What is often referred to as the first recorded game played under the Knickerbocker Rules (now believed to be yet another intrasquad game), took place on June 19, 1846. The Knickerbockers lost to the New York Baseball Club (aka “the New York Nine”) 23–1 in four innings. Elysian Fields First Game The enduring fame of this particular game and of its players is the product of circumstance and self-aware myth-making. As the official historian of Major League Baseball, John Thorn, has written: “The history of baseball is a lie from beginning to end, from its creation myth to its rosy … Continue reading →

DANIEL L. “DOC” ADAMS – 4th from left. Knickerbocker and Excelsior Base Ball Clubs, August 2, 1859, South Brooklyn, N.Y. [Source for date: SABR Pictorial History Committee Newsletter, June 1999] 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 o…