sla book review: base ball: a journal of the early game

base ball: a journal of the early game

Reviewed by Derek Charles Catsam, University of Texas of the Permian Basin

NOVEMBER 29, 2008 archive

Base Ball: A Journal

One of the most significant trends in the historiographical development of baseball literature is the increased attention and understanding of the origins of the game. Serious students of America's Pastime long abandoned the demonstrably false creation myths that involved Abner Doubleday and Cooperstown in favor of complex and nuanced understandings of the deep roots of an evolving sport extending back at least as far as the 18th century but with progenitors in bat and ball games extending back centuries.

The establishment of the new McFarland journal, Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game, thus represents a forum for the profusion of serious writing on baseball prior to the 1920s or so but also serves as a recognition of the ways in which writing and thinking about baseball has changed in recent years. The journal both embodies recent trends and provides a forum for expanding upon them. Base Ball thus represents an exciting and important contribution to literature on the sport.

The first issue, which appeared in spring 2007, reveals the myriad directions of current and future scholarship. John Thorn, a respected historian of early baseball history, is the journal's editor and Base Ball has a first-rate editorial board and, as a result, already appears poised to be among the finest journals dedicated to the history of sports. Philosophically, the journal appears determined to balance both scholarly history with the important work of writers from outside of the academy, a particularly wise move given the serious contributions that fans of the game from many walks of life have made to our understanding of the sport's development. Indeed, in few areas of scholarship is the so-called professional-amateur divide less meaningful.

The inaugural issue covers a host of topics and welcomes myriad approaches and articles of varying lengths from full scholarly treatments to what amounts to research notes. And as with most journals, the articles vary in quality even if, overall, the standard is quite high. As the journal gains a foothold, the quality and depth of contributions should continue to improve.

After a brief introduction from Thorn and another from publisher Robert Franklin, ten articles (from eleven contributors) follow. Angus Macfarlane moves away from the overwhelming focus on baseball as a game of the eastern cities as he focuses on the first organized baseball teams in San Francisco. Rob Edelman combines one area of cultural study, sport, with another, film, in his assessment of movies about baseball in the years leading up to 1920.

Most fans think of player trades as a particularly modern phenomenon. David Ball thoroughly debunks this misconception in his in-depth treatment of the early game's "sale system," with particular focus on an 1875 transaction. In a similar vein, Robert H. Schaefer explores the 1902 postseason, reminding us that, while 1903 introduced World Series play, it did not mark the first attempt to find out baseball's best team.

Baseball may have been indisputably the American game in these early years, but it was not only an American game, as Cesar Gonzalez Gomez shows in his article on Mexican baseball. But American and northeastern, the game certainly was. Joanne Hulbert, in one of the journal's best articles, shows how an opening day tradition emerged in Boston, a tradition that remains to this day in the form of Patriots Day when the Red Sox play the only morning game in the Major Leagues. And William A. Mann, in a piece the body of which is only tangentially related to baseball, reveals the origins of Hoboken, New Jersey's Elysian Fields.

While the early years of college football are quite well known to sports historians and fans, college baseball is a much better trod terrain, something Mike Huber and Jack Picciuto help correct in their look at the first Army-Navy baseball game. And while the history of professional baseball is relatively better established, Richard Hershberger still manages to fill in some important gaps on the early professionalization of the game that led to the establishment of the National League.

The final contribution to the journal comes from Thorn again, who presents a modified version of a speech he delivered at Pittsfield, Massachusetts' Berkshire Museum in June 2006. Thorn revisits his important discovery about Pittsfield's role in the development of baseball as we know it, augmenting what we know about the game's Berkshire roots, cautioning jingoistic locals about what we do not know, and reminding everyone that baseball does not have a creation myth, a moment of conception, but rather a long gestation and steady evolution. Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game seeks to chronicle, analyze, and expand our understanding of the game during its long, and seemingly getting longer, pre-1920 phase. This first issue is a wonderful first step.

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