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<div class="date">JULY 28, 1868, THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 23, 1868 On pg. 3 under "Base Ball" are the two box scores of games played in Central Park, each with a very brief, one sentence summary. The first game was played between the Dexter and Henrietta clubs, and the second between the Dexter and Resolute clubs.</div> +
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<div class="gmail_default">George Thompson, 1/13/21: "When New Yorkers said "the Park" in the first half of the 19th century, they meant the Park in front of City Hall. Not a big area, and today at least it's so cluttered with benches and a fountain that it doesn't seem possible to play a game that involves running about.</div>
<div class="gmail_default">I will check my notes to see if there is an indication of whether the Park was more open then."</div>
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<div class="gmail_default">John Thorn, 1/13/21: "certain lines in the 1845 Atlas note were *also* used by Whitman in his now-famous "sundown perambulations of late" note of July 23, 1846!! . . . . Was Whitman the author of the 1845 <em>Atlas </em>note? Did he later plagiarize himself, or an unnamed other?"
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<p><span><strong>Note: </strong>Whitman's text is at </span><a class="ydp55524770yiv9689899570moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/opening-day-e5f9021c5dda" rel="nofollow">https://ourgame.mlblogs.com/opening-day-e5f9021c5dda</a>. Whitman's appreciation of base ball is also shown at [[1846.6]], [[1855.9]], and [[1858.25]].</p>
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<div dir="auto">Richard Hershberger, <span><em>150 years ago in baseball</em>, FB posting 10/29/2020:</span></div>
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<div dir="auto">Chadwick on the improvement of the Chicago Club. They wisely took his advice and switched from a lively to a dead ball. Success inevitably followed.</div>
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<div dir="auto">Much as I enjoy tweaking Chad for this sort of thing, in fairness it was pretty standard in this era. A newspaper would publish helpful advice to the local club. If the club did something that could plausibly be taken as consistent with the helpful advice, the paper would claim credit for the suggestion. Say what you will about modern sports talk radio, even those guys don't usually claim that the GM turns to them for trade ideas.</div>
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<div dir="auto">Does the claim about the deal ball make a lick of sense? It is classic Chad, but there is a kernel of truth. Good and poor fielding teams generally favored a dead or lively ball respectively, on the grounds that a dead ball gave the infielders a chance to show their stuff while a lively ball was more likely to get to the outfield. The Red Stockings revolution was mostly about improved fielding, so they favored a dead ball. As clubs' fielding caught up, they followed suit. The eventual consensus was a relatively dead ball, with later discussions being how live or not, within the range of a relatively dead ball. So as the White Stockings got their act together, it is entirely plausible that they moved to a dead ball. In other words, they didn't get getter because they switched to a dead ball; they switched to a dead ball because they got better. And certainly not because Chadwick convinced them. </div>
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<div dir="auto">Richard Hershberger, 3/18/2022</div>
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<div dir="auto">"150 years ago today in baseball: Harry Wright is making arrangements with the Harvard ball team. If I am reading it correctly, the secretary of the Harvard club goes by "J. Cheever Goodwin." I hate him already. Wright proposes a date just two and a half weeks out. This is typical of scheduling in this era, done on the fly. It also was a major pain. A lot of Wright's correspondence consists of back and forth to find a date that works for both sides.</div>
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<div dir="auto">I'm not sure what is the story about the offer to let Harvard use the Boston grounds. Harvard had a field, but I don't know if it was enclosed at this period. You can't charge admission if there is no fence. This would explain the discussion here, where we can assume that the "satisfactory arrangements" he mentions is a discreet way to say "financial arrangements," with the Boston club getting a piece of the action.</div>
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<div dir="auto">Then there is the discussion of the Fast Day game. Fast Day is an obsolete New England holiday: a quasi-pagan fertility ritual where people were supposed to go to church and look solemn in order to ensure a good harvest. In practice they went to ball games. It was the traditional opening of the baseball season. This year it will be on April 4. Wright is arranging the "picked nine" the Bostons will trounce. Sometimes a picked nine was an impromptu affair, picking players from the crowd. This one is a bit more organized, with the players chosen ahead of time and publicized. Wright is offering three slots to Harvard. He doesn't specify which positions. This picked nine is not totally random, but neither is it totally organized."</div>
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<div dir="auto">Joanne Hulbert, FB posting, 3/18/2022:</div>
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<div dir="auto"><span>"Yes, Richard, Fast Day was made obsolete by baseball. But who wants to eliminate a holiday off the annual schedule? No one. This is how Patriots Day, April 19 was added to replace Fast Day - and Patriot's Day is still to this day an important baseball day in Boston. It is the one day in Boston when there is always a Red Sox home game on the schedule."</span></div>
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<div dir="auto"><span>Richard replied, 3/18/2022:</span></div>
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<div dir="auto"><span><span>"My take is that Fast Day was made obsolete by New England's cultural shift, from Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God to Walden Pond. But the point about Patriot's Day is entirely fair."</span></span></div>
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<div dir="auto"><span><span>Bruce Allardice added, 3-19-2022:</span></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr"><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;">"It was common for pro league teams to play amateur clubs, especially early in the year. The 1876 Chicago White Stockings played 2 local amateur clubs before their regular season started, as sort of a warm-up. They also played 30+ amateur, semi-pro and non-league pro clubs during the year.</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr"> The [Boston club] played the Tufts College club 4-24-72, winning 43-5 (<em>Boston Herald</em> 4-25-72). </div>
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<div dir="ltr">The April 4th game was played, against a 'picked nine' of local amateurs that included several from the Harvard team. The Red Sox won 32-0. <em>(Boston Journal</em>, 4-5-72). The amateurs made only 3 hits off Spalding's pitching."</div>
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<div dir="auto">"The Cincinnati Club holds a meeting. Recall that the Executive Committee recently announced that the club will not be fielding a professional team next season. This meeting is the membership's chance to second guess the committee. There is a moral there, about volunteering to be a club officers. Been there, done that.</div>
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<div dir="auto">"Here Champion backs up [Current President ]Bonte without reservation. We get a lot of inside information about the business of baseball in 1870." -- Richard Hershberger (From FB posting. 12/7/2020.)</div>
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<div dir="auto">Richard Hershberger, <em>150 years ago in baseball</em>, posted October 23, 2020: "Chadwick considers the question of the Red Stockings' decline. How steep a decline this is in fact will be the topic for a post-season roundup. The season has a bit more to go yet, so this would be premature today. But it is certainly true that the Red Stockings are no longer dominant in the way they were in 1869.</div>
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<div dir="auto">"Chad, frankly, doesn't have a great answer. The "lack of harmony" stuff is boilerplate Chadwick, and he doesn't even pretend he has any factual basis for it. Beyond that he falls back on a parity argument. This isn't wrong, but doesn't explain what is different in 1870 from 1869. The rest of the baseball world was catching up, but he doesn't explain what exactly this means.</div>
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<div dir="auto">"The Red Stockings revolution was primarily about fielding. Their pitching and hitting were solid, but their fielding in 1869 was qualitatively better than anyone else's. This was about fielder positioning and where they went once the ball was in play, with an emphasis on backing up other players. And, to be blunt, it was about actually practicing. The New York/Philly baseball establishment had grown complacent. The clubs at the top saw no reason to change, since what they were doing obviously was working. That changed with the Red Stockings' June 1869 tour. That was a wake up call. By the end of the season the established teams were already better. It was June of 1870 when one finally beat the Red Stockings. Here in October, teams are beating them, well, not exactly regularly, but often enough. So it goes. Play in the field is in front of anyone who cares to look, so there aren't really any secrets in the long run."</div>
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<div dir="auto">"The bit [#4] about high and low balls is an important refinement of an old idea. Called strikes had been around for a while by this time, but there was never total clarity about what was and was not a pitch that should be called a strike. Through the 1860s the batter could request a specific height for the pitch. If the delivery was both over the plate and within some vaguely defined distance to the specified height, there you go. In [early] 1870 they went complete the other direction, taking away the batter's right to request a height and declaring any pitch within some vaguely defined reach of the bat to be a good ball. This proved unsatisfactory and confusing. Here we see a move to a modernish definition of a strike zone, but with a throwback to the old right to request the height. This is codified as two distinct strike zones, the batter requesting which he wants. This may seem bizarre, but it stood until 1887.</div>
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<div dir="auto">"The other interesting proposal is that last one [#9], about the fielder momentarily holding the ball. This is a proto-infield fly rule. That will not take its modern form until a quarter century later, but the idea was floating around. This will not be adopted this year, but it will be a few years later. The problem was not any philosophical objection to the infielder dropping the ball to set up a double play, but that this made umpire decide whether the fielder caught the ball (putting the batter out) and then dropped it, or muffed the ball (for no out on the batter), leading to endless bickering. This objection still stands today, and is the best argument for the infield fly rule."</div>
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<div dir="auto">-- Richard Hershberger, "150 Years Ago Today," Facebook posting, 11/26/2020 </div>
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<p>The clubs met again on Aug. 12, this time in Peterboro. While the <em>Cazenovia Republican</em> reported that the visiting team’s hitters appeared “better accustomed to the swift pitching of Mr. Miller than in the former game,” the club did not fare much better, as Peterboro won the rematch 34-13. And [Gerrit Smith] Miller contributed more than just pitching in the contest.</p>
<p><span>“Mr. G.S. Miller’s striking was superior to that of any other player in the game, and in one instance gave him a clean home run,” the </span><em>Cazenovia Republican</em><span> wrote. (Hall of Fame. See https://baseballhall.org/discover/baseball-history/gerrit-smith-miller-a-pioneer-in-baseball-football-and-farming)</span></p>
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