Decades ago, I took notes
Just the other day I stumbled upon an old file in which I had gathered notes from my reading of the old, today ignored Base Ball Guides from 1860 to perhaps 1885. (Let me note that there was an earlier “guide” — The Base Ball Player’s Pocket Companion, published in Boston by Mayhew & Baker from 1859 through 1861.) While I am willing to share my notes verbatim upon request — handwritten, then typed up in WordStar on my CP/M Kaypro, later converted to Word— below I’ll winnow out some highlights that may be of interest to readers of Our Game. Where the notes are cryptic I have provided annotation or illustration.
I read the actual guides on microfilm, long before any were digitized, but you may peruse most of them online; see my friend Sean Lahman’s helpful index (https://bit.ly/2zxVEvt). Let’s treat each decade separately; today let’s spin our way through the 1860s guides.
POCKET COMPANION, 1859
p. 5: “The Game of Base Ball, as adopted by the ‘Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players,’ May, 1858, which has ever been the favorite and principal game played throughout New England, differs, in many points, from the New York game, though it requires equal skill and activity, and deservedly holds the first place in the estimation of all ball players and the public.” [See especially “The Game That Got Away” https://bit.ly/3dMJcHb, but also “Early Baseball in Boston” https://bit.ly/365StHy]
BEADLE, 1860
p. 1: opens with rules of rounders, “from which baseball is derived.” [Chadwick went to his grave believing this to be true, but recent scholarship has revealed rounders and baseball to be distinct games — siblings, perhaps, with neither deriving from the other.]
p. 2: acknowledges prior existence of the New York Base Ball Club but “we shall not be far wrong if we award to the Knickerbocker the honor of being the pioneers of the present game of base ball.” [The Knicks were preceded by the NYBBC (a.k.a. Gotham), the Eagle, and the Magnolia, but those clubds disbanded and the KBBC endured into the 1880s and was left to claim the laurel, despite grumbling by surviving Gothams.]
p. 18: Pitcher’s point and home base are described “quoits” — i.e., rings, not plates [no depiction of these survives though we do have representations of the 9" diameter plates.]
p. 26: “Right field. This is the position that the poorest player of the nine should occupy.”
pp. 31 ff.: Massachusetts Game rules and diagram are supplied. [After the Civil War this feature ceased.]
BEADLE, 1861
p. 46: lists all clubs and officers attending the National Convention of 1860, also all Junior Clubs
p. 53: Betting already a problem! [“During the season of 1860, several very exciting contests took place both in New York and Brooklyn, which were characterized by conduct on the part of the majority of the spectators, that greatly interfered with the pleasure the games would otherwise have afforded. The prominent source of the trouble, was, the heavy betting that was made on the result of the pending contests, a custom that has become far too prevalent not to be regarded as an evil that strikes at the vital interests of the game.
“This habit of betting large amounts on the result of important matches, makes that result a matter of importance to the pecuniary interests of the spectators who indulge in it, and not one confined simply to the interest and excitement consequent upon the mere contest itself. In the former case it requires considerable moral self-control to restrain a man, who has his “fifty” or a “hundred” bet on the result, from interfering in one way or another with the proceedings, when he thinks that by so doing he can influence matters either to favor the party on whose success he is so peculiarly interested, or prevent their opponents from obtaining a victory; but in the latter case the love of fair play, which is inherent in the mind of every individual possessed of any manly attribute, and the desire to see a well-contested game, is sufficient to control the influences that lead to outside interference with the progress of a match….
“At a regular meeting of the Eagle Base Ball Club, held July 11, 1860, the following resolution was unanimously adopted: Resolved, That in future no member of this club who may be interested, directly or indirectly, in any bet on a match game shall be allowed to play in such match, and that hereafter the National Association rule against betting by any person connected with a match game will be strictly enforced; and any player or scorer known to be interested in a bet on the game will be barred by this Club….”]
John C. Whiting of 87 Fulton St. (Upstairs) made baseballs for KBCC, Excelsior, etc. [He was a formidable third baseman with the Brooklyn Excelsiors.]
BEADLE, 1862
Pitcher’s Point and Home Base: The location of the pitcher’s point and the home base are indicated by means of iron quoits [see above] painted white, and not less than nine inches in diameter. They should be cast with iron spikes running from the under side to keep them marked by the insertion in the ground of a piece of hard wood, six feet long, about two inches wide, and from six to eight deep. It should be inserted so as the umpire can see it. [When the quoits were replaced by circular iron plates, it became evident why the home base is today more typically called “home plate.”]
The Ball: The rule states that the ball must be composed of India rubber and yarn, covered with leather, the proper weight being five and three-quarter ounces avoirdupois, and its circumference nine and three-quarter inches. The balls are easily made, but it would be advisable to obtain them from some well-known maker, as there will then be no chance of their being wrong in size or weight. The covering is usually sheepskin, and on a turf ground this covering will last some time.
On Scoring: It will be observed that each player is numbered on the score, from one to nine, and his position, in this respect, and also in reference to that he holds in the field, remains unchanged on the book throughout the game, no matter how many times his position is changed as a fielder. Therefore, instead of writing the name of the player we wish to designate, we simply use the figure that precedes his name. In order, also, to record the movements of each player during the game, a series of abbreviations are adopted, those we use in scoring being as follows:
A for first base. D for catch on the bound.
B for second base. L for foul balls.
C for third base. T for tips.
H for home base. K for struck out.
F for catch on the fly. R for run out between bases.
Double letters — H R, or h r, for home runs.
L F for foul ball on the fly.
L D for foul ball on the bound.
T F for tip on the fly.
T D for tip on the bound.
The above, at first sight, would appear to be a complicated alphabet to remember, but when the key is applied it will be at once seen that a boy could easily impress it on his memory in a few minutes.
The explanation is simply this — we use the first letter in the words Home, Fly, and Tip, and the last in Bound, Foul, and Struck, and the first three letters of the alphabet for the first three bases.
BEADLE, 1863
Apparently no annual Beadle Guide was issued in 1863, probably because the Civil War had reduced the number of players and games.
BEADLE, 1864
Has ’63 averages. Devyr, Swandell, and Duffy with Eckford, Goldie and Wansley with Mutual [Devyr, Duffy, and Wansley would become, as Mutuals in 1865, the first players to be banned for game fixing]. Also, Harry Wright with Gothams, Asa Brainard with Excelsiors, Al Reach with Eckford [he would depart, in 1865, for a weekly salary paid by the Philadelphia Athletics].
p. 54: Value of statistics, by Chadwick: “Many a dashing general player who carries off a great deal of eclat in prominent matches, has all ‘the gilt taken off the gingerbread,’ as the saying is, by these matter-of-fact ‘figures,’ given at the close of the season…. “
p. 64: In 1862, Creighton was not put out once! [This was later shown to be wrong, through a misunderstanding of how early batting stats were recorded. In fact he was retired 4 times in 5 games, giving him an average Outs score of “0” with an overage of “4” … before the batting average, performance at the plate was registered as “Outs and Over,” with the latter representing the remainder of dividing Out (or Hits) by Games.]
BEADLE, 1865
pp. 51–52: “Home runs can therefore be made through loose fielding or wild throwing as well as from long hits to the outer field.” [Although some scorers distinguished earned runs from those scored with the aid of poor fielding, this was not yet standard.]
Harry and George Wright both with Gotham in ’64.
BEADLE, 1866
George Zettlein breaks in with Eckford [speedy pitcher, mysterious nickname of “The Charmer”]
Bob Ferguson with Enterprise [will achieve new nickname in The Baseball Encyclopedia of 1969 — Death to Flying Things. But that nickname belonged not to third baseman and catcher Ferguson, a star with the Brooklyn Atlantics, but instead to outfielder and teammate Jack Chapman, famous for over-the-shoulder barehand catches.]
Charlie Pabor with Unions [another strange nickname: The Old Woman; also The Old Lady in the Red Cap, reflecting the red cap he wore with the Unions of Morrisania. Normally an outfielder, he pitched too, and on July 26, 1872 became the only pitcher to win a complete game with a team playing with only eight men. His counterpart in the Unions’ battery, catcher Dave Birdsall, was known as The Old Man; like Pabor (above), his nickname was immortalized in a carte de visite issued by the Grotecloss brothers in 1866.]
BEADLE, 1867
George Wright with Gotham and Union, Leonard with the Hudson River club of Newburgh [Both would play for the Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869, as would Sweasy below, who for 1868 was joined at Irvington by Leonard.]
Sweezy and Walters (Sweasy, Wolters) with Irvington [Pitcher Rynie Wolters was long believed to have been born in The Netherlands, but recent research indicates otherwise. Ruurd Edens writes, “The Wolters family in America believed Reinder was born in the northern Dutch province Friesland but some German records indicate an area just across the border, called Ost-Friesland (East Friesland) in northern Germany.”]
Goldie also with Union; Alphonse “Phonnie” Martin, too [a pitcher famous for his exceedingly slow, high-arc deliveries]
BEADLE, 1868
Charlie Gould with Buckeye in 1867 [would become only native Cincinnatian on 1869 Red Stockings]
Bielaski with Capital of Washington
Ellard and Wright (H.?) with Cincinnati
Borden with Commonwealth of PA [Joe Borden, a.k.a. Joe Josephs, is one of baseball’s most enigmatic figures. On July 28, 1875 he threw the first no-hitter in professional league history while with the Philadelphia Athletics. He then signed a multiyear contract with Boston in 1876. After winning the first game in MLB history on April 22, he was so ineffective that he was removed from the active roster; with his salary guaranteed, however, he was made to perform the duties of groundskeeper.]
Cummings, Flanley, Hall, Treacey with Excelsiors. [This club had faded from its prominence in the days of Jim Creighton, who, with Flanley, had signed subrosa professional contracts with the club in 1859. Creighton had been replaced by Asa Brainard, who went on to pitch nobaly for the Washington Nationals and, in 1869–1870, the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Cummings, who followed Brainard in the box, began to throw his celebrated curveball for the Excelsiors during the 1867 campaign. “It was during the Harvard game [October 7] that I became fully convinced that I had succeeded in doing what all these years I had been striving to do. The batters were missing a lot of balls; I began to watch the flight of the ball through the air, and distinctly saw it curve.”]
Bechtel, Meyerle with the Geary club of Philadelphia. [Meyerle became the champion batter of the National Association’s first year, with an average of .492, while Bechtel became the first major leaguer to be banished or blacklisted for game fixing.]
Davyr (Devyr) restored to good standing with Mutes — also Pike. [Both had gambling issues. Devyr had been banished for fixing a game against the Eckfords, while Pike ended his career by being banished for the same offense.]
Force with Olympic of DC [He would become famous for signing multiple conflicting contracts and landing with a different club every year. In September 1874 Chicago signed shortstop Davy Force to a renewal contract for 1875; then they learned that, because the season was still in progress, the contract was invalid by National Association (NA) rules. Chicago signed Force to another contract in November, but the organization blundered by backdating the contract to September, thus voiding it once again. In December the Philadelphia Athletics offered Force a contract, and he signed it. The NA Council, led by an Athletics official, upheld Force’s deal with that club. Within a few months, Hulbert gave the Easterners a taste of their own medicine and began signing Boston’s Big Four. Fearing another NA smackdown, Chicago’s William Hulbert resolved to form the National League.]
Creighton team of Norfolk, VA [A Southern club named for the late lamented Excelsior star was viewed as a symbol of regional reconciliation.]
Jack Burdock with Enterprise of Bkn (Jr.) — also George Hall, Jack Remsen, Jimmy Wood. [It is amazing to see, in tracking the annual travels of the best players, how many began to ply their trade in Brooklyn.]
Dave Eggler with Jefferson of Greenpoint (Jr.) [Forgotten today, he was the premier defensive outfielder of his day.]
DE WITT GUIDE, 1868
Edited in its first year by New York Herald reporter M.J. Kelly [often credited (rather than Chadwick) with inventing the box score]. Not held by NYPL but a copy is held by the Baseball Hall of Fame, where I perused it many years later.
p. 79: At National Association annual meeting held in Philadelphia on December 11, 1867, it is proposed that the clubs create a sinking fund to send eighteen players to England “for the purpose of illustrating the game of base-ball as now established in this country.” [So, the idea of the 1874 tour, which actually transpired, was not the brainstorm of Al Spalding or Harry Wright but originated seven years earlier.]
p. 85: African Americans in effect banned from the top tier of baseball play, as it proposed that no club composed of one or more colored persons be permitted in the National Association. [full text of resolution:
Sixth — Your committee would beg to add, that it has been quite impossible for them to ascertain the condition, character, and standing of all the clubs, in different parts of the country, as required by the Constitution, and can only assume that the applications made are based upon good faith. It is not presumed by your committee that any club who have applied are composed of persons of color, or any portion of them; and the recommendations of your committee in this report are based upon this view, and they unanimously report against the admission of any club which may be composed of one or more colored persons.
/S/Wm. H. Bell, M.D., Jas. Whyte Davis, Wm. E. Sinn; Philadelphia, Dec. 11, 1867.]
p. 87: Wansley’s admission to Fulton club membership voided, as he had been banned from NA in game-fixing scandal of 1865 (along with Devyr, readmitted to good standing with Mutuals). Also, Haymakers accused of chicanery in forfeit to Mutuals [after game interrupted by rain, umpire called on Unions of Lansingburgh and Mutuals of New York to resume play, as game had not yet been played to five innings. Unions/Haymakers refused, the protested the award of victory to the Mutuals. Two years later this disputatious team walked off the field after attaining a tie status (17–17) with the Cincinnati Red Stockings, so as not to cost their bettors a loss. Victory awarded to Cincinnati.]
BEADLE, 1869
Why “K” for strikeout — the last letter of “struck”; Chadwick also used last letter of “Bound” and “Foul” in scoring [Dispute reigns, still, over whether M.J. Kelly or Chadwick deserves credit.]
Cuban-born Steve Bellán with Union of Morrisania. [The other, forgotten Cuban star of the 1860s played for Troy, as Bellan would do: Rafael Julian de la Rúa of Matanzas. In 1860, at the age of twelve, he is listed in the U.S. census, living in Newton, Massachusetts, a student at R.B. Blaisdell’s school in Newton. A classmate of Bellán’s at Fordham from 1864–1867 (it is unclear whether he played ball with the Rose Hills), he transferred to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) for 1868, and in that year joined the Troy Haymakers, a first-class National Association club, pitching in twelve games. A lefthander with a peculiar screwball pitch, Rúa was so effective against the New York Mutuals on August 4 that the Troy Times observed, “Rúa’s pitching was the acme of perfection — not too swift to be unreliable, and with just enough of the ‘twist’ to prevent the Mutuals from making their heaviest batting.”
Cone, King, Osborne, Addy, Barnes, Spalding, “Swasy” with Forest City of Rockford
In November 9, 1868 game of Brooklyn vs. New York picked nines, triple play by Gorge. Wright (3B), Charlie Pabor (RF), and Marty Swandell (1B)
Visiting English cricketers played 7 games of baseball vs. Americans
Mutuals, abandoning their green stockings and trim, wore brown pants and cap, white shirt
DE WITT, 1869
1869 — opp. title page, nice linecut of “Base Ball Field”
Chadwick the editor
1869 — home plate is now a wrought-iron (not cast-iron) square, 12” to each side, with the point facing pitcher. [This gave the pitcher 17 inches of strike zone (not 12 … actually, 16.97, as application of the Pythagorean theorem will attest, but who’s counting?). Ever since 1869, the width of the plate has never changed, not even when some bright soul suggested, for the 1900 season, filling in the top “corners” as an aid to the home-plate umpire.]
Amendment to Sec. 7 of rules permits professional players for first time {although this provision was rescinded the following year, it permitted, for 1869, professional clubs to play match games against professed amateur clubs of the National Association. [Of the 57 contests that the 1869 Red Stockings, avowedly professional, would go on to play in 1869, 19 would match pro vs. pro.]
p. 24: “Since 1860 the professional system has been practically in vogue, though ostensibly all were amateur players…”
p. 35 Muffin matches have 11 men to a side — the extra at right-short and in outfield [This practice of permitting up to 11 men in the field would prompt Henry Chadwick , in years to come, to advocate forcefully for making baseball a ten-man game, with the extra player at “right short-stop.”]
p. 43: “First and third” situation — runner on first streaks for 2B, Catcher throws, but to shortstop, who nabs runner from 3B at home. [Many aspects of strategy as we know it today were born in the 1860s.]
p. 62: Pitch fast or medium-paced? Medium “affords more chances for outs than does swift pitching, the rule being that pitching is the most effective which affords the most chances for outs on the bases and catcher from high balls, and not that which yields the most outs on sharp tips and strikes.” [Guile rather than speed rules the game. The changeup was the game’s first deviation from the fastball, even preceding the development of the curve.]
p. 63: Value of change pitching, need for a fast or a slow hurler on staff [Before free substitution was permitted, swapping pitchers meant exchanging positions in the field; typically the “change pitcher” began the game in right field.]
p. 88: Heading “CLUB TOURS IN SUMMER”: “It is not many years ago when every summer saw interchanges of visits made between the military and fire companies of our principal cities. This was before the era of pic-nics and summer excursions of social organizations.” AND MORE GOOD STUFF [here about the social, cultural, and even political value of touring clubs.]
p. 90 “Could some prominent Southern club — the Monticellos of the University of Virginia, or the Louisville Clubs, for instance, — be induced to visit New York, we feel confident that the result would be greatly beneficial in removing some portion of the existing sectional prejudices which are among the greatest obstacles to true reconstruction.”
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