193 years ago today (July 9, 1827), I was 12 and at the Kimball Union School in Meriden, NH. My father wrote me: “One of your greatest faults as a scholar is the want of perseverance, to struggle with little recurring difficulties; you too readily give up, before making suitable effort to overcome them. This propensity you must correct or you can never attain to anything great or excellent.”
Continue reading →An account of a previous Knickerbocker-Excelsior game played on 8 July 1858 reported, regarding post-game activities, that “Our reporter—Mr. Chadwick—was called upon to respond to the toast of ‘The Press,’ but being somewhat diffident of his oratorical powers, he quietly retreated a moment before the call, having previously deputied the gentleman from the Tribune to respond, which duty he ably performed.” Significantly, this same account also included the observation that “The fielding of the Knickerbockers was marked by some excellent catches ‘on the fly.’ Their opponents seemed to prefer the surer, but less skillful method, of taking the ball on … Continue reading →
The 23rd Doc Adams Old Time Base Ball Festival will take place at Old Bethpage Village Restoration on August 1-2. The longest running Vintage Base Ball festival was renamed in honor of Doc Adams in 2015. This is an important year as hopefully Doc will be elected by the Early Base Ball Era Committee in December for induction into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 2021.
Continue reading →Let’s take the opportunity today to review a timeline of the life of Daniel Lucius “Doc” Adams.
Continue reading →Jay Jaffe of FanGraphs again shows support for Doc Adams’ inclusion in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Hopefully, the committee does better homework than it did last time when Doc came up 2 votes short for election. Since the last time Doc was eligible, the discovery of his handwritten “Laws of Base Ball” was announced. This document sold at auction for $3,263,246, setting a new record for the highest priced baseball document. It was also featured in the Baseball Americana exhibit at the library of Congress. “Adams’s hand in the sport’s early rule-making is not a revelation; instead, it … Continue reading →
Here’s an assortment of a few Knickerbocker Base Ball Club games that Doc Adams participated.
Continue reading →The seminal interview of Doc Adams that appeared in the February 29, 1896 Sporting News has surfaced in several places previously. This version appeared in the St Paul Daily Globe on June 30, 1895.
Continue reading →The seminal interview of Doc Adams that appeared in the February 29, 1896 Sporting News has surfaced in several places previously. This version appeared in the The Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette on June 27, 1895.
Continue reading →In a game that the Knickerbockers won 37-23 vs. the Empires on June 25, 1857, Doc led off and tallied 6 runs.
Continue reading →The following is from the “Biographical and Historical Record of the Class of 1835 in Yale College, for the Fifty Years from the Admission of the Class to College” published in 1881 by Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor, Printers, 371 State Street, New Haven, CT.
Continue reading →