Wednesday, October 2, 2024

October 2, 2024: 19th Century Baseball: The Massachusetts Game

[200 years ago this week, “Father of Baseball” Henry Chadwick was born. So this week I’ll AmericanStudy Chadwick and other 19th century baseball histories, leading up to a special weekend post on my new podcast on 19th century baseball and much more!]

On three places that can help us better remember an alternative form of baseball that eventually lost out to the New York Game and its “Knickerbocker Rules.”

1)      Dedham in 1858: Local teams had been playing baseball in Massachusetts since at least 1854, but it was at Dedham’s Phoenix Hotel on May 13th, 1858 that the Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players met to formally establish the shared set of rules which would become known as the Massachusetts Game. Those rules were designed to create a faster-paced and higher-scoring game than their New York counterparts, including such details as closer bases (60 rather than 90 feet apart), batters starting between home and first bases (only 30 feet away from first, and thus giving them a distinctly better chance to reach base safely), and no foul territory or baselines (giving batters the ability to use any part of the field for both hitting and running). And the results reflected those differences, as exemplified by the July 1859 game in which the Medway Unions beat the Upton Excelsiors 100 to 78 (although Upton got its revenge by beating Medway 100 to 56 for the state championship later that Fall).

2)      Pittsfield in 1859: Unlike football, which as I detailed in this Saturday Evening Post Considering History column began at the collegiate level before gradually evolving into a professional sport as well, baseball was much more fully semi-professional and professional in its early days. But there were collegiate teams as well, and just a year after the formalization of the Massachusetts rules, the first intercollegiate game took place in the state and following those rules. On July 1st, 1859, in the Western Massachusetts town of Pittsfield, Amherst College defeated Williams College 73-32 (Amherst would likewise defeat Williams in a chess match the following day, as the contest was two-part). Like most of their semi-professional peers, the Chinese American baseball players on whom my new podcast focuses played the sport in college (and did so in New England as well), and thus were direct descendants of these earliest collegiate baseballers.  

3)      Civil War diamonds: As the dates in this post, and I hope throughout this week’s series, have made clear, the popular mythology of the Civil War as the period during which baseball originated (or even was popularized) is entirely inaccurate. But the fact that the opposite is true—that baseball was well-established by the 1860s—only amplifies the role that the sport played for Civil War soldiers during their many downtimes between marches and battles. And since a good number of those soldiers came from New England, the Massachusetts Game was an integral part of those Civil War contests, even when New England teams played those from elsewhere—as with an 1863 game between the 11th Massachusetts and 26th Pennsylvania Regiments that was played using the Massachusetts rules. Although the New York rules had become dominant by the decade’s end, and would be featured in the new professional leagues I’ll write about tomorrow, at this foundational moment in American history the Massachusetts Game was an important presence.

Next baseball history tomorrow,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Baseball or sports histories you’d highlight?

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