Milwaukee Press Not Unanimous About the "Miserable" New York Rules
| Salience
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Noteworthy
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| Tags
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Pre-modern Rules, Stats and Box ScoresPre-modern Rules, Stats and Box Scores
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| Location
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WisconsinWisconsin
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| City/State/Country:
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Janesville, WI, United States
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| Modern Address
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| Game
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Base Ball, Old Fashioned GameBase Ball, Old Fashioned Game
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| Immediacy of Report
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Contemporary
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| Age of Players
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AdultAdult
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| Holiday
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| Notables
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| Text
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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 judgment 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."
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| Sources
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Daily Milwaukee News, May 17, 1860
Milwaukee Sentinel, May 16, 1860
Janesville Daily Gazette, September 1, 1860
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| Warning
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| Comment
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The Janesville WI ball club wasn't so sure about this new Eastern game, and apparently continued to play by the old rules.
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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.
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Janesville WI is about 60 miles SW of Milwaukee. Edit with form to add a comment
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| Query
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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
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| Source Image
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[[Image:|left|thumb]]
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| External Number
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| Submitted by
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[A] Dennis Pajot, [B] John Thorn
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| Submission Note
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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.
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| Has Supplemental Text
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1860.32 Milwaukee Press Not Unanimous About the "Miserable" New York Rules"
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