Yearly Archives: 2020

Rewriting History

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Andrew Forbes, the author of The Utility of Boredom: Baseball Essays recently released an updated version with a “minor” correction. ” if you were to open both of those hypothetical copies of the book to the essay entitled “Madison Bumgarner and the Beautiful Lie,” and more specifically to pages 50 and 51, you would find that I, with the full backing of Team Invisible, have made a minor change to the text. “… … “More recent scholarship, though, has clarified things, and ousted Cartwright from the founder’s role. Most notably, the excellent John Thorn – who, as the Official Historian … Continue reading →

1857 Convention of Base Ball Players (part 1)

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The 1857 Convention of Base Ball Players met for the first time on January 22 at Smith’s Hotel, the headquarters of the Knickerbocker Club, with the following clubs represented: Knickerbocker, Gotham, Eagle, Empire, Putnam, Baltic, Excelsior, Atlantic, Harmony, Harlem, Eckford, Bedford, Narrau, and Continental. The clubs elected Daniel Adams of the Knickerbockers as president of the convention and then appointed a rules committee, made up of one member of each represented club. This was perhaps the most important meeting in the history of baseball. It was a meeting of the baseball clubs of New York City, and unlike the previous … Continue reading →

Doc Adams Passed Away 121 Years Ago

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January 3, 1899, Doc Adams passed away at the age of 85 at his home in New Haven, Connecticut. In his years playing base ball (1845-1862) in New York City with the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club), he created and developed the shortstop position (1849/50), made all the balls and supervised the manufacture of all the bats. In 1857, in his ‘Laws of Base Ball’, he set the bases at 90 feet, and proposed nine innings/nine players per side and more. You can find more of Doc’s obituaries here.

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