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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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<div dir="auto">Richard Hershberger,"150 years ago in baseball: the financial condition of the Boston club," FB Posting, 12/5/2022;</div>
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<div dir="auto">"Last year they came in second, missing the pennant on a technicality. They won the pennant this year. They are the best team in baseball, and the best run organization. So their finances should be pretty good, right?</div>
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<div dir="auto">Not so much. The important thing to understand about the business of baseball in the 1870s is that they lacked a viable business model. They simply could not consistently bring in more revenue than they had expenses. This is why the churn rate of professional clubs was so high. They will only start to get an handle on this in the 1880s. Not coincidentally, the 1880 season will also see the first incarnation of the reserve clause. But that is in the future.</div>
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<div dir="auto">Boston has one advantage other clubs lack: the local popularity that comes with winning. We see here where management is essentially passing the hat among the fans. This will come together in a unique solution. The organization running the team is the Boston Base Ball Association. The fans will be the Boston Base Ball Club ("club" reflecting its social nature), which will take over the block of outstanding BBBA stock, paying for the privilege. This will carry the Bostons over until better times. This is why the now-Atlanta Braves are the oldest team in baseball."</div>
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<div dir="auto">Further comments from Richard, 12/5/2022:<span class="xt0psk2"><a class="x1i10hfl xjbqb8w x6umtig x1b1mbwd xaqea5y xav7gou x9f619 x1ypdohk xt0psk2 xe8uvvx xdj266r x11i5rnm xat24cr x1mh8g0r xexx8yu x4uap5 x18d9i69 xkhd6sd x16tdsg8 x1hl2dhg xggy1nq x1a2a7pz x1heor9g xt0b8zv" tabindex="0" href="https://www.facebook.com/richard.hershberger.16?comment_id=Y29tbWVudDo1NTc2OTQzMDE5MDI2Mzc5XzYyOTg1MzQ1MjE1NTgyMw%3D%3D&__cft__[0]=AZXRlzWgwFc3brKMw9zeQKN4MHDNK_JuhtjXZOLKhdBN0O52uMitQElpE5_RKTjQ3xwoG7cYslgAVTalGUv4OvR-H6oaEPehk2e_JgqFPXabUSImssMyzrxInbZCDoR_cNs&__tn__=R]-R"><span class="x3nfvp2"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x676frb x1nxh6w3 x1sibtaa x1s688f xzsf02u" dir="auto"><br/></span></span></a></span></div>
<div dir="auto"><span class="xt0psk2"><span class="x3nfvp2"><span class="x193iq5w xeuugli x13faqbe x1vvkbs x1xmvt09 x1lliihq x1s928wv xhkezso x1gmr53x x1cpjm7i x1fgarty x1943h6x x4zkp8e x676frb x1nxh6w3 x1sibtaa x1s688f xzsf02u" dir="auto"> </span></span></span></div>
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<div dir="auto">"We think of top-level professional sports as being awash in cash. Whatever the truth of this might be today, it certainly was not true in the 19th century, or really into the era of large television rights contracts. This is not to let the owners off the hook. Many were terrible people. But this does not change the underlying reality that free market economics simply don't work for top-level professional athlete salaries."</div>
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<div dir="auto">Richard Hershberger, <em>150 years ago in baseball, </em>FB posting on 1/13/2023</div>
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<div dir="auto">"The condition of the Atlantics. This doesn't quite add up. The team is a co-operative nine. In other words, rather than a fixed salary, the players are paid a share of the gate receipts. This was the business model adopted by clubs that were undercapitalized. The better players generally preferred a bit more certainty about their finances. This suggests the claim about the large number of members is so much eyewash. Compare it with the Athletics, who still maintain a fraternal club structure while also paying fixed salaries.</div>
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<div dir="auto">The sad truth is that the Atlantic Club is on its last leg. A co-op nine, with no upfront costs, can survive so long as there is a driving force keeping it going. In this case that driving force is Bob Ferguson. He was notably strong-willed. This was not always in a good way, but he will keep the Atlantics together through two not-good years. Then he will be hired away by the Hartford club, and the vestiges of the Atlantics will collapse shortly thereafter.</div>
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<div dir="auto">What happened? This is an interesting question. As recently as 1870 they were a top club: the first to beat the Red Stockings. My guess is that the underlying club structure was already threadbare at that point. With full professionalism, roster building followed a new model. The Atlantic club wasn't able to keep up with new, more energetic stock companies eager to hire away the best players and the cash to do it."</div>
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<div dir="auto">Richard Hershberger, 2/9/2023, ''150 years ago in baseball '': "<em>advances in outfield play</em>. This is another in the series of innovations Harry Wright made in Cincinnati, working their way into the general baseball consciousness.</div>
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<div dir="auto">Think of a Little League team. Not one of the teams you see on TV in Williamsport, but a little kid team coached by one of dads. The kids put in the outfield have figured out their spot and have a sense of the territory they are responsible for. So they go out to their spot, and if the ball comes into their territory, they do their best. If it goes into someone else's territory, they stand and watch the show.</div>
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<div dir="auto">Part of getting good is moving past this, learning where to go and make themselves useful even when the ball doesn't come to them. This stuff all had to be figured out. This was a large part of why the Red Stockings were so good. They were further along the road of figuring this stuff out, giving them a fielding advantage over those guys standing and watching the play. Here in 1873, the good teams have all got this figured out, in principle if not necessarily in detail, but it is still new enough that it is being explained here to the general baseball public."</div>
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<div dir="auto"><span style="font-size: 14.4px;">From Richard Hershberger, ''150 years ago today, ''6/10/2023:</span></div>
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<div dir="auto"><span style="font-size: 14.4px;">"The Bostons are in Brooklyn, where they beat the Mutuals 8-7. Recall that a couple of weeks back I related the earliest known description of a delayed double steal, done by the Atlantics. Here we see the same thing, this time by the Mutuals. Was this play already widely known, but we haven't noticed it earlier? Or did the Mutuals see what the Atlantics had done and decided to try it themselves? Who knows? The problem is that these plays are worked out, then the vocabulary to talk about them comes later. Reporters, even if they recognize what they just saw, will have trouble writing out it until the vocabulary is created. It is entirely possible that teams had been doing this for years, but only recently have reporters realized that there is something going on here.</span></div>
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<div dir="auto">"Speaking of vocabulary, notice that Dave Eggler "stole to" second base, not "stole" second base. Both constructions goes back to before the Civil War. The "steal to" form has been gradually fading for a decade now. This is a late example. This is a pity. To "steal to" second is to catch the pitcher and catcher off guard, while to "steal" second is an act of larceny. I think the first one is more accurate."</div>
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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">Of the Plow Boys--I can only find three images, all, later in life. Of the three, only Emerson Otis Stanley (1828-1912) can for certain be said to have played baseball with the Plow Boys. He was a farmer. The others are Jordan James Cole (1833-1901), later captain in the Union army and mayor of Downers Grove, and Theodore Smith Rogers (1831-1917), County Sheriff, who married Emerson Stanley's sister. The two images are from ancestry.com, the third, FindaGrave.</div>
<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">I can only prove 4 games the Plow Boys played--1858 in Chicago, 1859 against Danby, 1867 against Fullersburg and 1870 against Naperville.</div> +
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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">See also [[1852.17]] -- A work by Charles Dickens titled "The Child's Story" (1852) in which Dickens writes: "They were active ... at cricket and all games of ball; the prisoners base, hare and hounds, follow up leader, and more sports than I can think of."</div>
<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">There's a reference to a game of "prison base" in The Chester (UK) Chronicle, June 23, 1815.</div>
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<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">A description of Prisoner's base can be found in the Salisbury, NC <em>The Old North State</em>, Jan. 28, 1870.</div>
<div dir="ltr" data-setdir="false">See also Bancroft, "Games for the Playground" (1922) p. 156:</div>
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<p>"PRISONER'S BASE</p>
<p>Prisoner's Base is one of the most popular games for both boys and girls who are beginning to care for team organization, and is capital for adults. It gives opportunity for vigorous exercise for all of the players, for the use of much judgment, prowess, and daring, and for simple team or cooperative work.</p>
<p>The game is found under many different forms. Several, which offer marked or typical differences, each possessing distinct playing values, are given here. These differences are in (i) the arrangement of the ground, and (2) the rules governing the players and game.</p>
<p>The differences in the grounds may be classed as follows: —</p>
<p>I. The entire playground divided in two divisions, one belonging to each party, each division having a small pen for prisoners at the rear. (Diagram I.)</p>
<p>n. The main part of playground neutral territory, with home goals for the opposing parties at opposite ends, with prisons in, near, or attached to them. (Diagrams II, V.)</p>
<p>III. The main part of playground neutral territory, with home goab for both parties at the same end, attached or separate, and prisons at the opposite end, either (i) on the same side of the ground as the home goal, or (a) on the enemy's side of the ground. (Diagrams III-IV.)</p>
<p>The rules for play for the second and third types of ground are fundamentally the same, though differing in details, and they differ from those for Diagram I. The playing qualities of the games for the last three diagrams, however, are very distinct because of the different methods of the enemies* approach to each other (which make differences in the risk of **dares")» and because of the differing risks in rescuing prisoners and taking the enem3r's goal by entry.</p>
<p>It has seemed best to make a selection of the typical forms, and leave the feader of games free to choose his own. The first form is the simplest for beginners and younger players, and makes a good introduction to the game for such players."</p>
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<div dir="ltr">I'm not sure that the combination of homemade whiskey and Billy Ray playing the bagpipes would be such a good idea, particularly not with rifles lying about. -- Richard Hershberger</div>
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<div dir="ltr">Especially if the sheep had the rifles -- Protoball Functionary</div>
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<div dir="ltr"><span>As of December 2020, Protoball has n</span><span>o base ball is</span><span> known</span><span> </span><span>i</span><span>n Madison before 1860.</span><span> </span></div> +