1860.32

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Milwaukee Press Not Unanimous About the "Miserable" New York Rules

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags	Pre-modern Rules, Stats and Box ScoresPre-modern Rules, Stats and Box Scores
Location	WisconsinWisconsin
City/State/Country:	Janesville, WI, United States
Modern Address
Game	Base Ball, Old Fashioned GameBase Ball, Old Fashioned Game
Immediacy of Report	Contemporary
Age of Players	AdultAdult
Holiday
Notables
Text	In May 1860, The Milwaukee Sentinel quoted The [Daily Milwaukee] News as recently reporting that the Janesville Base Ball Club expected to challenge a Milwaukee club to "a friendly contest" that year. The News added: "Unfortunately however, the Janesville club plays the good old fashioned game of Base Ball, while our clubs play under the new code, (which we must here beg leave to say is, in our estimation, a miserable one, and in no way calculated to develope[sic] skill or excite interest . . .)"  The previous day, the Milwaukee Sentinel had responded to the News piece calling the new rules "miserable" by writing that "We don't think much of the judgement of the News. The game of Base Ball, as now played by all the clubs in the Eastern States, is altogether ahead of 'the old fashioned game,' both in point of skill and interest."  The Daily Milwaukee News of May 17, 1860 offered this: "Waiting for a ball to bound, instead of catching it on the fly . . . and various other methods of play adopted by this new-fangled game, looks to us altogether too great a display of laziness and inactivity to suit our notions of a genuine, well and skillfully conducted game of Base Ball. . . . We shall soon expect to hear that the game of Base Ball is played with the participants lying at full length upon the grass." Give us the 'old fashioned game' or none at all."
Sources	Daily Milwaukee News, May 15, 1860 Milwaukee Sentinel, May 16, 1860  Janesville Daily Gazette, September 1, 1860
Warning
Comment	The Janesville WI ball club wasn't so sure about this new Eastern game, and apparently continued to play by the old rules: On September 1, 1860, the Janesville Daily Gazette carried a box score for a game between the Janesville Base Ball Club and the Bower City Base Ball Club of Janesville reporting a 'match game' on August 31.   Bower City won, 50 tallies to 38 tallies.  The game, played to "first 50 tallies" listed 10 players per team and likely took 11 3-out innings.  The account does not describe the rules in force for this contest. As of November 2020, Protoball shows one ballgame and six club entries that cite Bower City Clubs. Janesville WI is about 60 miles SW of Milwaukee. Edit with form to add a comment
Query	What is the date of the Daily Milwaukee News piece in which the rules are described as "miserable"?   Edit with form to add a query
Source Image	[[Image:|left|thumb]]
External Number
Submitted by	[A] Dennis Pajot, [B] John Thorn
Submission Note	A] 6/23/2008; [B] emial of 11/8/2020Property "Submission Note" (as page type) with input value "A] 6/23/2008; [B] emial of 11/8/2020" contains invalid characters or is incomplete and therefore can cause unexpected results during a query or annotation process.
Has Supplemental Text

1860.32 Milwaukee Press Not Unanimous About the "Miserable" New York Rules"

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