffusion of an early modern English game to the United Kingdom as the New York Game, a modern American sport. Previous accounts of the tour focused on a few selected reports, confirming American views of its financial failings and British disinterest in its exhibitions. When considered in light of hundreds of British accounts from the 1870s, including unexamined evidence of the first British baseball clubs less than two years after the tour, this perspective becomes unsustainable.

Study of Physics Learning in Indoor Games at Transmart Surabaya

This study aims to examine the learning of physics in indoor games at Transmart Surabaya. This study uses a qualitative descriptive method, namely by using a documentation study. The target of this research is a modern game that applies the concept of physics contained in the Studio Mini Transmart Surabaya. The method of data collection carried out in this study used the observation method. In this study, it was concluded that some of the games contained in Trans Studio Mini Transmart Rungkut, Surabaya, namely roller coaster games, new york (rotating swing), sky rider, mini electric car, mini train, and bumper car applied several physics concepts. The roller coaster game applies the concept of mechanical energy. In the new york game, the physics concept is applied, namely the concept of rotational motion and harmonic motion. In the game sky rider applies the concept of physics, namely the force of gravity, rotational and circular motion and the moment of inertia. In the mini electric car game, the concept of physics is applied, namely the concept of displacement, velocity, acceleration and friction. In the mini train game, the physics concept is applied, namely acceleration and friction. As well as in the bumper car game applying the concepts of physics, namely acceleration, collision and the law of conservation of momentum.

A Permanent American Institution

Fittingly, the first to be noticed playing the New York Game in 1 863 were Union sol- diers stationed at Port Royal, South Carolina, according to a note in the New York Times of January 9: New-Year's day was observed by the soldiers in a few of the camps here and at Beaufort by target-shooting, games of base-ball, and the usual amusing sports of climbing a greased pole, wheelbarrow races, sack races, c it had been sold, and would become a brickyard. This left the clubs scrambling for new sites. The Athletic found new grounds at 17th and Masters. Wilkes' Spirit of the Times noted on March 28 that the New York Base Ball Club, which played only intramurally, would rent out its grounds at 63rd Street and Third Avenue (now about the only ones on Manhattan Island) for two days in the week, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted on March 24 that in addition to the Union Grounds, another Brooklyn skating pond, the Capitoline, would host baseball. …

"The Inauguration of This Noble and Manly Game Among Us"

It is commonplace to label baseball America's national pastime. As early as 1856, local York City journals were referring to base as the national or the national Yet for a pastime claimed national, baseball seemed to many contemporaries what the game was often called: the New York Northerners, and especially those in York, formulated the rules, proclaimed their teams champions of America, and assumed the authority to organize the game. This regional bias grew so obvious that the organization of a Association of Base Ball Players in 1858 prompted even the York Clipper to object:... the convention appears to be rather sectional and selfish in its proceedings, than otherwise, there having been no invitations sent to Clubs in other States.... National indeed! Why the association is a mere local organization, bearing no State existence even-to say nothing of a National one.1What is perhaps more curious is that modern historians have perpetuated this bias. Peter Morris's magisterial But Didn't We Have Fun? follows, in great detail, the history of baseball's pioneer era, 1843-1870. Yet in its 286 pages there are only four brief mentions of baseball in the southern half of the United States. doings of the otherwise obscure Fort Wayne, Indiana, Kekionga baseball team occupies more space than baseball in the 11 states of the Confederacy. chapter on how The York Becomes America's Game makes no reference to any baseball played in Orleans, Savannah, Macon, or Houston-four cities where organized baseball teams played games prior to the Civil War. John Thorn's Baseball in the Garden of Eden chapter on postwar baseball mentions the South only in the context of a northern team (the Brooklyn Atlantics) planning a southern tour. book that might, at first glance, seem most on point, William Ryczek's When Johnny Came Sliding Home, mentions Southern clubs on only two pages, and merely to point out a few observations by (inevitably) Yorkers on how baseball could bring together the once-warring sections of the country. Ryczek's Baseball's First Inning: A History of the National Pastime through the Civil War, spends little space on prewar Southern baseball, and claims (incorrectly) that New Orleans was the only southern city to embrace any type of ball claims.2 In fact, at least six cities (New Orleans, Macon, Norfolk, Augusta, Galveston, and Houston) fielded baseball clubs prior to the war.3With historians the caliber of Thorn, Ryczek, and Morris, this regional bias is doubtless not deliberate, but rather the product of the lack of available sources on early Southern baseball. York City press, and especially the sporting world press, largely ignored the South (and indeed ignored the U.S. 20 miles outside Manhattan), and with these Northern journals as primary sources, it is not surprising that historians have treated baseball as a Northern phenomenon. It is time to correct this bias. To paraphrase Joseph Schumpeter, telling the story of early baseball while omitting Southern baseball is like staging Romeo and Juliet without Juliet. And with the aid of Southern newspapers, newly digitized, this article will try to tell this hitherto untold story of the spread of baseball in the 11 Southern states that formed the Confederacy.4 As will be seen, even prior to the Civil War, baseball had spread to several Southern cities, at the same time as baseball had migrated from its York City roots to such Midwest cities as Milwaukee and Chicago.Southern Baseball Prior to the Civil WarAs with the rest of the country, bat-and-ball games had been played in the South for decades prior to the Civil War, and prior to the popularization of the York game that most historians credit as the beginning of modern baseball. Abundant references have been found to bat-and-ball games in North Carolina, Georgia, and elsewhere in the 1820s and 1830s, games with names such as town-ball or old cat. …

1845.4 Baseball in Brooklyn, 1845-1870

The Base Ball match between eight Brooklyn players, and eight players of York, came off on Friday [October 10] on the grounds of the Union Star Cricket Club. The Yorkers were singularly unfortunate in scoring but one run in their three innings. Brooklyn scored 22 and of course came off winners.1This short 1845 newspaper account, lacking any of the dramatic flair later brought to baseball writing by the likes of Henry Chadwick, represents the earliest record of an organized baseball game in Brooklyn. The result points to a game by the Knickerbocker Club's rules, which called for a winning score of 21 runs, and it put Brooklyn ballplayers at the top of the new game at its very dawn.We know less about earlier local forms of the game, but they had been played in Brooklyn for decades. Late in the century, a former mayor recalled that went to school in 1820-1, to one Samuel Seabury, on Hicks street.... I also attended Mr. Hunt's school, over George Smith's wheelwright shop in Fulton street, opposite High. Foot racing and base ball used to be favorite games in those days.2Colonel John Oakey, who took his schooling at Erasmus Hall in Flatbush from 1837, recalled the ballplaying there:Erasmus Hall academy had a fine play ground surrounding it. Here John Oakey and his school fellows played many a game of three base ball. The boys who played were called binders, pitchers, catchers, and outers, and in order to put a boy out it was necessary to strike him with the ball. On one occasion John Oakey threw the ball from the second base and put another boy out. The boy ... went down in a heap, but instantly sprang to his feet and cried out, It didn't hit me; it didn't hit me. But John Oakey and all the boys knew better. For a week after that boy had a lame back, but he would never acknowledge that the ball did it.3While Brooklyn and York sides played twice more in October 1845, records of organized base ball in Brooklyn disappear between these matches and the emergence in 1854 of the Excelsior Club of South Brooklyn, a baseball team organized by the members of the Jolly Young Bachelors social club. With the founding in 1855 of the Eckford Club of Greenpoint, and the Atlantic Club of Bedford, Brooklyn's triumvirate of great baseball clubs was complete. These teams would dominate baseball for more than a decade.In fact, by 1856 there were already more interclub games being played in Brooklyn than anywhere else in the York area,4 and the New York Game had, in one sense, skipped town. (Brooklyn was a separate political entity until 1898.) During the years when baseball became America's game, it was played best in Brooklyn.When the National Association of Base Ball Players formed in 1857, the explosive rise of the game in Brooklyn was evident. Nine of the sixteen founding clubs were from that city, and Brooklyn men would soon take a large role in NABBP governance. When the Association first recognized a formal champion in 1859, the Atlantic Club claimed the title, sporting a record for the year of eleven wins against just one loss.5Over the next few years, Brooklyn teams would monopolize competition for the championship, which was passed along to a club that defeated the incumbent champion in a best-of-three match. In 1860, the Excelsiors, having poached the devastating pitching ability of young James Creighton from the Star Club, bid strongly to wrest the title from the Atlantics. On July 19, 1860, the South Brooklyn club hosted the Atlantic and took its signal victory in the first game of the series, 28-4. The Brooklyn Eagle described the spectacle the following day:For a month or more the Base Ball public has been alive with interest concerning this great match.... There could not have been less than five or six thousand persons present. The greatest excitement prevailed, and betting stood at 10 to 8 on the Atlantic Club. The Atlantics were not up to their usual play in any one point, missing balls on the fly and bound, overthrowing and misbatting. …

1845.1 The Knickerbocker Rules — and the Long History of the One-Bounce Fielding Rule

If a ball be struck, or tipped, and caught, either flying or on the first bound, it is a hand out.2The famous Knickerbocker rules of 1845 may not be comprehensive enough to fully define a playable game, and may not even be baseball's first written rules,3 but they did indeed survive, and they give us the first coherent picture of the roots of the New York game.At first taken as evidence of the Knickerbocker Club's knack for inventive genius, the 13 playing rules have recently been freshly reconsidered in an evolutionary context, and their reputation for originality has taken several hits.4 At this point, it appears that only three rules that endure today lack clear precedent in prior safe-haven ballgames.5 These are (1) the tag-out rule, which supplanted the plugging of base-runners to put them out6; (2) the characteristic 90-degree territory defining fair hits; and (3) the three-out inning. The three-strike rule, for example, was already in use in predecessor games-as was the dropped-third strike rule that freed the batter who whiffed to run the bases. (Such familiar modern icons as the nine-inning game, the nine-player team and the ninety-foot basepath came along more than a decade later.)It seems ironic, when discussing rule innovations, that what may have been early game's most contentious rule (the issue remained unsettled for four decades) was perhaps actually the most ancient aspect of ballplay. The basic fly rule for putting batters out seems to have been a part of ballplaying since, at least, the earliest accounts of English stoolball and cricket, centuries ago.What Know About the Prehistory of the Bound RuleThe Knickerbocker Club's rule 12, cited above, includes a provision that to baseball fans seems quaint, if not alien, today; a batter could be retired if a fair or foul hit is caught after it bounces once.There has been, until recently, reasonable speculation that this provision was another Knickerbocker innovation, and why it appeared. Over time, the weight and dimension of the ball had been evolving toward that of the cricket ball, making it heavier-and, reportedly, harder. One might surmise, then, that a fielder's hands might be better protected from pain and injury if he were afforded the option of letting the ball bounce once, and then to field it once it was spent. A closer look, however, reveals some evidence that the one-bounce rule was known even before the New York game took shape.The bound rule actually has a solid place in ball sports-and not just in the children's game of jacks and in assorted playground fungo games. It is seen today mostly in tennis and related sports like handball and squash and table tennis, where the objective is to return a ball before it bounces twice, an event that would abruptly add one to the opponent's score. For many centuries the bound rule has been an essential part of the old form of tennis, played long before modern lawn tennis was invented (keeping the bound rule) in 1873. Very early forms of collegiate football in the United States, and rugby-rules football in England, also included rules that specified what a player could and could not do when catching a ball on the bound.7But was the bound rule also part of earlier safe-haven ballgames? One baseball pioneer certainly thought so. Describing the rules set for the new Gotham Base Ball Club in 1837, William Wheaton wrote, a half-century later: We abandoned the old rule of putting out on the first bound and confined it to fly catching.8 (If true, of course, this means that the Knickerbocker Club had actually decided to reverse the Gotham Club's decision, and had reverted to the bound rule.) A second pioneer agrees: Knickerbocker mainstay Doc Adams seems to have suggested that one reason that players still liked the bound rule in 1860 was that it was a familiar feature of their boyhood ballgames.9The direct evidence on broad prior use of a bound rule is suggestive, but it is not overwhelming. …

1831.1 The Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia

A small distance from the woods, I beheld a party of young men, (the majority of whom I afterwards distinguished to be Market street merchants,) and who styled themselves the Club, a title well answering to its name by the manner in which the party amused themselves in the recreant pleasure of ball....1The Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia was by far the longest-lived baseball club of the amateur era. Its origins go as far back as 1831, when a group of Philadelphians in their twenties gathered to play Two years later they merged with another group, which was loosely organized and went by the name Olympic. The combined group kept this name and adopted a formal constitution.2 The Olympics were still playing in the 1880s, with the last record of the club as a going concern dating to 1889.The Olympics crossed the Delaware River to play in Camden, Jersey. There is a persistent rumor that this was due to blue laws prohibiting play in Philadelphia, but there is no evidence for such an ordinance. It is more likely that they were driven by the same imperative that would have York ballplayers crossing the Hudson River to Hoboken. There was not yet even rudimentary public transportation. Urban growth pushed open fields beyond easy reach of the center city. Camden was a rural village with ample open space, and conveniently accessible by ferry. There they would remain until just before the Civil War, by which time passenger railroads gave access to outlying regions.The new club had the features that would become the classic model of a baseball club. The early clubs typically were urban organizations composed of young men of the professional and mercantile class. They held sedentary jobs, leading to a desire for exercise. They wished to take their exercise in a social context with their peers. They had the flexibility to make time for the activity, and the financial resources to support it.The Olympics fit easily within the broad pattern of baseball clubs. But the lingering question remains: Do they really count as a baseball club? Traditional histories consider the Knickerbockers of York, founded in 1845, the first ballclub, with the Olympics tending to be dismissed as a town ball club that did not switch to authentic baseball until 1860.There is a kernel of truth here. Modern baseball derives from the version that arose in York City in the late 1830s or 1840s. This New York began to spread outward in the late 1850s. The Olympics switched to the York game in 1860. But what did they switch from?Baseball was brought to America from England in colonial times, played as an informal, unorganized game. It was part of our common English cultural heritage. But this is not to say that is was played in a single version, or went by a single name. Versions were local, in the way that informal children's games even today vary from one locale to the next. It also went by different names, varying by region.3In York the game retained the old English name of base ball. In Philadelphia it went by a newer name: town ball. The origin of this name is unknown. (The common explanation that town ball was so called because it was played at meetings is post hoc speculation with no supporting evidence.) It was the usual term through a wide swath of America, from Pennsylvania west through the Ohio valley and throughout the South. It is entirely likely that the term arose on the eastern seaboard and spread west with white settlement, but there is no direct evidence of this. The earliest citations appear in the late 1830s, appearing within a few years of each other in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Louisiana.4Another misunderstanding is the common assertion that townball was the ancestor of baseball. This misconception arose in the later 19th century, when old-timers in areas such as the midwest recalled that town ball (meaning the old local form of baseball) came before base ball (meaning the York game). …

"Your Valuabal Paper"

TO FIELD SPORTSMEN, CRICKETERS, BASE BALL CLUBS, PROPRIETORS OF COURSES, AND OTHERS,-We shall at all times feel under obligations to those gentlemen who will furnish us authentic accounts of all kinds of field-sports, running, and trotting, and barter-racing; cricketing, base ball matches, or accounts of a successful hunt, rowing matches, etc., in which they are participants, or which come immediately under their notice.1The above call, printed at the beginning of the Out-Door Sports section of the Sunday Mercury, was answered regularly in the period immediately before the Civil War by aficionados of the New York Game, which was taking the old informal game of base ball to new heights of public interest as a sport for participants and spectators. Going beyond the call for reports, William Cauldwell-at first a reporter, later coeditor and publisher-attended the week's most important local matches and, beginning in 1853, provided game accounts and box scores that were published.2 Of most importance for the present project, the Sunday Mercury was offered as a venue for answering readers' questions about the game: general information, etiquette, and points of play not covered by the sketchy set of existing rules.Published weekly in New York 1839-1897, the Sunday Mercury flourished for decades. Its circulation in the years before the Civil War is estimated at 145,000.3 Raised to prominence in the 1850s by editor and publisher Samuel Nicholls (or at least so claimed in his 1854 obituary),4 the Mercury adopted the rising New York Game as a continuing feature, a process in which it was aided by the presence of Cauldwell, who with Sylvester S. Southworth and Horace P. Whitney succeeded Nicholls as editors and publishers. Cauldwell was among the early settlers in Morrisania, the southeastern area of the modern Bronx. As a member of the group that founded the Union Base Ball Club of Morrisania in 1855, Cauldwell is credited with helping to bring the new game to the area.5 He continued through the 1860s as a club officer and delegate to the national conventions of the National Association of Base Ball Players; he is listed in the 1860 Beadle's Dime Base Ball Player as a member of the NABBP Rules Committee. In 1867 he made the leap from local politics (he was a member of the Board of Supervisors of the village of West Farms 1857-1873) to state office, as a state assemblyman and senator.It is a testament to the Mercury's reputation as a baseball organ that in the period covered (April-December 1859 and May-October 1860), baseball reports and game accounts were received from as far away as San Francisco and Toronto, and from remote baseball outposts like Milwaukee, St. Louis, Louisville, and New Orleans. Inquiries came from across New York State and northern New Jersey.The Mercury's reader correspondents were in turn a cross-section of the baseball community before the Civil War: individual junior and senior players, club officials, former players, umpires, spectators, and on one occasion a certain H. C. who wrote in to urge umpires to enforce the rules more thoroughly. (A suspicion that H.C. stood for Henry Chadwick follows naturally.) Correspondents used initials or pseudonyms, unless writing on behalf of their clubs.The attraction of examining contemporary correspondence from primarily unknown individuals is that of drawing aside a curtain, particularly when previous views have been filtered so largely through Chadwick's viewpoint. However praiseworthy Chadwick's goals and objectives for the game, his single-minded pursuit of them did not lend itself to the illumination for posterity of the entire and frequently variant baseball landscape. The Sunday Mercury correspondence thus represents an opportunity to experience the pre-Civil War game at the level of its participants.Cauldwell gives the impression that selectivity in publishing items was purely a function of the amount of space available (game accounts and box scores always took precedence). …

Origins of the New York Game

This article includes excerpts from the author's forthcoming book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden, slated for publication by Simon & Schuster in Spring 2011.I have written elsewhere, including in this journal,1 about the Massachusetts Game of baseball and the Philadelphia Game, and why, despite their abundant virtues, they succumbed to the onslaught of the New York Game. To sum up without getting bogged down in playing rules and field configurations, let me say that the Massachusetts Game, better termed round ball, was livelier and called for more skill in all aspects-batting, fielding, throwing, and strategy. The Philadelphia Game was organized along club lines before any in New York or New England; however, played with 20-foot baselines, it may have lacked the scale that would appeal to an expanding nation.The more refined-or less countrified-New York Game, on the other hand, gave promise of utility, of somehow becoming, to those with deep-seated England Envy, cricket. And it was this game that may be seen on the playing fields of America today, thanks largely to the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, notably in their rules adopted on September 23, 1845. Or so the story goes.No student of the game any longer credits Alexander Cartwright or the Knicks of 1845 with inventing a game of nine innings, or sides of nine men. The best that Charles A. Peverelly, writing in 1866, could say for Cartwright's role was this:In the spring of 1845 Mr. Alex. J. Cartwright, who had become an enthusiast in the game, one day upon the field proposed a regular organization, promising to obtain several recruits. His proposal was acceded to, and Messrs. W. R. Wheaton, Cartwright, D. F. Curry, E. R. Dupignac, Jr., and W. H. Tucker, formed themselves into a board of recruiting officers, and soon obtained names enough to make a respectable show.2The 90-foot basepath, despite some hardy advocates, has been another Cartwright inspiration on the run, as several scholars, I first among them,3 have suggested that there are good reasons to suppose that the 1845 Knickerbockers played their game with basepaths of only 75 feet. William R. Wheaton's recollections of playing baseball with the Gothams of New York in 1837 cast further doubt on the Knickerbocker claim to primacy among ball clubs. Among the several revelations: the Gothams formed in 1837; Wheaton recorded the rules in a book; these rules included a ban on soaking; and the Knickerbockers were formed by those who found the expanding number of Gotham and New York Ball Club members to include too many of the wrong sort.4So, then, what innovation is left for Cartwright and the Knickerbockers of '45 that might justify their enduring laurel? Elimination of soaking? The concept of foul ground? No, even these must be removed from their list of innovations. If the Knickerbockers are to retain an important place in baseball history, it will be for their commitment to order and organization, and to the formality and stature that had long been attached to cricket, on both sides of the Atlantic.Let's take a few steps back before returning to 1845 and our Diedrich Knickerbockers, as grandiosely inventive of baseball's history as Washington Irving's narrator was for that of New York.Even while anointing Abner Doubleday in the final report of the Special Base Ball Commission on the game's origins, in accordance with the facts as they had been presented to him, chairman A.G. Mills wrote, until my perusal of this testimony, my own belief had been that our game of Base Ball, substantially as played to-day, originated with the Knickerbocker club of New York, and it was frequently referred to as the 'New York Ball Game.' Furthermore, he concluded:I am also much interested in the statement made by Mr. [Duncan F.] Curry, of the pioneer Knickerbocker club, and confirmed by Mr. [Thomas] Tassie, of the famous old Atlantic club of Brooklyn, that a diagram, showing the ball field laid out substantially as it is to-day, was brought to the field one afternoon by a Mr. …

"Old Fashioned Base Ball" in Western New York, 1825-1860

It appears that York of baseball, first codified by Knickerbockers in 1845, came to western New York State in mid-1850s. Syracuse Standard published version of Knickerbocker rules (without further explanation) under headline Ball-Rules for Playing in May 1855.1 In Rochester, new game may have been first played at about same time, and thus about two years before NABBP formed in New York City.2 In Buffalo, Niagaras in 1857 became first team to play New York game.3 But what game (or games) might have been played in region in preceding years?4We have recently identified 21 newspaper references to what was commonly called baseball in Syracuse,5 Rochester, and Buffalo. Unhappily, none of these accounts fully describes this earlier or lays out definitively how its rules differed from rules for New York However, they do contain several clues, and together, they offer at least dim outline of how earlier ballgame was played.Only one of 21 articles explicitly connects game with species of game that we understand today: game. In August 1859, Syracuse Standard reported that a game of or Massachusetts was played at Cazenovia on Saturday.6 Otherwise, coverage used such informal phrasings as the old-fashioned game of Base Ball, and base played in 'old fashioned' style. A second indication that old-fashioned game may have resembled Massachusetts game is found in an 1862 advertisement in Rochester paper: firm of Steele and Avery listed among its wares York Regulation Size balls [and] Massachusetts Balls.7 One surmises that there was at that time still demand for older-style ball, perhaps by players of old fashioned game.Old-fashioned took two forms in reports we found from late 1850s through 1870s. Before Civil War, it was still played competitively-as it may have been played in earlier decades-among local clubs. After War, it was most often played in throwback games intended, in part, to demonstrate how game had been played in earlier days; these games were, essentially, among some of earliest vintage ball games.8Competitive Games of Old Fashioned Baseball, 1858-1860In all three cities, it appears, some clubs initially resolved to cling to some or all characteristics of game up to outbreak of Civil War, and perhaps thereafter. In July 1858, three Rochester clubs expressed their loyalty to older West End Base Ball Club declared it would have nothing to do with new fangled tossing, but throw with wholesome movement, in regular old-fashioned style.9 Two other clubs, Washington and Union, soon made similar statements.10 All three of these clubs, incidentally, were composed of younger players, some as young as 12 years of age.If those who were inclined to stay with game needed rallying cry, they could have found it in Buffalo Morning Express in 1859. That paper's editors reported on an editorial from New York Tribune that mocked New York game as small potato that was worthy only of boys of ten years of age. The only genuine game, Tribune declared, was Massachusetts game.11In Syracuse area, we find evidence that old-fashioned game indeed retained popularity until start of Civil War. In July 1859 an style match was played between teams of picked from Onondaga and Madison counties-in effect, an all-star game between two adjacent counties.In March 1860, Syracuse-area Geddes Ball Players issued this public challenge in Syracuse Journal: We will raise ten men in this town that will play any ten men in city, at old-fashioned game of Base Ball [italics in original], game to be no less than 75, nor more than 100 tallies. …

The Magnolia, the Knickerbocker, and the Age of Flash

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. …

A "Yaller Kivered" Game: New York–Style Baseball Comes to Racine

A “Yaller Kivered” Game:New York–Style Baseball Comes to Racine Michael Epstein (bio) While the old game is manly and full of life, health and vigor and pleasing to behold, the new "yaller kivered" game is indolent, sickly, puerile, effeminate, and disgusting to behold. Racine Journal, August 1867 Introduction By the early 1860s the New York variety of baseball was well established in the large cities of the Northeast and was already beginning to reach many small towns and villages. In the post–Civil War period, the New York game began to rapidly spread throughout the nation. Returning veterans, tours by well-known eastern clubs, and the increasing publication of baseball manuals all served as important seeding mechanisms for the new game. In his book, Early Baseball and the Rise of the National League, Tom Melville points to the quote above as an example of the chilly reception the New York game sometimes received when first introduced into areas where older folk versions of baseball were still prevalent.1 This particular condemnation of the game was attributed to an "old town ball player" in Racine, Wisconsin. I was much intrigued by the old town baller's statement and decided to delve a bit further into this subject to see if I could provide some context. Who was this old town ball player? Why did he dislike the new game so? Was his view of the New York game common in Racine at that time? I went back to the original article in the Racine Journal and soon discovered that the author was none other than the owner and editor of the newspaper, Colonel William L. Utley. So, who was this Utley fellow anyway? [End Page 10] The Colonel's Journal William Utley was born in Monson, Massachusetts, in 1814; but a few years later, his family moved to rural Ohio. At age twenty-one Utley moved to New York in an attempt to better his educational and financial status but seems to have had little success there. He later journeyed to Racine and, in 1844, established himself there as a portrait painter and musician. During this time he became an ardent supporter of the Free-Soil movement and launched his political career in 1848, when he was elected Marshall of Racine. He was elected to the legislature in 1850 and served in various political offices until the onset of the Civil War. Commissioned as a colonel in 1862, Utley commanded the Twenty-second Wisconsin Volunteer Infantry and became a figure of national note when he refused to turn over a fugitive slave who had taken refuge in his camp. Utley later became a prisoner of the confederate army; and after his release in 1864, he returned to Racine. There, in 1865, he and his son Hamilton purchased the Racine Journal and ran the newspaper as a weekly until 1873.2 The Racine Journal was perhaps best known for William Utley's staunch Republicanism as well as his "spicy" editorial style. The Milwaukee Sentinel observed that, "It is widely read and widely quoted, chiefly for the sharp hits got in by the Colonel, whose trenchant pen slashes both this way and that, and cuts both friend and foe, provided they have any ungainly excrescences that need cropping off."3 Early Baseball In Racine While the colonel was editor in chief, his son, Hamilton, was responsible for editing the local page; and it is here where we find the newspaper's first mention of baseball in September of 1866. Base Ball—This very interesting game, which is so popular in this country, is being played every evening upon the West Park by the Racine Club. Base Ball is a noble game—very exciting—great deal of fun playing it—it is enjoyed hugely—result of first night's play is as follows: Crosby, hurt his hand; Upham, sprained his ankle; Hall, so lame had to be assisted off the ground; Tapley, thumb out of joint; Martindale, Shepard and others, lame all over. We were there, made a splendid short stop with forefinger, been using arnica since.4 The article goes on to mention that another club had formed in the...

Knickerbocker Base Ball: The Birth and Infancy of the Modern Game

Although he seems not to have given it much thought at time, pioneer baseball writer Henry Chadwick eventually came to regard first-ever convention of clubs-in 1857 in York-as a pivotal moment in game's history. With this convention, Chadwick wrote in 1881, base may be said to date its origin as a regular established sport, with authorized rules to govern it. Before 1857, he recalled, base was played under club rules merely, those of Knickerbocker Club of York prevailing in that city. Different rules governed clubs in England and Philadelphia, but after 1857 convention the 'New York game' began to obtain an extended popularity, and eventually it swallowed up Town Ball, and England game, and ten years afterward York rules became national.1Few baseball historians have accorded this first convention prominence Chadwick gave it; but its effect may be even greater than Chadwick supposed. To grasp its import, we need to see where baseball of 1857 came from-to look back to birth of New York in organization of Knickerbocker Base Ball Club.The baseball we know today traces its rules in a direct and undisputed line back through 1857 convention to founding of Knickerbocker Club on September 23, 1845. Baseball before that date is wreathed in uncertainty, but what we do know is enough to show transformative character of Knickerbockers' first rules.The name base ball and published descriptions of baseball-like bat-and-ball games date back at least to 1796, when a German compilation of games for youth included a detailed account of das englische Base-ball.2 From 1820s on, English and American books of outdoor games for described a game variously called rounders, base ball, and goal ball.3 But early descriptions were just that-descriptions; instructions on how to game. One of distinctive features of Knickerbocker rules of 1845 is that they constitute earliest extant codification of rules for playing baseball.The Knickerbockers' game and its rules transformed baseball from informal for to formal sport for adults. To call pre-Knickerbocker baseball play for children is not to say game was never played by adults. It was. A number of Yorkers played baseball for years before Knickerbockers organized, and there is ample evidence of early bat-and-ball by adults.4 What is distinctive about Knickerbockers' first rules is that they stabilized and (as it turned out) permanently institutionalized baseball as an adult game.5The very fact of club's formal organization gave it a substance and visibility that informal could never achieve. Although baseball historians like Robert Henderson and David Block have shown that development of baseball has been an evolutionary process,6 it is also useful to employ a different analogy: to look at formal organization of Knickerbocker Club as birth of baseball after long gestation. With club established and its rules set down in black and white, everyone could see game more clearly-could ponder rules and observe regularly scheduled club exercise, with its combination of familiarity and uniqueness that made it attractive for adults. With birth of Knickerbockers baseball gained a public face.Important among Knickerbockers' innovations, 1845 rules narrowed focus of by creating foul territory7 and forbade soaking (the practice of retiring a runner by hitting him with a thrown ball).8 These new rules promoted a less helter-skelter, more mannerly (read: more adult) form of exercise. Another rule lengthened distance between bases at least 20-35 percent, further distinguishing playing field from those of children's games.9The founding Knickerbockers did not intend their game as mere entertainment- for adults-but neither did they want it to be seriously competitive. …

Two Roads Diverged

When I first pondered what the subject of my keynote speech at the 2006 NINE conference might be, I came up with Present at the Creation: Baseball's Pioneering Clubs, 1830-50. That's what attendees saw in their programs. I had intended to talk about five clubs that made the game grow along certain lines and about three individuals whose vast contributions remain largely uncredited: William Rufus Wheaton, Daniel Lucius Adams, and Lewis F. Wadsworth. These five clubs were to have been the Olympics of Philadelphia, whose history and whose game are so little understood, and four clubs from New York--the Gotham, also known as the Washington for their primacy among New York ball clubs; the New York Base Ball Club, whose membership was for some time in the 1830s and '40s identical with that of the Gotham; the Eagle, which formed as a ball-playing club in 1840 but like the Gotham did not adopt baseball for several years; and of course the Knickerbocker, who have received too much credit for a hundred years now. Yes, that's the talk I was going to deliver. In the days prior to the mid-March event, however, I decided on another path. Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both And be one traveler, long I stood And looked down one as far as I could To where it bent in the undergrowth.... These roads are named in current histories the New York game and the Massachusetts game, but that nomenclature simplifies much and explains little. In the course of research for my forthcoming book, Baseball in the Garden of Eden, it occurred to me that baseball's development might well have proceeded differently at a number of critical junctures, and the game might not have emulated the Knickerbocker or New York game model. Along the way, I refined my thinking about formerly revered characters such as Abner Doubleday, Alexander Cartwright, and Albert G. Spalding and came to appreciate the only recently noted achievements of Daniel Lucius Adams, William R. Wheaton, and Lewis Fenn Wadsworth. This tale of two roads and four locales provides an opportunity to discuss quoted matter and some seemingly overbold assertions. An organized American game that we have reason to call baseball starts in several places, more or less, at once. This evening I will not talk about Pittsfield, Massachusetts, with which I have come to be associated for my uncovering of its 1791 bylaw, the unique feature of which is its mention of baseball by that name, set in the context of different ball games such as cricket and wicket. I have come to see four other signposts as better guides to telling the tale of how baseball came to be: Baltimore; Philadelphia; New York; and a cluster of towns in central Massachusetts that includes Grafton, Upton, and Medway. Historians have credited the Knickerbockers with the invention of baseball for these reasons: first, they were organized as a ball club; second, they created a written constitution and rules for play; third, they devised the important innovation of foul territory; and fourth, they eliminated the practice of retiring a runner by plugging him with the ball between bases. As to ninety feet, nine men, and nine innings--the accomplishments engraved on his Hall of Fame plaque--forget about them; it is clear now that Alexander Cartwright's Knickerbockers of 1845 originated none of these modern features. I stripped the brevets from Cartwright's shoulders in a speech at the Smithsonian in July 2005, when I said: The Knickerbocker game during Cartwright's tenure (he departed for the Gold Rush early in 1849) was almost never played with nine men, but instead as few as seven or as many as eleven; the number of innings was unspecified; the length of the baselines was imprecise. Sometimes referred to as an engineer even though he was a bank teller and then a book seller, Cartwright's scientific mind was further credited for laying out the game on a diamond rather than a square. …

Chapman's 'The Economic Value of Birds to the State' State of New York Forest, Fish and Game Commission: The Economic Value of Birds to the State Frank M. Chapman

Chapman's 'The Economic Value of Birds to the State' State of New York Forest, Fish and Game Commission: The Economic Value of Birds to the State Frank M. Chapman