I just received the latest copy of Memories and Dreams, official magazine of the Hall of Fame. I was a bit taken aback by the article referring to the soon to be unveiled “Taking the Field” exhibit. This exhibit will include the “Laws of Base Ball” and the “Rules for Match Games of Base Ball”.

The rules of baseball are engrained in the American culture to a magnitude unlike those of almost any other game. But those regulations changed repeatedly as they coalesced in the national consciousness.

Beginning Memorial Day Weekend, visitors to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown will have a first-hand look at an important part of that evolution.

On loan from baseball fan Hayden Trubitt, drafts of rules penned circa 1857 by the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club will be on display in the Museum’s Taking The Field exhibit. The handwritten documents, originally submitted as part of a convention called to codify the rules of the emerging National Pastime, address topics still relevant to today’s game, such as player movement from team to team and gambling.

These proposed rules, later amended and approved at the convention, also addressed the length of games, formalized nine players to a side and clarified regulations that were unaddressed in earlier rule books.

These documents, which will be exhibited in a special case designed to preserve their structural integrity, will be formally unveiled on Friday, May 22, as part of the Hall of Fame’s Memorial Day celebration of America’s 250th birthday.

Memories and Dreams, Spring 2026 Volume 48 Issue 1

It is very exciting that Hayden Trubitt, has placed these important documents on long-term loan to the National Baseball Hall of Fame. This will provide an opportunity for many fans to view these documents that represent an important part of baseball’s evolution.

However, it seems strange that the 3 most fundamental rules haven’t received sufficient emphasis: 9 innings, 9 players to a side, and 90-foot base paths.

… the handwritten documents address topics still relevant to today’s game such as player movement from team to team and gambling.

These proposed rules, later amended and approved at the convention, also addressed the length of games, formalized nine players to a side, and clarified regulations that were left unaddressed in earlier rule books.

Groundbreaking ‘Rules of Base Ball’ Documents Debut This Spring at Museum, Baseball Hall.org, January 14, 2026

More importantly, the intended focus of this exhibit is unclear since the draft rules presented to the convention are referred to as “penned circa 1857 by the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club”. Not even mentioning Doc Adams and William Grenelle in the description is a bit disconcerting and raises some serious questions.

… but it is the rules approved at the 1857 convention that prompted Henry Chadwick to describe that year as the game’s true birthdate.

Analysis of the “Laws of Base Ball”, Theodore A. Frank, Jr., Baseball (A Journal of the Early Game) Volume 9

The lead up to the opening of this exhibit, however, differs substantially from the previous two times they were displayed. I remain cautiously optimistic about the exhibit and will withhold judgement and further comment until the exhibit opens. So, stay tuned.

To provide a little background, please see below.

Oregon Historical Society (2016)

The “Laws of Base Ball” were first displayed at the Oregon Historical Society in 2016. The debut was mere months after Doc Adams missed election to the National Baseball Hall of Fame by 2 votes.

The documents, which make a strong case for New York Knickerbocker player and president Daniel “Doc” Adams being the game’s true patriarch, initially went to auction in 1999. The papers apparently had been in the family of Adams’ fellow Knickerbocker and baseball pioneer William Grenelle. A collector purchased them for $12,000, sight unseen, without truly understanding their import. The “Laws of Base Ball” sold again this spring for more than $3 million. This new anonymous buyer, says Oregon Historical Society Executive Director Kerry Tymchuk, is a “friend of the historical society.”

“Trove of documents that upend baseball history now on display at Oregon Historical Society”, The Oregonian (July 01, 2016)

John Thorn, Official Historian of Major League Baseball, declared the centerpiece document of our upcoming baseball exhibit to be the “Magna Carta” of America’s national pastime. This is the first public display of these elusive papers, which only recently came to light at an auction in California. The content of the documents thoroughly changed the early history of baseball and established Daniel “Doc” Adams the proper father of the modern game.

The hand-written documents were drafted by Adams for presentation to an unprecedented special meeting of all New York area baseball clubs in 1857 and include his notations of the meeting’s proceedings. Up until this meeting, games were played under a variety of rules. Teams ranged from eight to eleven players, games ended when a team scored twenty-one runs, and there was no set distance between bases. Among other rules, the “Laws of Base Ball” established the base paths at ninety feet, conclusively set the number of players to a side at nine, and fixed the duration of the game at nine innings

Baseball’s Magna Carta, The Historian – Member newsletter for the Oregon Historical Society, Summer 2016

Library of Congress (2018)

The ‘Laws of Base Ball’ next appeared at the Library of Congress, in 2018, as part of the Baseball Americana exhibit., This is how they were described then,

John Thorn, Official Historian of Major League Baseball, delivered a speech at the opening on July 14, 2018. Excerpts from his speech can be found below. The entire speech can be found at the link in the citation.

Paternity disputes have long plagued baseball. I have written extensively on that subject and will address it only in passing today, hoping instead to illuminate the historic importance of the “Laws of Base Ball” on exhibit now. Abner Doubleday, anointed by a Commission of Baseball Elders in 1908, gave Cooperstown an excuse to establish a fine museum in an economically challenged upstate village. Meanwhile his “rival” Alexander Cartwright — both men went to their graves not knowing that they had invented baseball — was awarded a plaque in the Hall of Fame that credits him as having “set bases 90 feet apart” and “established 9 innings as a game and 9 players as [a] team.” This is demonstrably false, as none of these aspects of the game were settled until 1857, some eight years after Cartwright had left New York for Hawaii, never to return east.

The Laws of Baseball … and the “Unchanging Game”, John Thorn, Our Game

Daniel Lucius “Doc” Adams was the guiding force; William Henry Grenelle rendered his teammate’s draft into the document that, in fine Spencerian Script, was placed before the first convention of baseball clubs. Adams and Grenelle were two of the three Knickerbocker Club delegates to that gathering; the third was Louis Fenn Wadsworth, to me an especially fascinating character. We will have more to say about each of them in time.

The Laws of Baseball … and the “Unchanging Game”, John Thorn, Our Game

Great documents are the products of great men, whose contributions — even their identities — may be erased from mainstream history. Until recently, that had been the fate of “Doc” Adams, who more than anyone reshaped his club’s primitive 1845 rules to become the game that would endure. While I have written about him and the early game for decades now, many of those learning about the dramatic find of these documents will ask, Who was Doc Adams? Who was William Henry Grenelle? Who was Louis F. Wadsworth?

The Laws of Baseball … and the “Unchanging Game”, John Thorn, Our Game

First among equals, Doc Adams: Born in Mont Vernon, New Hampshire, he attended Amherst and Yale as an undergraduate and received his degree from Harvard Medical School in 1838. When he came to New York in the following year, he commenced to play ball “just for exercise” with some medical colleagues; surely he had played baseball in the New England style beforehand. Joining the Knickerbockers in October 1845, the month after their founding, he became the club’s president and headed the committee to review and modify its rules.

Adams made the balls, oversaw production of the bats, and added the position of shortstop to what had originally been an eight-man game, or sometimes a game of extra players who were stationed in the outfield or behind the catcher. Though he was an accomplished player, it was Adams’ pioneering contributions that won for him, in 2015, his first year on the ballot, the most votes of any Veterans Committee candidate for the Baseball Hall of Fame; all the same he fell two votes short of induction, as most on the selection committee had never heard of him before they began their deliberations. With the rediscovery in the very next year of his “Laws of Base Ball” we have tangible primary evidence of his genius. While I have no personal stake in whether he is one day welcomed into the Hall of Fame, I would suggest that his merits are evident.

The Laws of Baseball … and the “Unchanging Game”, John Thorn, Our Game