1864.33

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New Yorkers Lose Their Only Ball, and Their Centerfielder

Salience Peripheral
Tags Civil War
Location Louisiana
City/State/Country: Alexandria, LA, United States
Immediacy of Report Retrospective
Age of Players Adult
Text

“I remember helping to organize for our own regiment as baseball nine which won the championship of the read-guard, defeating some active nines from Connecticut and Massachusetts. For our regimental team I served as pitcher and I believe as captain.

“The baseball contests were, however, brought suddenly to a close through an unfortunate misunderstanding with the Rebels, upon whose considerateness in this matter of sports we had, it appeared, placed too much confidence. We found no really satisfactory ground for baseball within the lines of our fortifications and, after experimenting with a field just outside our earthworks, we concluded that risk of using a better field which was just outside the line of the pickets. It was, of course, entirely contrary not only to ordinary regulations but to special orders prohibiting any men from going through the picket lines. It was particularly absurd for men without arms to run any such risk. I do not now understand how the officers of the 176th, including the major commanding, could have permitted themselves to incur such a breach of discipline, but the thing was done and trouble resulted therefrom.

“We were winning a really beautiful game from the 13th Connecticut, a game in which our own pickets, who were the only spectators, found themselves much interested. Suddenly there came a scattering fire of which the three outfielders caught the brunt: the centre field was hit and was captured, the left and right field managed to get into our lines. Our pickets fell forward with all possible promptness as the players fell back. The Rebel attack, which was made with merely a skirmish line, was repelled without serious difficulty, but we had lost not only our centre field but our baseball and it was the only baseball in Alexandria.

G. H. Putnam, Memories of My Youth 1844-1865 (G. P. Putnam’s Sons, New York, 1914), pp 48-49. Accessed 6/28/09 on Google Books via “’my youth’ putnam” search. The 176th was part of the Red River Campaign, and Alexandria LA is in mid-Louisiana, about equidistant from Baton Rouge and Shreveport. The 176th, raised in New York City, was at Alexandria LA from mid-April to mid-May of 1864. The 13th CT, organized in Hartford, was there April 30 to May 10. Kirsch and Millen both carry the meat of this colorful passage. Millen identifies Putnam with the 114th NY.

Comment

The game was probably in Pineville, just across the river from Alexandria, according to local historian Richard Holloway.

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External Number 142



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