Part 1 (1/2)

Base-Ball.

by John M. Ward.

PREFACE.

The author ventures to present this book to the public, because he believes there are many points in the game of base-ball which can be told only by a player. He has given some s.p.a.ce to a consideration of the origin and early history of the game, because they are subjects deserving of more attention than is generally accorded them.

His princ.i.p.al aim, however, has been to produce a hand-book of the game, a picture of the play as seen by a player. In many of its branches, base-ball is still in its infancy; even in the actual play there are yet many unsettled points, and the opinions of experts differ upon important questions. The author has been as accurate as the nature of the subject would permit, and, though claiming no especial consideration for his own opinions, he thinks they will coincide in substance with those of the more experienced and intelligent players.

To Messrs. A. H. Wright, Henry Chadwick, Harry Wright, and James Whyte Davis, for materials of reference, and to Goodwin & Co., the Scientific American, and A. J. Reach, for engravings and cuts, acknowledgments are gratefully made.

JOHN M. WARD.

INTRODUCTION.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE ORIGIN OF BASE-BALL, WITH A BRIEF SKETCH OF ITS HISTORY.

It may or it may not be a serious reflection upon the accuracy of history that the circ.u.mstances of the invention of the first ball are enveloped in some doubt. Herodotus attributes it to the Lydians, but several other writers unite in conceding to a certain beautiful lady of Corcyra, Anagalla by name, the credit of first having made a ball for the purpose of pastime. Several pa.s.sages in Homer rather sustain this latter view, and, therefore, with the weight of evidence, and to the glory of woman, we, too, shall adopt this theory. Anagalla did not apply for letters patent, but, whether from goodness of heart or inability to keep a secret, she lost no time in making known her invention and explaining its uses. Homer, then, relates how:

”O'er the green mead the sporting virgins play, Their s.h.i.+ning veils unbound; along the skies, Tost and retost, the ball incessant flies.”

And this is the first ball game on record, though it is perhaps unnecessary to say that it was not yet base-ball.

No other single accident has ever been so productive of games as that invention. From the day when the Phaeacian maidens started the ball rolling down to the present time, it has been continuously in motion, and as long as children love play and adults feel the need of exercise and recreation, it will continue to roll. It has been known in all lands, and at one time or another been popular with all peoples. The Greeks and the Romans were great devotees of ball-play; China was noted for her players; in the courts of Italy and France, we are told, it was in especial favor, and Fitz-Stephen, writing in the 13th century, speaks of the London schoolboys playing at ”the celebrated game of ball.”

For many centuries no bat was known, but in those games requiring the ball to be struck, the hand alone was used. In France there was early played a species of hand-ball. To protect the hands thongs were sometimes bound about them, and this eventually furnished the idea of the racquet. Strutt thinks a bat was first used in golf, cambuc, or bandy ball. This was similar to the boys' game of ”s.h.i.+nny,” or, as it is now more elegantly known, ”polo,” and the bat used was bent at the end, just as now. The first straight bats were used in the old English game called club ball. This was simply ”fungo hitting,” in which one player tossed the ball in the air and hit it, as it fell, to others who caught it, or sometimes it was pitched to him by another player.

Concerning the origin of the American game of base-ball there exists considerable uncertainty. A correspondent of Porter's Spirit of the Times, as far back as 1856, begins a series of letters on the game by acknowledging his utter inability to arrive at any satisfactory conclusion upon this point; and a writer of recent date introduces a research into the history of the game with the frank avowal that he has only succeeded in finding ”a remarkable lack of literature on the subject.”

In view of its extraordinary growth and popularity as ”Our National Game,” the author deems it important that its true origin should, if possible, be ascertained, and he has, therefore, devoted to this inquiry more s.p.a.ce than might at first seem necessary.

In 1856, within a dozen years from the time of the systematization of the game, the number of clubs in the metropolitan district and the enthusiasm attending their matches began to attract particular attention. The fact became apparent that it was surely superseding the English game of cricket, and the adherents of the latter game looked with ill-concealed jealousy on the rising upstart. There were then, as now, persons who believed that everything good and beautiful in the world must be of English origin, and these at once felt the need of a pedigree for the new game. Some one of them discovered that in certain features it resembled an English game called ”rounders,” and immediately it was announced to the American public that base-ball was only the English game transposed. This theory was not admitted by the followers of the new game, hut, unfortunately, they were not in a position to emphasize the denial. One of the strongest advocates of the rounder theory, an Englishman-born himself, was the writer for out-door sports on the princ.i.p.al metropolitan publications. In this capacity and as the author of a number of independent works of his own, and the writer of the ”base-ball” articles in several encyclopedias and books of sport, he has lost no opportunity to advance his pet theory. Subsequent writers have, blindly, it would seem, followed this lead, until now we find it a.s.serted on every hand as a fact established by some indisputable evidence; and yet there has never been adduced a particle of proof to support this conclusion.

While the author of this work entertains the greatest respect for that gentleman, both as a journalist and man, and believes that base-ball owes to him a monument of grat.i.tude for the brave fight he has always made against the enemies and abuses of the game, he yet considers this point as to the game's origin worthy of further investigation, and he still regards it as an open question.

When was base-ball first played in America?

The first contribution which in any way refers to the antiquity of the game is the first official report of the ”National a.s.sociation” in 1858.

This declares ”The game of base-ball has long been a favorite and popular recreation in this country, but it is only within the last fifteen years that any attempt has been made to systematize and regulate the game.” The italics are inserted to call attention to the fact that in the memory of the men of that day base-ball had been played a long time prior to 1845, so long that the fifteen years of systematized play was referred to by an ”only.”

Colonel Jas. Lee, elected an honorary member of the Knickerbocker Club in 1846, said that he had often played the same game when a boy, and at that time he was a man of sixty or more years. Mr. Wm. F. Ladd, my informant, one of the original members of the Knickerbockers, says that he never in any way doubted Colonel Lee's declaration, because he was a gentleman eminently worthy of belief.

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, several years since, said to the reporter of a Boston paper that base-ball was one of the sports of his college days at Harvard, and Dr. Holmes graduated in 1829.

Mr. Charles De Bost, the catcher and captain of the old Knickerbockers, played base-ball on Long Island fifty years ago, and it was the same game which the Knickerbockers afterward played.

In the absence of any recorded proof as to the antiquity of the game, testimony such as the foregoing becomes important, and it might be multiplied to an unlimited extent.

Another noticeable point is the belief in the minds of the game's first organizers that they were dealing with a purely American production, and the firmness of this conviction is evidenced by everything they said and did. An examination of the speeches and proceedings of the conventions, of articles in the daily and other periodical publications, of the poetry which the game at that early day inspired, taken in connection with the declarations of members of the first clubs still living, will show this vein of belief running all the way through. The idea that base-ball owed its origin to any foreign game was not only not entertained, but indignantly repudiated by the men of that time; and in pursuing his investigations the writer has discovered that this feeling still exists in a most emphatic form.

In view of the foregoing we may safely say that base-ball was played in America as early, at least, as the beginning of this century.