1856.35
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Future Star Dickey Pearce Discovers the Decade-old No-Plugging Rule
| Salience | Peripheral |
|---|---|
| Tags | Famous, Pre-modern RulesFamous, Pre-modern Rules |
| Location | |
| City/State/Country: | Brooklyn, NY, United States |
| Modern Address | |
| Game | Base BallBase Ball |
| Immediacy of Report | Retrospective |
| Age of Players | AdultAdult |
| Holiday | |
| Notables | |
| Text | "I was working at my trade in 1856," said Dick, "and old Cale Sniffen, who was the pitcher of the Atlantic Club at that time, asked me to go out with him and see the club practice. I told him I did not know a thing about the game. 'Never mind that,' said Cale, "I'll show you.' So I went out with him one day to the old field where the Atlantics played in 1856, and which adjoined the Long Island Cricket Club's grounds. At that time I used to take a hand in with the boys in practicing old-fashioned base ball, in which we used to plug fellows when they ran bases, by putting out through throwing the ball at them. Well, I went out with Cale and he got me into a game, and the first chance I had to catch a fellow running bases, I sent the ball at him hot, and it hit him in the eye. Then I learned the new rule was to throw the ball to the base player and let him touch the runner."
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| Sources | The Sporting Life, January 4, 1888. For an overview of Pearce's baseball life, see Briana McKenna's article at http://sabr.org/bioproj/person/db8ea477. |
| Warning | |
| Comment | Finder Richard Hershberger adds that this account "has a couple interesting features. The New York game by 1856 was well into its early expansion phase, but we see here where it still wasn't really all that widely known, even in Brooklyn. Pearce also cuts through the nonsense about what baseball's, meaning the New York game, immediate ancestor was, and what it was called. "There was in the 1880s a widespread collective amnesia about this, opening the way for Just So stories about Old Cat and such. Pearce correctly calls the predecessor game "base ball," just like they had at the time it was played." Note: Pearce was born in 1836, and thus was nine when the Knickerbocker rule replacing plugging/soaking/burning had appeared. Eleven years later, lads in Brooklyn had evidently made the adjustment.
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| Query | Do we have any additional information on where in Brooklyn Pearce and his friends were playing the old-fashioned game in the 1850s? Edit with form to add a query |
| Source Image | [[Image:|left|thumb]] |
| External Number | |
| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Submission Note | 19CBB Posting, 1/30/2017 |
| Has Supplemental Text |
1856.35 Future Star Dickey Pearce Discovers the Decade-old No-Plugging Rule"
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