This is Daniel P Adams speaking.
What you just heard is a recording made in New York City in early January 1962.
It is a conversation between my wife Adelaide and my father, Roger Cook Adams, in which I joined toward the end.
He is recounting some of his recollections of what he learned about the Knickerbocker Baseball Club from his father, Doctor Daniel Lucius Adams, who was a graduate of Yale in 1836 and of the Harvard Medical School in 1838.
Mr. Adams was in his 88th year when the recording was made, at which time he was visiting us after my mother’s death in December 1961.
He died June 8/19/62.
Doctor Adams practiced medicine in New York City from 1839 until he moved to Ridgefield, CT in 1865, when he was 51 years old.
This move was largely dictated by the belief that Ridge fields High altitude 1000 feet would be beneficial to my grandmother’s.
He was a man of many activities beyond baseball.
He loved to sing, and when they both were young in their professions, he played flute duets with Henry Ward Beecher.
In Ridgefield, he carried on his medical practice, was a member of the Connecticut Assembly, the first treasurer of the Ridgefield Library, and the 1st President of the Ridgefield Savings Bank.
He moved to New Haven in 1888, where he died January 3rd, 1899.
To supplement my father’s recollections, Mr. Chadwick is generally credited with devising the box score in a form very similar to that used today.
Daniel Putnam Adams on the interview of his father, Roger Cook Adams
The following quotes are some excerpts from the interview.
Apparently, he was so enthusiastic and so helpful and getting everything started that they soon made him elected him captain and he remained so for some years as long as he would keep the office.
Roger Cook Adams
Well, that that was Nestor of ball players. That was a set of resolutions passed by the club when he when he left it. It was a very flowery resolution… I deposited that, together with the original rule books that I had and a few letters and one thing or another with the Yale library, they have them there.
Roger Cook Adams
Yes, I went to Cooperstown and they they showed me the first Rule book of baseball, so-called, according to their statements, and Its date was 1858. I had one book of rules of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, dated 1848 revised from 1845, which was the first rules. And then there was another one, I think ’53. And another one of ’57, although they claimed theirs was the first which was dated ’58.
Roger Cook Adams
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