1845.1
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Knicks Adopt Playing Rules on September 23
| Salience | Prominent |
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| Location | NYCNYC |
| City/State/Country: | [[{{{Country}}}]] |
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| Text | Led by Alexander Cartwright, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York City organizes and adopts twenty rules for baseball (six organizational, fourteen playing). This rule book is later seen as the basis for the game we now call baseball. The Knickerbockers are credited with establishing foul lines; abolishing the plug (throwing the ball at the runner to make an out); and instituting the tag and force-out. However, the Knickerbocker rules do not specify a pitching distance or a baseline distance. The distance from home to second base and from first to third base is set at forty-two paces. In 1845 the "pace" was understood either as a variable measure or as precisely two-and-a-half feet, in which case the distance from home to second would have been 105 feet and the "Cartwright base paths" would have been 74.25 feet. The "pace" of 1845 could not have been interpreted as the equivalent of three feet. [Explain why?] The Knickerbocker rules provide that a winner will be declared when twenty-one aces are scored but each team must have an equal number of turns at bat; the style of delivery is underhand in contrast to the overhand delivery typical in town ball; balls hit beyond the field limits in fair territory (home run in modern baseball) are limited to one base. The Knickerbocker rules become known as the New York Game in contrast to the Massachusetts Game favored in and around the Boston area. |
| Sources | A detailed recent annotation of the 20 rules appears in John Thorn,Baseball in the Garden of Eden, pages 69-77. See Also "Larry McCray, "The Knickerbocker Rules -- and The Long History of the One-Bounce Fielding Rule, Base Ball Journal, Volume 5, number 1 (Special Issue on Origins), pages 93-97.
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1845.1 Knicks Adopt Playing Rules on September 23"
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