Chapter - 01

Origin And Early History

The earliest references to a thrown ball go back 5,000 years, to the era of the first civilized man. History records that the ancient Egyptians, and later the Greeks and Romans, tossed balls back and forth as part of their religious rites and as a conditioning exercise. Some phase of ball-throwing activity probably goes back to the most primitive man.

The first actual historical record of any sort of true "game" to be played with a ball and bat appears in the 12th Century in France and Spain. It was the custom, after Easter services, to play a ball game in which the whole congregation would rush up and down the main street, happily hitting a ball with a stick. The English took to the idea as soon as the news reached them and promptly developed a game called "stool ball," so called because part of the gear was a milkmaid's stool. The point was that one player tried to hit an upturned stool with a ball while his opponent tried to bat or swat the ball away from the goal. For some reason, this game was played in churchyards. Later, a group of unidentified milkmaids entered the picture and added second, third and fourth stools as "bases" to be circled after the ball was hit.

"Rounders" became one of the favorite games of British youngsters — the French played a similar game but called it "poison ball" —and it was brought to the American colonies by early settlers. Another game the English colonists preferred was cricket. They had brought cricket equipment with them but kept it reserved for the grown-ups. The youngsters of the 1700s had to make do with old, discarded bats and balls and their "wickets" (which can be called the bases in cricket) became wooden stakes driven into the ground. Their game became a combination of rounders and cricket with new wrinkles added as they occurred to the players. The rules depended upon the number of players on hand and the playing equipment available.

The Early Ball. — The boys thought up the idea of wrapping string around a center of rags until it was big enough and firm enough to use as a ball; they eliminated the stakes that were used as bases in cricket and substituted flat rocks that were not so easy to stumble over; their bats were fashioned from tree branches. There was, at the outset of earliest play, just one stake at a point back of the pitcher, just as there is one wicket back of a cricket bowler. The next stake was just about where first base is now and the third stake was at approximately the same spot as third base. The player ran from home to first, then across the field, back of the pitcher to third, and then home, covering a triangular infield. The distance between stakes was left up to team captains and usually ranged from sixty feet to seventy-five. The batter tried to hit a ball thrown by a pitcher and, if he did, to get around as many bases as he could before he was put out. He was safe on a base, the same as today.

There was no set number of players, "plugging" (hitting a player with the ball as he ran between bases) was permitted, and the size and shape of the field varied from area to area. This primitive version of baseball became very popular all over the American colonies and was variously called "Town Ball," "One Old Cat," "Two Old Cat," "Massachusetts Game," "Goal Ball," and even "Base Ball."

"The Book of Sport," by Robin Carter, published in 1834, included a set of playing rules and a diagram of a diamond for baseball as it was played in the early 1830s. The rules were similar to modern ones: Three strikes constituted an out, as did a caught fly. When the batsman got a hit and circled the bases, he made a run. There were no basemen designated, and when a player fielded a throw he "plugged" it at the base-runner who was then out. There were no umpires. First base is shown as being to the left of the catcher where third now is and the base-runners ran clockwise. These rules were almost exactly the same as the older rules for rounders.

Was rounders of American invention, or was it really a form of cricket? That was the argument that raged some years later. Whatever its origin and name, a game was being played in the United States as early as the 1700s that was a crude forerunner of the swift and sparkling game played on diamonds throughout the country today.

Origin in America.— It wasn't until 1905 that the aforementioned argument started. Henry Chadwick, called the father of baseball, its first writer and the inventor of the box score, claimed that American baseball was positively descended from the British game of rounders, which became "town ball" in this country, then baseball. He was an eyewitness to the evolution, having seen rounders played as a boy in England, and rounders, town ball and baseball in this country.

A. G. Spalding, founder of the famous sporting goods house, a fine pitcher himself, and publisher of the "Baseball Guide," claimed that such a theory was nonsense and that baseball was purely an American invention. A committee was appointed to investigate the matter. The findings of the committee — that baseball had been invented in 1839 by Abner Doubleday, a distinguished Civil War General, in Cooperstown, New York — were based wholly upon evidence submitted in a letter written by a man who stated that he had observed the actual invention when he was a schoolboy in Cooperstown.

Many accepted the findings of the committee even though there seemed to be much more evidence to support Chad-wick's claim than that of Spalding. To this day, even though numerous baseball authorities have repeatedly poked holes in the Doubleday theory, there are many who still believe this old story. It should be noted that Abner Doubleday himself never made any claims whatever to having had any influence on baseball. He had died years before the findings were published.

Henry Chadwick, who invented the first box score and was unwavering in his belief that baseball descended from the British game of rounders.

By the early 1840s, the baseball games played in this country had been pretty well standardized into "Town Ball," played East of New York, and "the New York Game," played, naturally, in New York. They were alike in many respects but Town Ball was patterned more after the ancient rounders, while the New York Game seems to have been largely taken from cricket. In 1842, the New Yorkers drew up the first diagram of a baseball field and grown men began to take this boys' game seriously and to see in it possibilities for a great sport. In 1845, the Knickerbocker Baseball Club of New York was formed, the first such organization in history. It was an amateur group with duly elected officers. No professional organization was to appear for twenty-five more years. The Club immediately began drawing up a set of standard rules and making plans for a more satisfactory playing field. Draftsman and surveyor Alexander Cart-wright was given the task of preparing a diagram for a new type of field.

By the following year, Cartwright had prepared the diamond diagram which, except for minor changes, is the baseball field used to this day wherever baseball is played. The Knickerbockers also established uniform rules which set the pattern for present-day ball.

The First Game. — The Knickerbockers then issued challenges to take on all comers and the first baseball game ever played under organized rules took place on June 19, 1846, at Elysian Fields (near Hoboken), New Jersey. "The New York Nine" was the opposing team and they beat the Knicks 23-1 in four innings. So depressed were the Knickerbockers that they played no more inter-city games until 1851, but limited their play to practice games. After five years of practice, they evidently believed they were ready for another go at the game and took on the "Washington Baseball Club of New York" on June 3, 1851 on the same Elysian Fields. Both teams were tied at the end of the ninth, but the Knicks got two runs in the tenth to win the game 22-20. The next year, the Washington Club, which had become "The Gothams," challenged for a return match at the Red House Grounds, 106th Street and Second Avenue in New York City. The now thoroughly experienced Knicks wrapped this one up in six innings, 21-12, and the first box score was kept at this game. The Knicks were nattily clad in the first baseball uniforms, consisting of white shirts, long blue trousers, blue and white belts and white caps.

Another game between the two teams, played two years later in New York, had a major effect on the development of baseball. Until this game, which resulted in history's first tie—12-12 in twelve innings—other teams had not dared challenge the Knickerbockers, but when they saw that the Knicks were not invincible, a scramble followed in and around New York to field teams that could challenge them. By 1858 there were twenty-five organized amateur baseball clubs in New York and New Jersey. During that same year the Knickerbocker Club lost the control over the game that it had held since its formation because of its stubborn refusal to concede to rule changes demanded by the other clubs. The Club felt that the game should be reserved for "gentlemen" and resisted efforts to make changes that would make it more popular. It did agree to a change which set the game at nine innings of play instead of twenty-one points, but would allow no further modernization of the rules. At an 1858 meeting of all the clubs, the National Association of Baseball Players was formed, the first body duly appointed to govern baseball, and the Knickerbockers were eased out of the picture.

Growth of the Game. — The game grew more popular with both players and spectators and the first professionally-promoted game — the start of a three-game series — was held at the Fashion Race Track on Long Island, near Brooklyn, New York. At fifty cents a head, the match attracted an attendance of 1,500 for a gate of $750, big money to players who had heretofore paid their own way. Incidentally, New York beat Brooklyn in two of the three games. The series attracted a great deal of attention throughout the country and more and more clubs began to form, extending into the Midwest. Baseball was well on its way to becoming one of the major recreational interests of the country.

This was a legal pitching delivery.

This was not a legal delivery.

Ty Cobb was baseball's greasiest hitter. He played 24 years and compiled a lifetime average of .367, the highest in history.

The first intercollegiate game in history was played between Amherst and Williams on July 1, 1859. Amherst won 73-32 and the excellence of Amherst's pitcher, a man named Hyde, was explained away by Williams rooters with the story (never proved) that he was a local blacksmith disguised as a college student.

In 1860, the Brooklyn Excelsiors, a fine team that featured baseball's first star pitcher, nineteen-year-old James Creighton, made a pioneer baseball tour, playing in upper New York and then through Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland, winning all fifteen games played. Their tour was immensely successful from both the standpoint of public acceptance and player interest. They frequently played before record crowds — up to that time — of 3,000 and new clubs were formed in the surge of enthusiasm aroused by the conquering Excelsiors.

The start of the Civil War in 1861 cut short the growth of baseball teams. In New York the number of clubs dropped from sixty-two to twenty-eight in the first two years of the war — but the war was to have an unexpectedly important effect upon the increase of baseball's popularity. Union soldiers took the game with them wherever they went and many Southerners saw baseball for the first time in Northern prison camps. One Army game was watched by 40,000 men, by far the largest crowd ever to attend a sporting event in this country to that time.

When the fighting men returned home, they carried with them enthusiastic reports of the new game and soon the South was busily forming teams in many states. In the years following the Civil War, the growth of baseball's popularity was tremendous. In 1865, just after the end of the war, ninety-one clubs were represented at the convention of the National Association of Baseball Players. Two years later, the number had grown to 237 members and New York was no longer the leader in numbers of clubs. Illinois had more than twice as many, Ohio had twice as many, and Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Indiana, Maryland and Connecticut had about the same number of teams as New York.

While baseball was growing throughout the country, most of the New Eng-landers held out against the "New York Game" and were still playing their old "Town Ball" — now known as the "Massachusetts Game" — featuring long-since abandoned customs like "plugging." This difference in style naturally limited the competition between New England and other areas.

Pro Ball. — The Cincinnati Red Stockings, organized as an amateur team in 1866, decided that the club would be a professional team with regular salaries for the players. The venture was an immediate success, especially since the newly organized team clobbered all opposition on a road tour. Cincinnati fans loved their Red Stockings. The Wright brothers — George and Harry — were big influences on the team's success. Harry was manager and captain and he had the good sense to travel around the circuit and sign up the best performers from other good teams, thus introducing the idea that members of a team need not necessarily be home town boys. The Cincinnati team had players from New York, Washington and Brooklyn. Harry also designed the first true baseball uniform which, in this case, was red and white and very similar to today's uniforms. Brother George also was the star player of the nine-man (no substitutes) team which, in 1869, traveled 12,000 miles and played fifty-seven unbeaten games. George, a shortstop, and the first ball player who got pestered by fans on the street, hit fifty-nine homers and batted .518. He was the earliest player of his era selected to Baseball's Hall of Fame. Harry Wright got $1,200 a year, his brother George got $1,400 and other team members' salaries ranged from $1,000 down to $800, and their playing season lasted for eight months, March to November.

Babe Ruth was the game's greatest home-run hitter. He smashed a total of 714 homers in his 22 years as pitcher, first baseman and outfielder.

During their second season, the Red Stockings continued to crush all the opposition for another twenty-two games, but their seventy-eight game winning streak was finally broken at Brooklyn.

The Brooklyn Athletics beat them 8-7 in eleven innings before a crowd of 20,000 standees at fifty cents a head. It was clear after the Reds' highly successful first season-and-a-half that amateur ball was all through and that pro ball was off and running.

First League.— In 1871, a number of teams met and formed the National Association of Professional Baseball Players. The teams in this organization were from New York City, Brooklyn, Boston, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Chicago, Fort Wayne (Ind.), Rockford (111.) and Troy (N.Y.). Later that same year other teams joined up.

The new organization was weak and loosely knit. It set up various rules but could not do much about enforcing them, and for the next five years baseball's progress was all downhill. Clubs followed any schedule that happened to appeal; gambling on the outcome of the games was difficult for the police to control; hard liquor was consumed in large quantities at the games, and pickpockets, drunk-rollers and brawlers drove away the respectable fans. Teams lost money and reputations and some of them folded.

The game had to clean house or go out of business. In 1876, two men began to do something about it. They were William A. Hulbert, president of the Chicago White Stockings, and Boston pitcher Albert G. Spalding. The latter jumped from Boston to Chicago, taking three star teammates along with him, so that he and Hulbert could lay plans for the formation of a new organization. Spalding, incidentally, was a great missionary for the American game. He took the Bostons and the Philadelphia Athletics to England on a sail-rigged steamship, for a series of exhibition matches in 1874. Start of Organized Play — Spalding and Hulbert continued with their efforts to organize baseball on a responsible business basis and, in January of 1876, a secret meeting was called at Louisville where plans were formed for an organization to be known as the National League. A month later a constitution was agreed upon and the new league was a reality.

The first National League idol of the 20th century was Christy Mathewson, master of the fadeaway which is nothing much more than today's screwball. In 18 years as a pitcher for the New York Giants and Cincinnati Reds, Matty won 373 games.

This is how the stylish fans looked when they turned out to cheer for their favorites at the turn of the century. Ladies liked baseball, even in the olden days.

The first game played under National League rules, and thus the real beginning of baseball as we know it, took place at Philadelphia on Saturday, April 22, 1876. Boston beat the home team 6-5. The first real test of the NL's power took place in the same year when the Philadelphia Athletics and the New Yorks decided it was too much trouble to travel west to complete their schedules. The League tossed out these two largest cities for six full years. By this action they proved once and for all that they meant business and that no team, no matter how powerful, was going to be permitted to trifle with the rules.

Additional evidence of the League's determination to clean up baseball came when four Louisville players were convicted of making deals with gamblers and were barred for life. Gambling and drinking at games were cut down to the extent that the sport soon became respectable enough for ladies to visit the ball parks. The National League had won its battle for existence and baseball began a steady march upwards to fantastic heights of success, popularity and profit. But it had a long climb.

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