In her book “A History of American Sports in 100 Objects”, Cait Murphy proposes that these 100 objects tell much more than just stories about great games – they tell the story of the nation. She shows how the games Americans play are woven into the fabric of America itself. One of the objects that she includes is “Soil From The Elysian Fields”. She states that “In Greek mythology, the souls of the historic dead enjoyed paradise in the Elysian Fields.” She found it fitting that was the home of the Knickerbockers and that the “first organized baseball game” took place at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey.

We applaud her selection of this object from the heart of baseball’s nascent period. Of course, when selecting this object, she could not avoid mentioning Doc Adams.

We will disregard the controversial phrase, “first organized baseball game”, and focus on references to Doc Adams, the 1857 convention and the “Laws of Base Ball”.

But Cartwright was more like Moses, setting down familiar practices for what became known as the “New York game” (as opposed to the “Massachusetts game”). As one early baseball historian, John Ward, put it in 1888, “They recorded the rules of the game as they remembered them from boyhood, and as they found them in vogue at that time.” But others did as much or more, for example, not only did Daniel “Doc” Adams create the shortstop position, but he also led the legislative effort in 1857 that set the bases 90 feet apart and established nine innings as the standard. These “Laws of Base Ball” sold at auction in 2016 for $3.26 million. Adams, too, was associated with the Knickerbockers.

“A History of American Sports in 100 Objects”, Cait Murphy, Basic Books, 2016