America's National Game. Albert G. Spalding
is very unfortunate that the records of games played by soldiers during the Civil War are inscribed only upon the memories of those who participated in them. Interesting, indeed, would it be to read the details of struggles which served so well to break the monotony of camp life in the early sixties. Especially would it be of interest to note that while Americans of the North were fighting Americans of the South, between battles both were playing a game that had been devised nearly a quarter of a century before by a youth who, in the pending struggle, had sighted the first gun in defense of Fort Sumter, and who, later on, was to wear the epaulets of a Major General.
It was during the Civil War, then, that the game of Baseball became our national game; for against it there was no prejudice — North or South; and from that day to this it has been played with equal fervor and with equal prowess in every section of our beloved country.
It is said that in Virginia, in the long campaign before Richmond, at periods when active hostilities were in abeyance, a series of games was played between picked nines from Federal and Confederate forces. I have heard rumors of this series repeatedly, but have not been able to trace them to any authoritative source. I refer to them here, not as history, but simply as of sufficient interest to be worthy of mention. I have not found any soldier of either army to corroborate these rumors or to deny them. Several have told me that they took part in many games, on one side or the other, and that they believed the rumors might be founded on fact, because they had themselves known of cases where good-natured badinage had been exchanged between Union and Confederate soldiers on the outposts of opposing armies in the field.
However, it is of record that many games of Baseball were played by soldiers during the war. On Christmas Day, December 25th, 1862, a team from the 165th New York Volunteer Infantry, Duryea's Zouaves, engaged a picked nine from other Union regiments in that army. The game was witnessed by about 40,000 soldiers. It was played at Hilton Head, South Carolina, and was discussed for many a week thereafter. Among those participating in this game was Mr. A. G. Mills, of New York City, afterwards President of the National League, and to him I am indebted for the interesting incident.
Writing under date March 8th, 1909, Mr. N. E. Young, former President of the National League, says:
" In my native town in New York State the modern game of Baseball had not been introduced prior to the breaking out of the Civil War. In my regiment we had a full cricket team, all of whom had played together at home, and our first match was arranged and played near White Oak Church, Va., in the early spring of 1863, against the Ninety-fifth Pennsylvania Regiment's team, hailing from Philadelphia. About this time (1863) a Baseball club was organized in the Twenty-seventh New York Regiment, so we turned our attention to Baseball, and kept it up as we had the chance until the close of the war. It was here that I played my first regular game of Baseball."
In Collier's Weekly of May 8th, 1909, Will Irwin writes as follows:
" Then came the Civil War, and the place of the Boston boys was the ranks. The number of clubs in and about New York City dwindled from sixty-two in 1860 to twenty-eight in 1865. But the enlisted players took their game with them into the camps of Virginia and Tennessee. Whenever, in summer or fall, the Federal armies rested for a week, someone was sure to take a Baseball out of his haversack and start a game. They played it on the Peninsula while the Army of the Potomac waited for the latest incompetent general to replace the last incompetent general. They played it before Fort Fisher, dropping one game mid-innings to fall in and run to the firing line. They played it in Confederate prisons, where they taught it to their captors. The Ohio, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana regiments turned out to watch and remained to learn. A young cricketer from Amsterdam, New York, who had enlisted in the ranks, saw the Eighth New York, recruited from Manhattan, playing a new game. It looked like cricket, for which his soul thirsted; he begged into the game. It was Nicholas E. Young, for a quarter of a century President of the National League. A volunteer private returned invalided to Rockford, Illinois, in 1863. He saw the boys batting up flies, and he told them that he knew a better game. He had learned it in the army. One tall, wiry boy took a special interest. It was Al Spalding, great pitcher, great manager, great organizer — prime figure in Baseball from that day to this. On Roanoke Island Hawkins' Zouaves formed two scrub teams. A young volunteer pitcher won for his side by a weak, puzzling delivery which baffled the batsmen. It was Alphonse Martin, first in the line of great American pitchers.
" The same leaven was working in the Confederate ranks. The New Orleans boys also carried baseballs in their knapsacks. A few of them found themselves in a Federal prison stockade on the Mississippi. They formed a club. Confederate prisoners from Georgia and South Carolina watched them, got the hang of it and organized for rivalry. In the East and West Series that followed the West won triumphantly by unrecorded scores."
James L. Steele, writing in Outing Magazine, has the following relative to newspaper treatment of the sport in days before the war:
" The first newspaper report of a Baseball game that I remember reading was an account of a game played at Hoboken. N. J., in 1859. It appeared in an illustrated weekly, and was such a novel and interesting event that the weekly gave a double-page illustration.
" There were no Baseball schedules in those days, and nobody lay awake nights hatching up reasons why Harvard should not play Princeton and why Yale should play Pennsylvania. All that was needed was an occasion such as a Fourth of July celebration, a county fair, a house-raising, or some other event of that nature. The occasion for this particular game was the entertainment given to a team of English cricketers then touring this country and defeating ' United States Twenty-Twos ' with commendable regularity. We had evolved a game called Baseball, and we wanted to show our cousins what a high old game it was.
" It may have been the ' humors of the day ' editor who wrote the report, which was as follows:
" ' Baseball differs from cricket, especially in there being no wickets. The bat is held high in the air. When the ball has been struck, the " outs " try to catch it, in which case the striker is out; or, if they cannot do this, to strike the striker with it when he is running, which likewise puts him out.
" ' Instead of wickets, there are, at this game, four or five marks called bases, one of which, being the one at which the striker stands, is called " home."
" ' As at cricket, the point of the game is to make the most runs between bases; the party which makes the most runs wins the day.'
" The fact that the reporter thought it necessary to explain how the game was played, indicates the extent of the public's knowledge of Baseball at that time, and even he wasn't quite sure whether there were four bases or five. When he says a base runner may be put out by hitting him with the ball, he makes no mistake, for that was an actual fact, and it was considered a good play on the part of the base runner to draw a throw from the pitcher, for usually the runner would dodge the throw and gambol around the bases while the fielders were hurrying after the ball. This rule was abolished as soon as the game became popular, for a baseman, instead of touching a runner with the ball, would often ' soak ' him at short range, which generally brought forth unprintable remarks from the soakee.
" The artist, in illustrating this game, was not far behind the reporter. The picture shows us several hundred spectators, and, with the exception of a few ladies and gentlemen, seated in carriages, the only person sitting down in the entire assemblage is the umpire; and, as if to show the perfect tranquility of his mind and his contempt for foul tips, he leans back in his chair with his legs crossed. The basemen, instead of playing ' off,' are standing, each with one foot on his base, and a base runner is ' glued to third,' although the pitcher is ready to deliver the ball. In short, the general aspect of the field is enough to give a modern Baseball captain nervous prostration."
CHAPTER VIII.
FIRST