Baseball 1856 - Henry David Thoreau

[mikelink45]

I lecture on many historic topics in my job with American Cruise Lines, so I am constantly perusing different historic documents.  In the past I have told you how both Wild Bill Hickok and Tom Custer played baseball. 

This note is from Thoreau's journal - he did not play, but he observed this game that was in Sleepy Hollow where Washington Irving based his stories of Rip Van Winkle and the Headless Horseman.  

"Fast-Day.—Some fields are dried sufficiently for the games of ball with which this season is commonly ushered in. I associate this day, when I can remember it, with games of baseball played over behind the hills of Sleepy Hollow, where the snow was just melted and dried up, also with the uncertainty I always experienced whether the shops would be shut, whether we should have an ordinary dinner, and extraordinary one, or none at all, and whether there would be more than one service at the meeting-house. This last uncertainty old folks share with me. This is a windy day, drying up the fields; the first we have had for a long time."

-From Thoreau's Journal; April 10, 1856

 

Interestingly, Baseball Reference says this is the year that Major League Baseball began.  You can see the teams started this year in this wiki posting.  If you are interesting in more about this year try  THE NEW YORK GAME.

  

 

[Dave The Dastardly]

Ironic that a sport criticized today as slow and pedantic was played in Sleepy Hollow, home of Rip Van Winkle. Oh, and the Headless Horseman? Perhaps a reference to the baseball commissioner?

One cannot help ponder these things...

[ashbury]

3 hours ago, mikelink45 said:

Interestingly, Baseball Reference says this is the year that Major League Baseball began. 

 

I think this b-r.com page shows the list of players born in a given year.  The earliest year of birth I can find is 1832.

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/1832-births.shtml

Nate Berkenstock.  Now there's a trivia answer to keep in the back of your mind for your next SABR convention.

The 1871 National Association is generally accepted as the first season of major league baseball.  The sport itself, of course, has no exact beginning date, and the taint of "professionalism" drifted in as soon as grown men started playing seriously.

As for the New York Game article you referenced, you will never go wrong by reading what John Thorn writes.

[BB_History]

Hiya -- I stumbled across this page from Google when futzing with early baseball history research and wanted to point out that "Sleepy Hollow" here almost certainly refers to a place in Concord, MA rather than the famed New York location. It was a specific spot in Concord that was turned into a cemetery and is where Thoreau and his family are now buried (amongst other famed writers!).

But I'm sure many ballgames were being played in NY/tristate area before the legendary one on Hoboken's Elysian Fields, though! Cheers

[Brock Beauchamp]

2 hours ago, BB_History said:

Hiya -- I stumbled across this page from Google when futzing with early baseball history research and wanted to point out that "Sleepy Hollow" here almost certainly refers to a place in Concord, MA rather than the famed New York location. It was a specific spot in Concord that was turned into a cemetery and is where Thoreau and his family are now buried (amongst other famed writers!).

But I'm sure many ballgames were being played in NY/tristate area before the legendary one on Hoboken's Elysian Fields, though! Cheers

Whoa, thank you for the clarification on that!

[ashbury]

As long as we're revisiting this topic, I want to point out that the (excellent) reference provided regarding the New York game might not be relevant to the passage quoted from Thoreau since the strong likelihood is that the Massachusetts Game was being played in Concord in 1856.  The latter version had a number of noticeable differences from the game we know today, for example batted balls that were hit outside the baselines were fair hits and could be fielded for outs, and outs could be registered by hitting the runner with a thrown ball.  (Baseballs back then were much softer than the hardballs that were developed a few decades hence, and were nearly bundles of rags held together with stitched leather.)  On the other hand, Massachusetts ball involved overhand pitching whereas the New York game mandated underhand tosses from the pitcher, and in the New York game an out could be registered by catching a fly ball on its first bounce. 

Anyone who enjoys playing slow-pitch softball would be well served by latching on to a Vintage Baseball team that plays either variant of the 1850s rules, and getting a feel for how much closer softball is to them than modern baseball is.