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    19th Century Baseball in Chicago
    19th Century Baseball in Chicago
    19th Century Baseball in Chicago
    Ebook187 pages1 hour

    19th Century Baseball in Chicago

    By Mark Rucker and John Freyer

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    About this ebook

    The Chicago area today hosts two of the most historic major league franchises and half a dozen minor or independent league teams. Baseball's roots run deep in the Windy City. Indeed, it was Chicago businessman William "I'd rather be a lamp-post in Chicago than a millionaire in any other city" Hulbert, who, according to baseball lore, staged the coup that in 1876 would put the National League on the map. The Chicago White Stockings (now ironically called the Cubs) were one of eight charter members, winning the inaugural NL Championship with such legendary names as A.G. Spalding, "Cap" Anson, and Roscoe Barnes.

    But The National Pastime arrived in Chicago well before the 1876 season, as is proven in this fascinating new book, 19th Century Baseball in Chicago, illustrated with over 150 vintage images.Any local fan of the modern game-whether the action takes place at the "Friendly Confines," 35th & Shields, or the cozy setting of a minor league ballpark out in Kane or suburban Cook County-will enjoy the wealth of information offered in 19th Century Baseball in Chicago.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArcadia Publishing
    Release dateNov 24, 2003
    ISBN9781439642184
    19th Century Baseball in Chicago
    Author

    Mark Rucker

    Mark Rucker, author of Brooklyn Dodgers and a pictorial researcher for the Ken Burns film Baseball, is a baseball historian and active member of the Society for American Baseball Research. He operates Transcendental Graphics and the Rucker Archive, providing historical images and information for projects worldwide.

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      Book preview

      19th Century Baseball in Chicago - Mark Rucker

      me.

      INTRODUCTION

      The birth of baseball is a term that contradicts itself. Baseball was not born. It was not invented. It has evolved. Or, in the words of heralded 19th-Century statistician and baseball analyst, Henry Chadwick, Base ball wasn’t invented, it jes’ growed.

      The mention of ball games in America dates back to as early as 1775. In recent years, thanks to the advance of technology in research, passages have been found that make reference to a game being played between soldiers and officers the day before the Battle of Bunker Hill. Baseball historian Priscilla Astifan discovered one such description, while researching her Baseball In Rochester (NY) history, in the following passage from an article titled Continental Baseball in an 1875 Spencerport, New York newspaper: The student of American history will recollect that the day previous to the battle of Bunker Hill ‘our boys’ indulged in a friendly game of base ball. It may not be generally known that the return game was then and there arranged to be played at Spencerport [an outer Rochester suburb], September 11, 1875, at 2 PM, sharp.

      It goes on to refer to a ball that is large and round and other aspects of primitive baseball. It also mentions that soarred and gousy veterans elected themselves captains. Although it was not baseball as we know it today, it was still two teams, a ball, a bat, and bases. This was 64 years before Abner Doubleday’s ‘invention’ of the game in 1839.

      In the 1880s, in his later years, Whig politician Thurlow Weed reminisced of playing base ball in 1825 at Mumford’s meadow, by the side of the river above the falls, in Rochester, New York. Likewise, in Grandfather Stories, author Samuel Hopkins Adams reflects on going to his first ballgame in Rochester, New York, in the 1880s with his grandfather. An old ball player, his grandfather talks with a local fan about his playing days in Rochester in 1827. They played twelve men to a team at Mumford’s Lot. Coincidence?

      In 1886, a letter from Dr. Adam E. Ford recalls a ball game that he witnessed on June 4, 1838, in Beechville, Ontario. The following excerpts of this letter come from the Journal of Sport History, Vol.15, No. 1 (Spring, 1988): " ‘A Game of Long-Ago which Closely Resembled Our Present National Game’… The 4th of June, 1838 was a holiday in Canada, for the Rebellion of 1837 had been closed by the victory of the government over the rebels, and the birthday of His Majesty George the Fourth was set apart for general rejoicing. The chief event at the village of Beachville, in the County of Oxford, was a baseball match between the Beachville Club and the Zorras, a club hailing from the township of Zorra and North Oxford…

      "The infield was a square, the base lines of which were twenty-four yards long, on which were placed five bags, thus . . . (See Beachvillle Diagram, page 11.)

      The distance from the thrower to the catcher was eighteen yards; the catcher standing three yards behind the home bye. From the home bye, or knocker’s stone, to the first bye was six yards. The club (we had bats in cricket but we never used bats in playing base ball) was generally made of the best cedar, blocked out with an ax and finished on a shaving horse with a drawing knife. A wagon spoke, or any nice stick would do.

      The game looked very close to what was called ‘town ball’ or the ‘Massachusetts game,’ with five ‘byes’ instead of four bases.

      Why did teams from Rochester, New York and Beechville, Ontario play town ball, an organized game similar to the Massachusetts game? The upstate section of New York was once a part of Massachusetts—as late as 1791 when the Gorham/Phelps Act changed the states of New York and Massachusetts to their current alignment. That area of Ontario was known as Upper Canada. It came to be settled by Tories—those who were loyal to the King of England— who had come from New England. These same settlers may have played the English game of ‘Rounders,’ an early bat-and-ball game played as a children’s game in England from the 1600s, in Massachusetts. So, it is widely believed that town ball and the Massachusetts game are direct descendants of that early English game; Rounders was Americanized long before Doubleday.

      After the defeat of the Indian nations and the abandonment of their English allies in the Indian Wars of the late 1700s and the War of 1812, thus ending Indian resistance to western expansion into the region, people began to settle the Northwest Territory (now the Midwest) in hopes of finding land and fortune. What does this have to do with baseball in Chicago? It has to do with the expansion of baseball. Early Chicago settlers came from the East in great droves, thanks to the Erie Canal, St. Joseph River, and Lake Michigan. Americans and Canadians settled the Northwest Territory alike. So the early forms of baseball being played in Beechville and Rochester migrated to Chicago as the Tories and New Englanders traveled west, bringing their bat-and-ball games with them, planting the seeds of the National Pastime in the American Midwest.

      In 1839, Chicago was a small, very raw city. As traders and merchants worked their daily jobs, how could they possibly have time to play base ball? Chances are

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