On June 15, 1832, Doc Adams received a letter from his 11-year old sister that has become known as the “Bat and Ball letter“. In the letter his sister Nancy sent to him at school, she said, “I have not played with your bat and ball as you bid me. I forget it every morning and indeed I have not seen it since you went away”.
Continue reading →ON THIS DATE: (June 5th) IN 1846: Doc Adams was appointed to a committee with teammates, Duncan Curry and William Tucker to arrange a game with the New York Base Ball Club. That game would take place two weeks later. IN 1855: The Knickerbocker Base Ball Club played the Eagle Base Ball Club in Hoboken, NJ. It lasted four innings.Final score: KBBC 27 aces, Eagles 14 aces. Doc Adams made 3 runs (aces) and 3 hands (outs).
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 →
The Knickerbockers held elections annually to determine who would serve as officials. At the club’s second election, held on May 5, 1846, Adams was named the Knickerbockers’ vice president. At an April 1847 meeting, he became the president of the team, and was re-elected in 1848 and 1849. He was the leader of a “Committee to Revive the Constitution and By-Laws” of baseball in 1848.
Continue reading →On April 24, 2016, the last hours of the auction for the “Laws of Base Ball” authored by Doc Adams lived up to its billing and did not disappoint as the closing bid came in at $3,263,246 setting a new record for the highest priced baseball document. “Adams’s hand in the sport’s early rule-making is not a revelation; instead, it is the physical record of his central role memorialized in the three surviving pages of his document.” This compelling artifact surely establishes that Daniel Lucius ‘Doc’ Adams is unequivocally a key Founding Father of baseball and deserves to be enshrined … Continue reading →
April 7, 1849, Doc Adams was elected to his third term as President of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in New York City. The Club’s meeting was held at Abell’s, 474 Broadway.
Continue reading →Doc Adams became president of the Knickerbockers for the fourth time, winning an election held at the club’s April 5, 1856, meeting.
Continue reading →In his recent article, “How the Shortstop Offensive Makeover Is Changing Baseball“, Zach Kram discusses the evolution of the shortstop position. From Doc Adams invention of the position through to today’s game – it’s been a fascinating evolution.
Continue reading →On March 26, 1862, Doc tendered his resignation from the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, “… although absent in body, I shall be present in spirit. My interest in the Club will never cease, nor can I forget the many happy hours spent in communion with its members.” James Whyte Davis, the KBBC secretary, accepted his resignation, “I indulge the hope that the ‘spirit’ you express of being with us as always, may be accompanied by the body on the old Play Grounds. Playing commences on the 21st.” Doc was made an honorary member of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club and … Continue reading →
In 1845, a young doctor from Mont Vernon named Daniel Lucius Adams moved to the city to establish his practice. As a proponent of the benefits of exercise, Adams began gathering with several medical colleagues on a nearby New Jersey field to participate in a game then known as “base ball.” In his recent article in New Hampshire Magazine, Ray Carbone spotlights Doc Adams while “discovering baseball’s hidden gems and deep historical roots in New Hampshire”. Click here to read his article: “New Hampshire’s Role In Creating Baseball”, New Hampshire Magazine (3/14/2019)
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