History of Baseball: America’s Game?
Written by playerpress.com, Thursday April 23 2009
The World Baseball Classic is proof that we are no longer alone on the planet baseball. Interestingly, as other nations catch up and surpass us at the game to which we claim invention it is still unclear how we came about playing the sport.
Before we can determine from whence the sport came, we must first recognize who created, or more accurately, adapted the game. We like to place the credit at the feet of Abner Doubleday. Along with having a cool name, it has long been stated that he created the game and originally taught it to Union troops. While this is an inspiring tale that features all of the elements that give it a place in American mythos it is not true. The big strapping handlebar mustache image of Abner Doubleday teaching the Union soldiers to unwind by playing what was destined to become America’s pastime rings of apple pie and motherhood, but like both isn’t always what it’s cracked up to be.
Playing games involving some kind of paddle, stick, or bat with a ball are worldwide. They don’t take the precedence of kicking a larger ball around a meadow, but it‘s been done just about everywhere. Many claim that baseball is a derivation of cricket, but that game is so structurally different that it is as difficult as trying to compare a mosquito to a condor based on they both have the ability to fly.
Baseball is closer to rounders. Rounders goes back to Tudor times and featured whacking a ball with a cylinder and trying to make it around a series of four bases to score a rounders, or point. Its history seems to spring up simultaneously in both England and Ireland with the Irish version originally known as cluiche corr.
The game alternated two sides playing both defensively and offensively with nine players per team. While most Brits look down their nose at the sport and maintain that it is mostly played by schoolgirls, it continues to be played in both England and Ireland. On a personal note I once had a British bartender say to me, “You did a much better job at adapting rounders than you did football, Yank.” I think she was correct in her assessment.
If you can handle admitting that baseball derived from a game that was played by guys in tights and later taken up by British schoolgirls then you can handle knowing that Doubleday did for baseball what Paul Bunyan did for the logging industry. As stuff of legend he comes up short when the facts get sorted.
As the game known as townball, base, or baseball continued to grow from its rounders roots a man named Alexander Cartwright sought to formalize rules for the matches. While he lacks the cachet of Doubleday, the rules he established have remained as a hallmark for the game as it is played today. While rules like the number of balls and strikes per at bat have been altered and the method of putting a runner out by “soaking”, which meant hitting him with the ball, have been eliminated, the game is still close to what he set in motion when he held the first officially recognized game of organized baseball.
That game took place in 1846 when Cartwright’s Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, NJ. Not only did this event precede the alleged Doubleday invention and tutoring of the Union soldiers it also inspired amateur teams to enter the fray and form baseball nines.
By 1857 a number of amateur teams decided to form an organization and set the rules established by Cartwright. Interest was so high in the Northeast that 25 local teams formed the National Association of Base Ball Players which became the first organized league in the history of the fledgling sport. Quick to grasp the future dynamics of the game, not long after forming the Association teams began to charge an admission, or gate fee to attend the sport that had previously been viewed free of charge.
If there is a thread to the Doubleday myth it would center on the Civil War. As the War Between the States was waged baseball, like most other interests, took a backseat. However, while Association play and team play was halted Union soldiers did indeed play the game when not in combat. This would allow the sport which had been regionalized in the Northeast to spread throughout the country.
As is often the case following a war opportunity to make money heightened and in 1869 brothers Henry and George Wright formed the first professional baseball team known as the Cincinnati Red Stockings. To say their nine enjoyed being financially rewarded for playing a game they had previously pursued for free would be an understatement since they kicked off their inaugural season by going 65-0.
While the Reds players showed their delight in getting compensated by pounding the opposition many who had begun the game felt that being paid to play was wrong and denigrated the class of the participant. Lofty ideas often tumble before cold, hard cash and this was no exception. The payday obtainable for playing baseball became more of a lure and soon amateur nines could not compete with their mercenary opponents.
By 1871 enough salaried teams existed that they formed the National Association. With the formation nine paid teams competed in league play. By 1875 the NA grew to 13 teams and paid attendance was the regular order of business.
Although paid, the players were in essence the bosses of the teams in the NA and their compliance with gamblers along with unrestricted liquor sales soon made the games either less than exciting to watch, or downright dangerous and withdraw of public support led to the formation of the National League which admitted teams owned by off the field parties who paid the players a contractual salary.
Their success at scheduling, establishing ticket prices and paying the players under contract led other businessmen to see the possibility of profit in baseball and in 1882 the American Association began as a competitive organization with lower ticket prices to lure fans to their brand of baseball.
By 1901 this rival Association became the American League and would co-exist with their NL neighbors until deciding that watching pitchers bat was boring and create one of the many rifts among fans that are a long standing as Doubleday legends.
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