Doc Musings
“He’s the true father of baseball and you’ve never heard of him.”
John Thorn, Official Historian of MLB
“Well you know Doc saved baseball.”
Fred Ivor Campbell, noted baseball historian and author
“Ninety feet between home plate and first base may be the closest man has ever come to perfection.”
Red Smith, sportswriter
“I indulge the hope that the ‘spirit’ you express of being with us always, may be accompanied by the body on the old Play Grounds. Playing commences on the 21st.
James Whyte Davis, baseball pioneer, Knickerbocker Base Ball Club
“Resolved, that to him as much if not more than any other individual member are the Knickerbockers indebted for the high rank their club has maintained since its organization, and we claim for him the honored title of ‘Nestor of Ball Players.'”
Proclamation presented to Doc Adams upon his retirement
(Nestor: the wise old King of Pylos who gave sage advice to the Greeks on the field of the Trojan War.
“I really hope you will favor me with your company and with old associations and memories dear to all lovers of the game in the good old fashioned Knickerbocker style.”
James Whyte Davis, baseball pioneer, Knickerbocker Base Ball Club
“The Father of the National Game Still Living in New Haven.”
Chicago Chronicle (June 23, 1895)
“His interest in base ball continued to the end of his life. Even after he was seventy-five he would occasionally join his sons in a neighborhood scrub game, and astonish all the boys with his batting.”
Roger Cook Adams,youngest son of Doc Adams
“When you come across this rough draft of history, it’s compelling. It’s like the Dead Sea Scrolls — it is endlessly worthy of research.”
John Thorn, Official Historian of MLB
“Daniel Lucius “Doc” Adams may never be a household name like baseball’s imagined inventor Abner Doubleday or basketball’s actual inventor James Naismith. But a newly verified set of documents, titled “Laws of Base Ball,” sold at auction early Sunday for nearly $3.3 million, go a long way toward lifting him to legendary status.“
Andrew Dalton, Associated Press
“Teetering on the edge of Cooperstown, Adams is becoming decreasingly enigmatic and increasingly valuable in determining baseball’s genesis, evolution, and governance.”
David Krell, author
“Baseball is the national pastime, It’s important that the historical record is correct.”
Marjorie Putnam Adams, great-granddaughter of Doc Adams
“Someday soon, the average baseball fan will answer the question, ‘Who is the founding father of baseball’ with the name Doc Adams,”
Dan Imler, Managing Director, SCP Auctions
“For his role in making baseball the success it is, Doc Adams may be counted as first among the Fathers of Baseball”.
John Thorn, Official Historian of MLB
“He is baseball’s most important figure not in the Hall of Fame.”.
John Thorn, Official Historian of MLB
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Live on Mr. Doc Adams!! Thank you for these reminders!
The quotes are all well and good, but haven’t the lords of baseball (aka Rob Manfred) made Doc’s journey to the HOF even more difficult by making Pete Rose and Shoeless Joe Jackson eligible for admission? They will go before the same Classic Era committee that will consider Doc in two years. Receiving 12 of the committee’s 16 votes has therefore likely become even less feasible. Conspiracy theorists might think it’s yet another way MLB and the HOF can continue avoiding having to deal with Alexander Cartwright’s ridiculous HOF plaque. And just maybe they’d be right!!
Yes, this makes it even less likely that this pioneer will finally be recognized in 2028. Not that they hadn’t made it immensely difficult already. To think that 2 people who were permanently banned from the game can be considered when one of the true pioneers can’t get back on a ballot after missing by only 2 votes in his one time on a ballot with his handwritten Laws of Base Ball subsequently re-discovered, says a lot about baseball and the Hall of Fame. And it’s not too nice. It will be a sad day if they get on a ballot and or in the Hall before Doc Adams does.
My hope is that the first time around will be too soon for 75% of the Committee to ignore the tarnished reputations of Rose and Jackson, regardless the obvious merit of their candidacies based on career performance alone (though Jackson could prevail given that his stats during the 1919 WS belie the accusation of tanking). Strangely, perhaps this can help focus even greater attention on Doc’s incontrovertible and “unblemished” case for HOF admission.
We hope that you are right!