1855.47

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Newark Club Hosts Jersey City -- Earliest Knick-rules Tilt in NJ?

Salience Prominent
Tags Antedated Firsts
City/State/Country: Newark, NJ, United States
Immediacy of Report Contemporary
Age of Players Adult
Text

A Newark club defeated the [Jersey City] club in July 1855 at the club's grounds in Newark. “The first match in New Jersey … some very spirited play on the part of the Newark club, …”)

 

Sources

[1] "New-Jersey Base Ball, NYDT, July 18, 1855 [2] "Base Ball: Newark vs Olympic Club, Spirit of the Times, July 21, 1855 [3] "The Newark and Olympic Clubs, NYC {?}, July 1855.

 

For context, see also: 

See https://protoball.org/Games_Tab:Greater_New_York_City#1855

https://protoball.org/Club_of_Newark, which includes 21 of the club's games, 1855-1864

PBall item 1855.35 New Jersey Comes over to the NY Game

PBall item 1855.36 African Americans Play in NJ

PBall item 1855.40 First Junior Base Ball Club Founded

 

Warning

Note: as of January 2023, we are uncertain whether this game was played by modern (Knickerbocker) rules.  See John Zinn's assessment, below.

Comment

 

 

From leading NJ base ball researcher John Zinn, 1/10/2023

"For the moment, I'd recommend holding off on designating this or any other 1855 game as the first game New Jersey clubs played by New York rules.  I believe the only things we know about the July game is there were nine on a side and the score was 31-10.  If they were playing by New York rules the game should have ended when the Newark club reached 21, although it's possible they reached 31 in the top of an inning and so the game didn't end until the Oriental (later the Olympic Club) had their last at bat.
 
It seems pretty certain that in 1855 both the Newark and Jersey City clubs started out playing either a different "baseball" game or a hybrid of something they knew and the New York game.  In the case of Jersey City, the early involvement of the New York clubs playing at Elysian Fields most likely got them on to the New York rules.  How that happened in Newark is less certain, but by the end of the 1855 season, the teams from both cities were playing by the New York rules.
 
If these first New Jersey clubs started out playing by something other than New York rules, it suggests as far as New Jersey was concerned, Tom Gilbert's suggestion of New York/Brooklyn players moving someplace and taking the game with them doesn't apply.  Otherwise, they would have started out playing by the New York rules.
 
In the relatively near future, I'll put sometime into applying some criteria to the limited information we have about the 1855 games and see if I can come up with a systematic approach to identifying the first game by New York rules.  First, however, I want to spend a week or so intensely looking at whether I can find a feasible explanation or explanations as to how the New York game got from Manhattan to Newark."

 

 

 

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Query

[] Can we add any details, or context, for this early game?

[] Do we know whether it was played by Knick rules, in fact?

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Submitted by Craig Waff
Submission Note Waff's Games Tab



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