In his book, “”The Father of Baseball”: A Biography of Henry Chadwick”, Andrew J. Schiff states: “At this particular stage, only one other person, Dr. Daniel “Doc” Adams of the Knickerbockers, may have had more influence. Doc Adams was elected presiding officer of the first convention of baseball players and was credited with many of the game’s early innovations.”
Continue reading →The annual meeting for 1855 was held on the 7th of April. The following officers were elected for the year : A. H. Drummond, President ; E. R. Dupignac, Jr., Vice-President ; Jas. W. Davis, Secretary ; Geo. A. Brown, Treasurer. Directors—D. L. Adams C. S. DeBost, Wm. B. Eager, Jr.
Continue reading →On June 5, 1846, the first honorary members were elected, viz. James Lee and Abraham Tucker, At the same meeting Curry, [Doc] Adams, and Tucker were appointed a committee to arrange the preliminaries, and conclude a match with the New York Base Ball Club. From all the information the writer has been able to gather, it appears that this was not an organized club, but merely a party of gentlemen who played together frequently, and styled themselves the New York Club. “The Book of American Pastimes”, Charles Peverelly (1866)
Continue reading →David L. Porter provides a biography of Doc Adams in his book, “Biographical Dictionary of American Sports: A-F”.
Continue reading →In the May 29, 1859 issue of The Sunday Mercury, a weekly New York newspaper that extensively covered the expanding world of base ball playing, an untitled paragraph announced the possibility of a forthcoming game that would be strikingly different from all others played during the past few years: “We have heard it rumored — we do not know with what truth — that the Knickerbocker Club, of this city, will shortly play a match with the Excelsior Club, of Brooklyn, in which they will repudiate catching the ball upon the bound.” William Cauldwell, the editor of the newspaper, predicted … Continue reading →
In 1871, Doc Adams became the first President of the Ridgefield Savings Bank (now the Fairfield County Bank where his photo still hangs in the lobby of the main office), a position he would hold in two separate terms for ten of the next fifteen years.
Continue reading →What may you ask does a book titled “Searching for Mary Schäffer: Women Wilderness Photography” by Colleen Skidmore have to do with Doc Adams? The description of the book is as follows: Mary Schäffer was a photographer, writer, botanical painter, and mapmaker from Philadelphia, well known for her travels in the Canadian Rockies and Jasper at the turn of the twentieth century. In Searching for Mary Schäffer, Colleen Skidmore takes up Schäffer’s own resonant themes—women and wilderness, travel and science—to ask new questions, tell new stories, and reassess the persona of Mary Schäffer imagined in more recent times. Public and private … Continue reading →
Just recently, our petition to recognize Daniel Lucius “Doc” Adams’s role as a founding father of our National Pastime exceeded 1,000 signatures. The recognition being sought is his enshrinement in the National Baseball Hall of Fame. The show of support via the petition demonstrates that we are successfully telling Doc Adams story. When this journey started, few had heard of the great doctor. “He’s the true father of baseball and you’ve never heard of him,” John Thorn (the Official Baseball Historian of MLB) told The Associated Press in a phone interview. John Thorn‘s book, “Baseball in the Garden of Eden“, … Continue reading →
Patrick Pinak asked this question this week in FANBUZZ in his article, “How Did Shortstop Get The Name “Shortstop”?”. Of course, everyone who knows Doc Adams’ story already new the answer. It is re-assuring that more people are becoming aware of Doc and his contributions to the National Pastime. This continues to be important in the year that Dr. Daniel “Lucius” Adams should appear on the Hall of Fame ballot for the second time. If he receives enough vote at the 2020 Winter Meetings, he will be enshrined in the class of 2021 along side a member of the 2020 … Continue reading →
Doc’s father, Daniel Adams MD (1773-1864) was born in Townsend, Massachusetts and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1797 and from the second class of Dartmouth Medical School in 1799. As well as being a practicing physician, he was a farmer, an author of widely used arithmetic and geography textbooks (the former was in use from 1801 to c.1864), a deacon of his Congregational church, choir master, a member of the New Hampshire Legislature, president of the New Hampshire Medical Society, and an early and frequent orator in support of temperance and abolition. In 1800, he married Nancy … Continue reading →