Baseball

Sources

Beginnings. Notwithstanding the myth that Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York, the modern game is not the invention of an individual but the product of an evolutionary process. American children played various versions of the game now known as baseball as early as the eighteenth century. All such games—variously known as “barn ball,” “four-old-cat,” “base,” and “base ball”—entailed hitting a ball with a stick, and most could trace their origins to the English games of rounders or cricket. The most popular version of the game in the northeastern states was derived from rounders and called “town ball,” probably because it took place on town-meeting days. Towns or villages often played against one another, and the rules varied considerably with the circumstances and the players.

Town Ball. As few as eight or nine could play on a side, but some town ball games boasted as many as twenty or thirty men on a team. The most commonly used ball was made of string, stitched down to keep it from unraveling, or else of handsewn leather stuffed with wool, bits of rubber, or string. Town-ball players wore no gloves, but the soft handmade balls rarely hurt, no matter how hard they were thrown. The game was played on a square infield without foul lines. Since any hit was fair, a batter had only to make contact with the ball to put it in play. He then had to touch the poles staked at the bases in their proper order to score a run, but the runner was allowed to run into the outfield and wait until the opposition was distracted to continue his circuit—a tactic called “lurking.” A runner could only be called out by being “plugged” or “soaked,” that is, hit by the thrown ball. Sides changed whenever someone was thrown out, but scores often ran high. Although town ball had begun as a casual pastime, by the end of the 1830s the game was becoming more serious and more competitive.

The New York Game. An important step in the evolution of baseball, or the “New York game,” as it was soon to be called, was taken in 1842, when nine prosperous businessmen and lawyers banded together to form the exclusive New York Knickerbocker Baseball Club. These men were dedicated to turning the sport into a “gentleman’s” activity. They practiced seriously, wore similar clothing—blue trousers, white shirts, and straw hats—and, led by Alexander J. Cartwright, gradually changed and codified the rules. They decided that nine players would play on a diamond-shaped field and that three outs would constitute an inning. In an important change from rounders, Cartwright described how a base-runner must be tagged and wrote “that in no instance is a ball to be thrown at him.” Other rules—such as the setting of twenty-one “aces” (runs) as the goal of the game, the requirement that the pitcher throw underhand, and calling a batter out if his hit ball was caught on the first bounce—would be changed as the game developed.

Elysian Fields. The Knickerbocker’s first baseball game against another team was played on 19 June 1846 in a meadow in Hoboken called the “Elysian fields,” where they lost 23-1 to the New York Nine. Gradually, other baseball clubs or fraternities formed in the city, composed mostly of clerks from banks, shops, and count-inghouses, but there were also clubs of policemen, firemen, schoolteachers, bartenders, actors, doctors, and clergymen. Interest in the game grew as clubs began to schedule contests against rivals. In the years 1849-1851 teams began to create their own colorful and distinctive military-style uniforms. During the 1850s these baseball clubs also organized their own social activities, such as picnics, dances, and formal dinners.

Organization. The popularity of the game led the Knickerbockers to call a convention in May 1857, where it was decided that Cartwright’s rules be modified so that nine innings rather than twenty-one runs determine the length of the game. A second convention on 10 March 1858 saw the creation of the sport’s first league, the National Association of Base Ball Players. The twenty-five-member teams would become less and less exclusive as competition intensified and gambling on games became more widespread. The first game of the National Association, between rivals from New York and Brooklyn, was also the first occasion of fans paying to see a game. Some fifteen hudnred fans paid fifty cents apiece, the gate paying for the cost of preparing the field that was the Fashion Race Course for baseball.

Soldiers. The Civil War helped to nationalize the game of baseball as New Yorkers spread the gospel of their game. On Christmas Day 1862, for example, a game between two teams organized from the 165th New York Volunteer Infantry attracted forty-thousand spectators. Soldiers often played informal games while waiting in camp for their marching orders. One private from Ohio discussed the popularity of the game in the middle of war. “Over there on the other side of the road,” he wrote home to his family, “is most of our company, playing Bat Ball and perhaps in less than half an hour, they may be called to play a ball game of a more serious nature.” Southern prisoners of war learned the game in northern prisons, and Yankees brought baseball to Confederate prison camps, where they sometimes played with their captors.

Postwar Popularity. Both Confederate and Union soldiers brought the game back home with them after the end of the war and interest grew exponentially. The annual convention of the National Association of 1867 drew representatives from 237 clubs, many of them from mid western states such as Ohio, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana. Baseball was gaining in popularity on college campuses as well, and even a few women began to play. “They are getting up various clubs now for out-of-door exercise,” wrote home Annie Glidden from Vassar College in 1866. “They have a floral society, boat clubs and base-ball clubs. I belong to one of the latter, and enjoy it highly, I can assure you.” Public disapproval soon led to the disbanding of such women’s clubs.

Barnstorming. Although interest in baseball was becoming national, rivalries remained local because few amateur clubs had the resources or desire to travel beyond their regions. The first team to barnstorm the country was a group of government clerks and college students, who represented the Nationals of Washington, D.C. Leaving the capital in July 1867, they toured the Midwest, traveling some three thousand miles and trouncing many of the teams of the region. Washington suffered only one loss on the entire trip, to the Forest City Club of Rockford, Illinois. Pitching that day for Forest City was seventeen-year-old Albert G. Spalding, who had learned the game from a Civil War veteran.

The Red Stockings. One of the teams the Washington Nationals had humiliated on their tour was the Cincinnati Red Stockings. In 1869 a group of Cincinnati businessmen decided that the only way their city could have a team they could be proud of would be to field professional players. Although the practice of nominally amateur clubs surreptitiously paying a few players had been going on for years, the Red Stockings were the first avowedly professional team. Only Charles Gould, the first baseman, was from Cincinnati.

Cincinnati Reigns. The talented, well-disciplined Red Stockings were a revelation to the two hundred thousand fans who saw them that summer of 1869. They traveled nearly twelve thousand miles from coast to coast and played every prominent club without losing a game. The one blemish on their record resulted from their game with the Haymakers of Troy, New York, who quit in the sixth inning with the score knotted at seventeen because of an argument about a foul tip. When the Red Stockings returned to Cincinnati with a record of sixty-five wins and one tie, club president Aaron Champion declared, “I’d rather be president of the Cincinnati Reds than of the United States!” The Red Stockings continued their winning streak into the next season as they toured the deep South. It was finally snapped at ninty-two by the Brooklyn Atlantics, who beat them 8-7 in eleven innings—perhaps the first extra-innings game.

The National Association. The success of the Red Stockings created an appetite among fans for professional play. In a 17 March 1871 meeting in a New York saloon, the representatives of ten teams established the first professional league, the National Association of Professional Baseball Players. The original members included the Boston Red Stockings, Chicago White Stockings, Cleveland Forest Citys, Fort Wayne Kekiongas, New York Mutuais, Philadelphia Athletics, Rockford Forest Citys, Washington Nationals, and the Washington Olympics. The Brooklyn Eckfords, who had attended the meeting, on reflection decided that the new league was too unstable and not worth the $10 required for membership. However, when the Fort Wayne Kekiongas dropped out during the first season, Brooklyn replaced them. Each team was to schedule a best three-of-five series with the others, the team with the best record winning the honor of flying the championship streamer, or “whip pennant,” at its ballpark for the next year. The National Association lasted five years, with the Boston Red Stockings dominating the last four seasons after the Philadelphia Athletics claimed the first pennant.

The National League. With the National Association fast losing public support because of gambling scandals, disreputable fan behavior, and its inability to enforce discipline on its member clubs, Chicago businessman William A. Hulbert saw an opportunity for reforming professional baseball. In 1875 Hulbert had accepted the presidency of the Chicago White Sox of the National Association and set about contracting the best players from the eastern clubs to play for his team, most notably Albert G. Spalding, then the star pitcher for Boston. In discussions with Spalding, Hulbert became convinced that the National Association was too undisciplined to survive and decided to propose a National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, which could exercise much firmer control over the game. Calling a meeting of National Association teams at noon on 2 February 1876 at his suite in the Grand Central Hotel in New York City, Hulbert laid out his plans for a stronger, more disciplined organization: the entrance fee was raised from $10 to $100; membership was limited to cities with populations of at least seventy-five thousand to ensure adequate gate receipts; liquor and bookmaking were banned at ballparks; there would be no tolerance of players involved with gambling. The era of Major League Baseball had begun.

The Early Years. The first years of the National League were especially difficult ones. In the inaugural season the charter clubs—New York, Boston, Hartford, Philadelphia, Chicago, Saint Louis, Cincinnati, and Louisville—played a seventy-game schedule, with Hul-bert’s Chicago team taking the pennant. The stability of the league was threatened, however, when its biggest market clubs, Philadelphia and New York, refused to make the long road trips west to play return games with the clubs that had traveled east. Hulbert saw to it that both teams were expelled. In 1877 Boston won the championship. Four Louisville players were found guilty of taking bribes from gamblers and were suspended for life. Such strong actions ensured the credibility of the National League and its long-term survival. Professional baseball was on its way to becoming a permanent fixture of American life.

CONVENIENT TARGETS

The decimation of buffalo herds by white hunters, railroad crews, settlers, and soldiers is well recorded in the annals of American history. However, the rail passenger in the Great West also contributed to the destruction, Elizabeth Custer, wife of Lt. Col. George A. Custer, described one disturbing scene while traveling by rail in the late 1860s:

I have been on a train when the black, moving mass of buffaloes before us looked as if it stretched on down to the horizon. Everyone went armed in those days, and & [it] was the greatest wonder that more people were not killed, as the wild rush for the windows, and the reckless discharge of rifles and pistols, put every passenger’s life in jeopardy. & I could not for the life of me avoid a shudder when a long line of guns leaning on the backs of seats met my eye as I entered a car. When the sharp shrieks of the train whistle announced a herd of buffaloes the rifles were snatched, and in the struggle to twist around for a good aim out of the narrow window the barrel of the muzzle of the firearm passed dangerously near the ear of any scared woman who had the temerity to travel in those tempestuous days.

Source: Geoffrey C. Ward, The West: An illustrated History (Boston: Little, Brown, 1996), p. 261.

Sources

Dean A. Sullivan, Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995);

Hy Türkin and S. C. Thompson, The Official Encyclopedia of Baseball, eighth edition, revised by Pete Palmer (South Brunswick & New York: A. S. Barnes, 1976);

Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns, Baseball: An Illustrated History (New York: Knopf, 1994).