Last Updated December 1, 2008
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Early Ballplaying in Western and Central New York State
A Working Chronology
Note: This sub-chronology comprises entries from the Protoball Chronology that
pertain to the areas of Central and Western New York State, and area that
extends westward from the Adirondack Mountains and from the Catskills. It was
created in December 2008 from version 10 of the Protoball Chronology. Additional relevant entries may have
been added to any later versions of the full Chronology; not all entries on
this subchronology are necessarily identical to those on the most recently
updated full Chronology. Readers
are encouraged to suggest or perform updates. Please send notes about omissions,
mistakes, typos, etc, to lmccray@mit.edu
-----
1753.1 – NYS Traveler Notes
Dutch boys “Playing Bat and Ball”
Gideon Hawley (1727-1807),
traveling through the area where Binghamton now is, wrote: “even at the
celebration of the Lord’s supper [the Dutch boys] have been playing bat
and ball the whole term around the house of God.”
Hawley, Gideon, Rev. Gideon Hawley’s Journal [Broome County, NY
1753], page 1041. Collection of Tom Heitz. Per Patricia Millen, From Pastime
to Passion [2001], page 2.
1816.1 – Cooperstown
NY Bans Downtown Ballplaying Near Future Site
of HOF
On June
6, 1816, trustees of the Village of Cooperstown, New York enact an
ordinance: “That no person shall play at Ball in Second or West Street (now Pioneer and Main Streets), in this village, under
a penalty of one dollar, for each and every offence.”
Otsego Herald,
number 1107, June 6, 1816,
p. 3. The Herald carried the same notice on June 13, page 3. Note:
those streets intersect is a half block from the Hall of Fame, right?
1820s.18 -- Alums Make Nostalgic
Visit to Syracuse NY Ball Field
David Block reports: “In the lengthy
‘Editor’s Table’ section of this [The Knickerbocker] classic
monthly magazine, the editor described a nostalgic visit that he and two old
school chums had taken to the academy that they had attended near
Syracuse. ‘We went out upon
the once-familiar green, as if it were again ‘play time’, and
called by name upon our old companions to come over once more and play
‘base-ball.’ But they
answered not; they came not! The
old forms and faces were gone; the once familiar voices were
silent.’” Source:
“Editor’s Table,” The Knickerbocker (S. Hueston, New York, 1850), page 298. Contributed by David Block 2/27/2008. The Editor, Lewis Gaylord Clark, was
born in 1810, and attended the Onondaga
Academy. He was thus apparently recalling
ball-playing from sometime in the 1820s.
Caveat: We need better data
on Clark’s age while at the Academy.
1822.5 – Ball-playing
Disallowed in Front of Hobart College Residence
“The rules for Geneva Hall in 1822 are still
preserved. The residents were not
allowed to cut or saw firewood, or play ball or quoits, in front of the building.”
Warren Hunting Smith, Hobart and William Smith; the
History of Two Colleges (Hobart and William Smith
Colleges, Geneva NY,
1972. Provided by Priscilla
Astifan, email of 2/4/2008.
1825c.1 – Thurlow Weed
Plays Base-Ball in Rochester
NY
“A baseball club, numbering nearly fifty
members, met every afternoon during the ball playing season. Though the
members of the club embraced persons between eighteen and forty, it attracted
the young and old. The ball ground, containing some eight or ten acres,
known as Mumford’s meadow . . . . “Weed goes on to list prominent
local professional people, including doctors and lawyers, among the players.
Weed, Thurlow, Life of Thurlow Weed (Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1883), Volume 1, p.
203. Per RH ref # 159.
1825c.12
– “How the Game of Ball Was Played”
Writing in 1866, a man (“W”)
in Rochester NY described the game he had played
“forty years since.”
That game featured balls made from raveled woolen stockings and covered
by a shoemaker, a softer ball – “not as hard as a brick” --
than the NY ball, no fixed team size, soft tosses from the pitcher who took no
run-up, “tick” hitting, the bound rule, plugging, a mix of flat and
round bats. He suggests organizing
a throw-back game to show 1860’s youth “what grey heads can
do.”
“W,” “The Game of Base Ball in the
Olden Time,” Rochester Evening Express (July
10, 1866), page 3, column 4. Provided by Priscilla Astifan,
2006. To read the full text, go to
item 1825c.12 of the main Protoball Chronology. Note:
the writer does not say where he played these games, mentioning that he moved
to Rochester
three years before.
1827.2 – Story Places
Baseball in Rochester NY
Samuel Hopkins Adams, “Baseball in
Mumford’s Pasture Lot,” Grandfather Stories (Random House, New York, 1947), pp. 143 –
156. Full text is unavailable via
Google Books as of 12/4/2008.
This story, evidently set in 1880 in Rochester, involves three boys who convince
their grandfather to attend a Rochester-Buffalo game. The grandfather contrasts the game to
that which he had played in 1827.
He describes intramural play among the 50 members of a local club, with
teams of 12 to 15 players per side, a three-out-side-out rule, plugging, a
bound rule, and strict knuckles-below-knees pitching. He also recalls attributes that we do
not see elsewhere in descriptions of early ballplaying: a requirement that each
baseman keep a foot on his base until the ball is hit, a seven-run homer when
the ball went into a sumac thicket and the runners re-circled the bases,
coin-flips to provide “arbitrament” for disputed plays, and the
team with the fewest runs in an inning being replaced by a third team for the
next inning [“three-old-cat gone crazy,” says one of the boys]. The grandfather’s reflection does
not comment on the use of stakes instead of bases, the name used for the old
game, the relative size or weight of the ball, or the lack of foul ground
– in fact he says that out could be made on fouls.
Adams’ use of a frame-within-a-frame device is
interesting to baseball history buffs, but the authenticity of the recollected
game is hard to judge in a work of fiction. Mumford’s lot was in fact an early
Rochester
ballplaying venue, and Thurlow Weed [#1825c.1] wrote of club play in that
period. Priscilla Astifan has been
looking into Adams’ expertise on early Rochester baseball. See #1828c.3 for another reference to Adams’ interest in baseball. Caveat: We welcome input on the essential nature
of this story. Fiction? Fictionalized memoir? Historical novel?
1828c.3 –Author Carried
Now-Lost 1828 Clipping of Ball Game in Rochester
“Your article on baseball’s origins
reminded me of an evening spent in Cooperstown
with the author Samuel Hopkins Adams more than 30 years ago. Over a drink
we discussed briefly the folk tale about the “invention” of
baseball in this village in 1839.
“Even then we knew that the attribution to Abner
Doubleday was a myth. Sam Adams capped the discussion by pulling from his
wallet a clipping culled from a Rochester
newspaper dated 1828 that described in some detail the baseball game that had
been played that week in Rochester.”
Note: Priscilla Astifan has looked hard for such an article, and it
resists finding.
Letter from Frederick L. Rath, Jr, to the Editor of
the New York Times, October
5, 1990. Note: other accounts use different dates for
this story.
Adams’ biography also notes the author’s
doubts about the Doubleday theory: asked in 1955 about his novel Grandfather
Stories, which places baseball in Rochester in 1827 [sic], he retorted
”’I am perfectly willing to concede that Cooperstown is the home of
the ice cream soda, the movies and the atom bomb, and that General Doubleday
wrote Shakespeare. But,” and
he read a newspaper account of the [1828?] Rochester game.” Samuel V. Kennedy, Samuel Hopkins
Adams and the Business of Writing (Syracuse
University Press, 1999), page 284. Submitted by Priscilla Astifan,
1/14/2008 email.
1830.17 – NYS Squirrel
Hunters Stop for Ballplaying
From an account that appeared 53 later, involving a
25-year-old who lived about 20 miles south of Buffalo NY:
“Mr. Wickham had a great taste for hunting, and
he relates the incidents of a squirrel hunt that took place in Collins in 1830.
Two sides were chosen, consisting of eight hunters on a side, and the party
that scored the most points by producing the tails of the game secured, were
declared the victors. . . . About 4 o’clock P.M. the hunters came in and
the scores counted up and it was found that Timothy Clark’s side were
victorious by over one hundred counts and the day’s sport wound up by an
old fashioned game of .base ball, in which Timothy Clark’s men again came
off victorious.”
Erasmus Briggs, History of the Original Town
of Concord, Being the Present Towns of Concord, Collins, N. Collins, and Sardinia -- Erie County New York (Rochester, Union and Advertiser Company's Print, 1883),
page 526. Submitted by David
Nevard, 2/22/07.
1830s.12 -- Wicket Ball in Buffalo NY
“[The Indians] would lounge on the steps of the
‘Old First Church,’
where they could look at our young men playing wicket ball in from of the
church: (no fences there then), and this
was a favorite ball ground.”
Samuel M. Welch, Home History: Recollections of Buffalo During the Decade from 1830 to 1840, or Fifty
Years Since [P. Paul and bro., Buffalo,
1890], page 112. Submitted by John Thorn 9/13/2006.
1830s.15 – In Buffalo NY,
Balls Formed from Fish Noses
Writing over 50 years later, Samuel Welch recalled”
“The fish I bought as a small boy at that time
[1830-1840], at one cent per pound, mainly to get its noses for cores for our
balls, to make them bound, to play the present National Game.”
Welch also recalls the local enthusiasm for
ballplaying: “the boys, who must have their fun, did not always
‘Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy,’ but world make a
holiday of it by a vigorous game of ball, in some secluded spot in the suburbs
of the town.”
Welch, Samuel L., Home History. Recollections of Buffalo during the
Decade from 1830 to 1840, or Fifty Years Since (Peter
Paul and Brother, Buffalo, 1891), page 353 and page 220,
respectively.. Text unavailable via
Google Books as of 11/16/2008.
1832.8 – Buffalo NY
Council Frowns on “Playing at Ball”
Nobody knows when baseball was first played in Buffalo. There is evidence to show it was played
in some form at least as far back as 1832, the year the city was
incorporated. Ordinance #19 of the
first city charter reads as follows:
‘The City Council shall have the authority to make laws regulating
the rolling of hoops, flying of kites, playing at ball, or any other amusement
having a tendency to annoy persons passing in the streets and sidewalks of the
city, or to frighten teams of horses.”
Overfield, Joseph, 100 Seasons of Buffalo Baseball (Partner’s
Press, Kenmore NY, 1985), page 17.
1838.3 – Cooper Novel Home
as Found Mentions Ballplaying in Cooperstown
“’Do you refer to the young men on the
lawn, Mr. Effington? . . . Why, sir, I believe they have always played ball in
that precise locality.’
He called out in a wheedling tone to their ringleader,
a notorious street brawler. ‘A fine time for sport, Dickey;
don’t you think there would be more room in the broad street than on this
crowded lawn, where you lose our ball so often in the shrubbery?’
‘This place will do, on a pinch,’ bawled
Dickey, ‘though it might be better. If it weren’t for the
plagued house, we couldn’t ask for a better ball-ground. . . ‘
‘Well, Dickey . . . , there is no accounting for
tastes, but in my opinion, the street would be a much better place to play ball
in than this lawn . . . There are so many fences hereabouts . . . It’s
true the village trustees say there shall be no ball-playing in the street [see
item #1816.1 above -- LM], but I conclude you don’t much mind what they
say or threaten.’”
Thus James Fenimore Cooper, in his novel Home As
Found, describes the return of the Effingham family to Templeton and
their ancestral home in Cooperstown,
NY. The passage is thought to be
based on a similar incident in Cooper’s life in 1834 or 1835. In an unidentified photocopy held in the
HOF’s
“Origins of Baseball” file, the author of A City on the Rise,
at page 11, observes that “Cooper was the first writer to connect the
game with the national character, and to recognize its vital place in American
life.” Another source calls this “the first literary
ball game:” http://external.oneonta.edu/cooper/cooperstown/baseball.html. Caveat: In a 1/24/2008 posting to 19BCC, Richard
Hershberger writes: I believe the
consensus on the Cooper reference is that it likely was something more
hockey-like than baseball-like.”
James Fenimore Cooper, Home as Found [W.A. Townsend and Co., New York 1860] Chapter
11. The 1838 first edition was published by Lea and Blanchard in Philadelphia -- data
submitted by John Thorn, 7/11/2004.
1839.1 – Graves
Letters of 1905 Say that Doubleday Invented Base Ball
Abner Doubleday, who was to become a Civil War
notable, is much later (1905) said to
have “invented” baseball at Cooperstown, New York, according to the
findings of the Mills Commission (1905-1907),
a group of baseball magnates appointed by the American and National League
Presidents to investigate the origins of baseball. The Commission bases its
findings almost entirely on letters received from Abner Graves, a resident of Cooperstown in his childhood. The Commission’s
findings are soon discredited by historians who proclaim the “Doubleday
Invention” to be entirely a myth.
The Doubleday game, according to Graves’
offerings, retained the plugging of runners, eleven players per team, and flat
bats that were four inches wide. Graves
sees the main improvement of the Doubleday game that it limited the size of
teams, while town ball permitted “twenty to fifty boys in the
field.”
Graves believed that Abner Doubleday was 16 or 17
years old when he saw him lay out his improved game [in fact, Doubleday was 20
in 1839, and at West Point]. Graves
himself declined to fix a year to the Doubleday plan, suggesting that it might
have occurred in 1839, 1840, or 1841. In choosing 1839, the Commission
rested its story on the memory of a boy who was then 5 years old.
Letters from Abner Graves to the Mills Commission,
April 3, 1905 and November 17, 1905.
To read them, go to entry #1839.1 of the main Protoball Chronology.
1840s.28 -- At Hobart College,
“Wicket and Baseball Played in Summer”
At upstate NY’s Hobart
College in Geneva, “Social events were among the
few recreations available; there were no intercollegiate athletics, and no
concerted sports at all. . . . wicket and baseball were played in summer, there
was skating in winter, and that was about all.” Warren Hunting Smith, Hobart and
William Smith; the History of Two College (Hobart
and William Smith Colleges, Geneva NY, 1972), page 123. Caveat:
The author is imprecise about the date of this observation; this passage
appears in the chapter “Student Life Before 1860,” and our
impression is that he refers to the 1840s . . . but the 1830s or 1850s cannot
be ruled out. Provided by Priscilla
Astifan, email of 2/4/2008.
Priscilla notes that this book also details a number of somewhat destructive
student pranks and drinking. “When I read about all the pranks and
dissipation, carousing, etc., I see why base ball and other sports were
considered a welcome diversion when they became popular.” [Email of 10/22/2008.]
1841.9 -- County-wide Wicket
Challenge Issued Near Rochester NY
“A CHALLENGE. The undersigned, Amateur (Wicket) Ball Players, of the Town of Chili,
Monroe County, propose, within 20 players, to
meet any other Club, or same number of men in this county, and play a game of
three ins a side, any time between the first and fifteenth of July next.
The game to be played at Chapman’s corner, eight miles west from Rochester. . . . Chili,
June 24, 1841.” Rochester
Republican, June 18,
1841
Noted by Priscilla Astifan, 19CBB posting,
1/28/2007. Priscilla adds: “Pioneer baseball players’
[in Rochester]
memoirs have mentioned Wicket as one of baseball’s early predecessors
here and that some of the best pioneer baseball players had been skilled wicket
players.
1846.11 -- Suspicious Rochester NY
Idler Observed Playing Wicket
“You speak . . . of Harrington, the express
robber as being in prison here. This is incorrect. He isn’t,
neither has he been in jail since his arrival here, unless you can call the
Eagle Hotel a jail. . . . [W]hen the weather has been pleasant, he has occupied
his time in playing wicket in the public square; or playing the fiddle in his
room . . . to solace and relieve the tedium of his boredom.”
Rochester Police Officer Jacob Wilkinson letter of
April 7, 1946, as quoted in “The Express Robbery,” The National
Police Gazette, Volume 1, Number 32 [April 18, 1846], page 277.
Submitted by John Thorn, 9/2/2006. Note: It is possible to
construe wicket as a daily Rochester
occurrence from this snippet.
1850s.16 -- Wicket Play in Rochester NY
“The immediate predecessor of baseball was
wickets. This was a modification of cricket and the boys who excelled at
that became crack players of the latter sport of baseball. In wickets
there had to be at least eight men, stationed as follows: Two bowlers,
two stump keepers or catcher, two outfielders and two infielders or shortstops.
. . .
“The wickets were placed sixty feet apart, and
consisted of two ‘stumps’ about six inches in height above the ground
and ten feet apart. . . . The ball was as large as a man’s head, and of
peculiar manufacture. Its center was a cube of lead weighing about a
pound and a half. About this were tightly wound rubber bands . . . and the
whole sewed in a thick leather covering. This ball was delivered with a
stiff straight-arm underhand cast . . . . Three out was side out, and the ball
could be caught on the first bound or on the fly.”
“Baseball Half a Century Ago,” Rochester Union
and Advertiser, March
21, 1903. Submitted by Priscilla Astifan [date?]
1854.10 -- Ball Played at Hobart College,
Geneva NY
“Baseball in Geneva began, at least on an organized basis,
in 1860. Informal games had taken place at Hobart
College as early as 1854, and at the
nearby Walnut Hill School
. . . the boys were organized into teams in 1856 or 1857.”
Minor Myers, Jr., and Dorothy Ebersole, Baseball in
Geneva: Notes to Accompany an Exhibition at the Prout Chew Museum, May 20
to September 17, 1988
[Geneva Historical Society, Geneva,
1988], page 1. Note: This brochure implies that it describes the New York game, but does
not say so.
1855.23 – Association Rules
Appear in Syracuse
Newspaper
Without accompanying comment, 17 rules for playing the
New York
style of base ball appear in the Syracuse Standard (May
16, 1855).
The rules include the original 13 playing rules in the Knickerbocker
game plus four rules added in in New
York in 1854.
Porter’s Spirit of the Times would carry the New York rules in
December of 1856 [Peter Morris, A Game of Inches (Ivan
Dee, 2006), page 22.
1855c.14 – New York Game Comes to Rochester NY
According to the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle
(August 6, 1869), the town’s first
team, the Live Oak Club, had formed in 1855.
“The first baseball club in Rochester was organized about 1855. . . . The
first club was the Olympics.”
“Baseball Half a Century Ago,” Rochester
Union and Advertiser, March 21, 1903. Other base ball pioneers have cited 1857
and 1858 for Rochester’s
first games. Information supplied by
Priscilla Astifan, 2006-2007.
1857.21 – Buffalo NY
Sees its First Club
“The first organized, uniform team was the
Niagaras who played their first games in 1857 . . . . The Niagaras were, of course, strictly
an amateur nine. They played their
first games after ‘choosing up’ among themselves, and then [later]
played matches against other Buffalo
nines as they became organized”
Overfield, Joseph, 100 Seasons of Buffalo Baseball (Partner’s
Press, Kenmore NY, 1985), page 17. Overfield does not cite a source. Originally provided by Priscilla
Astifan, email of 12/7/2007. Note: Double-check for any indirect reference
to a source.
1858.22 Rochester NY
Editor: Base Ball to Curb Tobacco, Swearing, (if not
Spitting)
“We hail then with pleasure, the introduction in
our city of the game of base ball and the formation of the many clubs to enjoy
this healthful activity. It will
impart vigor, health and good feeling.
It is a manly sport . . . [and] will contribute as much to good morals as it does to pleasure. . . . The
stimulus of outdoor exercises will supplant the morbid and pernicious craving
for tobacco. . . . It is a luxury to see our young men together, in the
innocent enjoyment of a healthful sport.
Let a father who was once a ball player too . . . have the privilege of
looking on without the pain of hearing a profane word . . . Signed, X.“ “Field Sports,” Rochester
Democrat and American (August 12, 1858),
page 3, column 2. Provided by
Priscilla Astifan, email of 1/14/2008.
1858.41 – Buffalo NY Feels
Spring Fever, Expects Many New BB Clubs
“The Niagara Club, of Buffalo,
also played on Saturday, on the vacant lot on Main Street, above the Medical College. We learn that several other clubs will soon
organize, so that some rare sort may be anticipated the coming season. The Cricket Club will soon be out in
full force . . . . We are pleased
to notice this disposition to indulge in manly sports. “Cricket and Base Ball,” Spirit
of the Times, Volume 28, number 7 (Saturday, March
27, 1858), page 78, column 2. Facsimile provided by Craig Waff,
September 2008.
1858.48 – Three Youth Clubs
in Rochester NY Disdain the NY Game
In Rochester, the West
End Base Ball Club, the Washington
club, and the Union club showed no love for the NYC rules. The West End Club, for example, declared
that it would have “nothing to do with the new fangled tossing, but throw the ball with a wholesome movement, in the regular
old-fashioned base ball style. It
is not clear that the clubs persisted in their preference, or whether their
rules were a hybrid of old and new ways.
The clubs’ announcements appeared and in the Rochester Democrat
and Advertiser for July 21, 1858.
Provided by Priscilla Astifan.
1859.25 -- Buffalo Editor Demurs
on NY Game -- “A Small Potatoe,” “Worthy Only of Boys”
“Do our [Buffalo]
Base Ball Clubs play the game of the "National Association" - the New York and Brooklyn
club game? If so they are respectfully informed by the New York
Tribune [see item #1959.14] that the style of Base Ball - what is falsely
called the "National" game - is no more like the genuine game of base
ball than single wicket is like a full field of cricket. It says, the
clubs who have formed what they choose to call the "national
Association," play a bastard game, worthy only of boys of ten years of
age.
[The Tribune] says: "The only genuine game
is what is known as the 'Massachusetts Game,' and if the Englishmen [visiting
cricketers] desire to be fairly matched, they must not permit themselves to be
deluded by any men playing the small potatoe game recognized by the 'National
Associates.' It would be no more honor for the English Eleven to beat the
best nine that could be selected, playing the New York
game, than it would be to beat at cricket the best Eleven they could pick from
any ordinary school in England.
If they want to find foes worthy of their steel, let them challenge the
'Excelsior' Club, at Upton, Massachusetts,
now the Champion Club of New England, and which Club could probably beat, with
the greatest ease, the best New York
nine, and give them three to one.
We have not the least idea whether it is the
"National Association" game or the "Massachusetts" game that our Clubs
play, but we suppose it must be the latter, as we are certain their sport is no
"child's play."
Editorial, “Base Ball -- Who Plays the Genuine
Game?,” Buffalo
Morning Express, October
20, 1859. From Priscilla Astifan’s posting on
19CBB, 2/19/2006. [Cf #1859.14,
above.]
1859.46 – Visiting English
Cricketers View the Bound Rule as “Childish”
On October 22, 1859, the touring English cricketers
played base ball at a base ball field, which is “about two miles from the
town, and had been enclosed at great expense. The base-ball game is somewhat
similar to the English game of “rounders,” as played by
school-boys. . . .Caffyn played exceedingly well, but the English thought
catching the ball on the first bound
a very childish game.” Fred
Lillywhite, The English Cricketers’ Trip to Canada and the United
States (Lillywhite, London, 1860),
page 50. Provided by John Thorn,
email of 2/9/2008. The game was
played in Rochester NY.
The book [as accessed 11/1/208] can be viewed on Google books; try a
search of “lillywhite canada.”
1859.47 – Outmanned Buffalo Club Survives
“Old-Fashioned” Game, 46-38
“The matched game of Base Ball between the Buffalo and Alden clubs was played yesterday afternoon on
the Niagara’s grounds on Main st. The match was a closely contested one,
and resulted in favor of the Buffalo Club, who scored forty-six to thirty runs
made by the Alden Club in the twelve innings. The Alden Club have played several
matches and have never been beaten before.
The game was the old-fashioned one, which calls for more muscle than the
New England game.”
“The Ball Match Yesterday,” Buffalo
Daily Courier (August 13, 1859),
page 3, column 2.
The Alden club fielded 15 players to the confront the
Niagaras’ 12; they included two “behinds” as well as a catcher,
two left fielders, two right fielders, a fourth baseman, and one more team
member listed simply as “fielder.” Both teams’ pitchers were termed
“throwers.” The game
was evidently limited to 12 innings instead of to a set total of tallies, as
was found in other upstate “old-fashioned base ball” games of this
period. Taken at face value, this
account implies that three games were played in the region at the time –
the New York game, the New
England game, and this game.
Alden NY
is 20 miles due east of downtown Buffalo. Source: Email of 5/25/2008 from
Priscilla Astifan.
A return match was hosted by the Alden club on
September 3rd, with the Buffalo New York and Erie
railroad offering half-price fares to fans. Alden won, “by 96 to 22
tallies.” Sources: Buffalo Daily
Courier, September 2 and September 5, 1859, reported by email by Priscilla
Astifan on 12/7/2008.
1859.48 – Wicket Club and
Base Ball Club Play Demo Matches For Novelty’s Sake
“Novel Ball Match – The Buffalo Dock
Wicket Club have invited [the Buffalo Niagaras] to play a game of wicket, and a
return game of base ball. It is
intended, not as a trial of skill, (for neither club
knows anything of the other’s game, and it was expressly stipulated that
neither should practice the other’s) but merely for he
novelty and sport of the thing; each club expecting to appear supremely
ridiculous at the other’s game.” Buffalo
Daily Courier, September 10, 1859.
The Buffalo Morning Express later reported that the Niagaras lost
the wicket game, and that attendance was good; the result of the base ball game
is not now known. Provided by
Priscilla Astifan, email of 12/7/2008.
1860.7 – Excelsiors Conduct
Undefeated Western NY Road
Trip. . . “First Tour Ever”?
First $500 Player Ever?
“The
Excelsiors of Brooklyn leave for Albany,
starting the first tour ever taken by a baseball club. They will travel
1000 miles in 10 days and play games in Albany, Troy, Buffalo, Rochester, and Newburgh.”
Baseballlibrary.com --
chronology entry for 6/30/1860. Note: Was it really the first
tour? On whose authority? Is
there a July press notice on the tour?
In announcing the tour, a Troy
paper noted: “The Excelsior
Club of Brooklyn, who have pretty well reduced base ball to a science, and who
pay their pitcher [Jim Creighton] $500 a year, are making a crusade through the
provinces for the purpose of winning laurels.” “Base Ball,” Troy Daily
Whig Volume 26, number 8013 (Tuesday, July 3, 1860),
page 3, column 5. Facsimile
provided by Craig Waff, September 2008.
News of the return of the Excelsiors appeared in
“Base Ball,” Spirit of the Times, Volume 30, number 24 (Saturday, July 21, 1860), page 292, column 1. Facsimile provided by Craig Waff,
September 2008. The item started:
”The Excelsior, the crack club of Brooklyn, and one of the best in the United States,
returned home of Thursday of last week, after a very pleasant tour to the
Western part of the State. During their trip, they played games with several
[unnamed] clubs, and we believe were successful on every occasion.”
1860.45 – Competitive
“Old-Fashioned” Game is Still Alive in Syracuse NY
About 20% of the games covered in available 1860
newspaper accounts of base ball in Syracuse
depict “old-fashioned base ball” as played by a set of five area
clubs. The common format for these
games was a best-two-of-three match of games played to 25 “tallies”
[not runs]. A purse of $25 was not
uncommon. Teams exceeded nine
players. However, no account laid
out the details of the playing rules, or how they differed from those of the
National Association. An 1859
article suggested that the game was the same as “Massachusetts “Base Ball,”
giving the only firm clue as to its rules.
Sources: Syracuse
Journal, June 14, June 21, and July 11, 1860; and Syracuse Standard, August 5,
1859.
1860.46 – First
International Game Played by New York
Rules
Joseph Overfield notes
that the Buffalo NY
team called the Queen Cities played a team from Hamilton, Ontario
in August 1860, and says that it was the first international contest played by
the National Association rules. Joseph Overfield,
The 100 Seasons of Buffalo Baseball (Partner’s
Press, 1985), page 17.
Overfield does not cite a primary source for this event.
1860.47 – Old-Fashioned
Base Ball in Buffalo NY
On July 4, 1860, a Buffalo newspaper reported “a
very exciting and interesting game of old fashioned Base Ball” that had
been played in Akron NY – about 20 miles east of Buffalo. This game featured 15 players on each
side and a 3-out-side-out rule.
Source: Buffalo
Morning Express (July 10, 1860),
page 3. Provided by Priscilla
Astifan.
1860.48 – “Veterans
of 1812” Play OFBB . . . Annually?
One of the earliest instances of an apparent
“throwback” game occurred in August 1860, when a newspaper reported
that the “Veterans of 1812” held their “annual Ball
play” in the village of Seneca Falls NY, east of Geneva and southeast of
Rochester. The “old
warriors,” after a morning of parading through local streets, marched to
a field where “the byes were quickly staked out,” sides were
chosen, and the local vets “were the winners of the game by two
tallies.” Seneca
Falls Reveille (August 18,
1860).
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