By John Thorn, author, Baseball in the Garden of Eden

When the Knickerbockers met on December 6, 1856, they resolved “to call a convention of the various base ball clubs of this city and vicinity.” The New York Herald, in reporting on this meeting, observed: “We understand the object of this convention is to promote additional interest in base ball playing, by the getting up of grand matches on a scale not heretofore attempted.” The anticipated outcome would be to inaugurate new clubs and to strengthen existing ones, by conforming the rules and making the game more “scientific” and difficult to play—”manly,” in the preferred term of the day, like cricket—and thus of wider appeal. Children might play baseball along short base paths and catch the ball on one bound to record an out, but grown men, well…