Property:Text
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"Text" is a predefined property that represents text of arbitrary length and is provided by Semantic MediaWiki. This property is pre-deployed (also known as special property) and comes with additional administrative privileges but can be used just like any other user-defined property.
This is a property of type Text.
1
<p>"[In the summer] ball was the chief amusement, and if the weather permitted (and my impression is that it generally <em>did</em> permit) the open green about the meeting-house and the school-house was constantly occupied by the players, little boys, big boys, and even <em>men</em> (for such we considered the biggest boys who consented to join the game) . . . . These grown-up players usually devoted themselves to a game called 'wicket,' in which the ball was impelled along the ground by a wide, peculiarly-shaped bat, over, under, or through a wicket, made by a slender stick resting on two supports. I never heard of baseball in those days." -- John Howard Redfield</p> +
<p>"The most outstanding cricket matches of the period were those in New York. In fact, the matches of note were played in that city. These contests took place between members of different clubs, and often the sport lasted for two days. Great was the interest if any English player happened to be present to participate in the sport. On June 16, 1820, eleven expert English players matched eleven New Yorkers at Brooklyn, the contest lasting two days." Holliman, Jennie, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">American Sports (1785 - 1835)</span> [Porcupine Press, Philadelphia, 1975], page 68.</p>
<p>Holliman cites the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">New York Evening Post</span> June 16, 1820. See also Lester, ed., <span style="text-decoration: underline;">A Century of Philadelphia Cricket</span> [U Penn, 1951], page 5. Tom Melville, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Tented Field</span> (Bowling Green U, Bowling Green, 1998), page 7, adverts to a similar Englishmen/Americans match, giving it a date of June 1, 1820. He seems to cite <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The New York Evening Post</span> of June 19, 1820, page 2 for this match, and so June 16 seems like a likelier date.</p> +
<p>Nehemiah Cleaveland and Alpheus Spring Packard, <u>History of Bowdoin College with Biographical Sketches of the Graduates</u> (Osgood and Company, Boston, 1882). Per Thomas L. Altherr, "Chucking the Old Apple: Recent Discoveries of Pre-1840 North American Ball Games," <u>Base Ball</u>, Volume 2, number 1 (Spring 2008), page 32.</p>
<p>"The student of earlier years had not the resources for healthful physical recreation of the present day [1880s]. We had football and baseball, though the latter was much less formal and formidable than the present game" [Page 96]. <b>Note:</b> the precise time referenced here is hard to specify; but the authors graduated in 1813 and 1816, and the context seems to suggest the 1810-1830 period.</p>
<p>Only one of the book's many sketches of alumni, however, mentions ballplaying of any type. The sketch for James Patten, Class of 1823, includes this: "He entered college at the mature age of twenty-four, was a respectable scholar, spoke with a decided brogue, and played ball admirably. . . . When last heard from he was an acting magistrate and a rich old bachelor." [Page 276] The sketch for Longfellow, who in 1824 wrote of constant campus ballplaying [see #1824.1], does not allude to sport.</p> +
<p>"About 1820 a somewhat modified version of the old English game of rounders was played on the New England commons, and twenty years later the game had spread and become "town ball." In 1833 the first regularly organized ball club was formed in Philadelphia with the sonorous title of "The Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia." About 1850 the game gained vogue in New York."</p>
<p>Barbour, Ralph H., <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Book of School and College Sports</span> [D. Appleton and Co., New York, 1904] page 143. Per Seymour, Harold - Notes in the Seymour Collection at Cornell University, Kroch Library Department of Rare and Manuscript Collections, collection 4809. Thanks to Mark Aubrey for locating a pdf of the baseball section of this text, June 2007. Barbour does not provide sources for his text.</p> +
<p>On June 19, 1820, the Union and Mechanic Cricket Clubs played two matches in Brooklyn. According to an account [a box score was also provided] in the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">New York</span> <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Daily Advertiser</span> of June 21, "this manly exercise <em>. . .</em> excited astonishment in the spectators by their great dexterity . . . . A great number of persons viewed the sport."</p>
<p>Posted to 19CBB by Richard Hershberger, 7/31/2007. Richard noted: "this is the earliest example I know of named cricket clubs, and is not mentioned in Tom Melville's history [<span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Tented Field.]</span> In am 1/30/2008 email, Richard added that this game was also reported in the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">New York Columbia</span> of June 19, 1820 as having "all Europeans" on both sides. <strong>Note:</strong> does the David Sentence book cover this game? Do we know of any earlier club play; for instance, did the Boston Cricket Club [see #1808.2 above] ever take the field in 1808?</p> +
<p><u>Juvenile Sports or Youth's Pastimes</u> [London], per David Block, <u>Baseball Before We Knew It</u>, page 189. The accompanying text: "With bat and trap, the Youth's agre'd/To send the ball abroad with speed,/While eager with his open hands,/To catch him out his playmate stands."</p> +
<p>"If a base-ball were required, the boy of 1816 founded it with a bit of cork, or, if he were singularly fortunate, with some shreds of india-rubber; then it was wound with yarn from a ravelled stocking, and some feminine member of his family covered it with patches of a soiled glove." - Charles Haswell</p>
<p>(Haswell also reflected on Easter observances of the era. They were subdued, save for the coloring of eggs by some schoolboys. "For a few weeks during the periods of Easter and Paas, the cracking of eggs by boys supplanted marbles, kite-flying, and base-ball.")</p> +
<p>"I could not jump the length of my leg nor run as fast as a kitten . . . . At ball and cricket I 'followed in the chase not like a hound that hunts, but one that fills up the cry.'"</p>
<p>-- John Howard Raymond, later President of Vassar College.</p> +
<p>"'Election Day' was, however, the universal holiday, and the prevailed amongst the farmers that corn planting must be finished by that day for its enjoyment. It was a day of general hilarity, with no prescribed forms of observation, though ball playing was ordinarily included in the exercises, and frequently the inhabitants of adjacent towns were pitted against one another in the game of wicket. Wrestling, too, was a common amusement on that day, each town having its champions."</p>
<p>Charles J. Taylor, <u>History of Great Barrington</u> (Bryan and Co., Great Barrington MA, 1882), page 375. Accessed 2/3/10 via Google Books search (taylor great barrington). <b>Note:</b> this passage is not clearly set in time; "1820s" is a guess, but 1810s or 1830s is also a possibility.</p> +
<p>"Ball was a common diversion in Vermont while I lived there; yet I never became proficient at it, probably for want of time and practice. To catch a flying ball, propelled by a muscular arm straight at my nose, and coming so swiftly that I could scarcely see it, was a feat requiring a celerity of action, an electric sympathy of eye and brain and hand . . . . Call it a knack, if you will; it was quite beyond my powers of acquisition. 'Practice makes perfect.' I certainly needed the practice, though I am not sure that any amount of it would have made me a perfect ball-player."</p>
<p> </p> +
<p><u>School-boys' Diversions: Describing Many New and Popular Sports</u> [London], per David Block, <u>Baseball Before We Knew It</u>, page 189. The woodcut shows a trap and bat in the foreground.</p> +
<p>Henderson, p. 137, attributes this to Holliman, but has no ref to Holliman or to George Stoddard, who reported the game to the Mills Commission. Also quoted at Henderson, p. 150.</p> +
<p>"In the early times, fifty or sixty years ago, when the modern games of croquet and base-ball were unknown, the people used to amuse themselves with marbles, "town-ball" - which was base-ball in a rude state - and other simple pastimes of a like character. Col. Mayo says, the first amusement he remembers in the county was a game of town-ball, on the day of the public sale of lots in Paris, in which many of the "young men of the period engaged."</p>
<p><u>The History of Edgar County, Illinois</u> (Wm. LeBaron, Chicago, 1879), page 273. Contributed January 31, 2010, by Jeff Kittel. Paris IL is near the Indiana border, and about 80 miles west of Indianapolis.</p> +
<p>"Any person, who shall, after the first day of July next, play at ball, or fly a kite, or run down a hill upon a sled, or play any other sport which may incommode peacable citizens and passengers in any [illegible: street?] of that part of town commonly called the <i>Village</i> <i>of Bedford</i>" faces a fifty-cent penalty.</p>
<p>"By-Laws for the Town of New-Bedford," <u>New Bedford</u> <u>[MA] Mercury</u>, August 13, 1821. Accessed by subscription search May 5, 2009.</p> +
<p>The Schenectady City Council banned "playing of Ball against the Building or in the area fronting the Building called City Hall and belonging to this corporation . . . under penalty of Fifty cents for each and every offence . . . ." <b>Note:</b> citation needed. Submitted by David Pietrusza via John Thorn, 3/6/2005.</p> +
<p>"The members of the old cricket club are requested to attend a meeting of [sic?] the Carolina Coffee House tomorrow evening."</p>
<p> </p> +
<p>"'Three times and out' is a maxim of juvenile players at cricket."</p>
<p><u>Maine Gazette</u>, November 20, 1821; submitted by Lee Thomas Oxford, 9/2/2007. <b>Note:</b> What can this reported rule possibly mean? Were beginning cricketers given three chances to hit the bowled ball in ME? John Thorn, email of 2/3/2008, points out that three swings was sometimes an out in wicket, and that the <u>Gazette</u> may have erred.</p> +
<p>In May and June 1821, an ad ran in some NY papers announcing that the Mount Vernon mansion was now open as Kensington House. It could accommodate dinners and tea parties and clubs. What's more, later versions of the ad said: "The grounds of Kensington House are spacious and well adapted to the playing of the noble game of cricket, base, trap-ball, quoits and other amusements; and all the apparatus necessary for the above games will be furnished to clubs and parties."</p>
<p>Richard Hershberger posted to 19CBB on Kensington House on 10/7/2007, having seen the ad in the June 9, 1821 <span style="text-decoration: underline;">New York</span><span style="text-decoration: underline;">Gazette and General Advertiser</span>. Richard suggested that "in this context "base is almost certainly baseball, not prisoner's base." John Thorn [email of 3/1/2008] later found a May 22, 1821 Kensington ad in the <span style="text-decoration: underline;">Evening Post</span> that did not mention sports, and ads starting on June 2 that did.</p>
<p>Richard points out that the ad's solicitation to "clubs and parties" may indicate that some local groups were forming to play the mentioned games long before the first base ball clubs are known to have played. </p>
<p> </p> +
<p><u>Little Ditties for Little Children</u> [New York, Samuel Wood and Sons], per David Block, <u>Baseball Before We Knew It</u>, page 190. "Come on little Charley, come with me and play/And yonder is Billy, I'll give him a call,/ Do you take the bat, and I'll carry the ball . . . "</p> +
<p>Ford reports that "John Willes of Kent is "no-balled" for "throwing" at Lord's for round-arm bowling. Nevertheless William Lillywhite James Broadbridge and others continue this practice. John Ford, <u>Cricket: A Social History 1700-1835</u> [David and Charles, 1972], page 21. Ford does not give a citation for this account.</p> +