By the mid-19th century,
baseball was a popular American sport and was well on its way to
becoming the “national pastime”. Small towns all over the nation
had a baseball team, including the Upper Valley towns of Woodstock,
White River Junction, Lebanon and Barnard (Silver Lake). Baseball was
popular in the cities, too. Baseball games in large cities drew
crowds of spectators, enabling some city clubs to build fancy
baseball fields and big baseball stadiums, paying for these
facilities by charging admission.
The actual rules of the baseball games
varied from locale to locale, until the New York Knickerbockers
standardized the rules in 1854. Alexander Cartwright, a Manhattan
bookseller and captain of the local volunteer fire department,
thought the firemen should form a baseball team. The fire engine
company was called “The Knickerbockers” and the team adopted that
name as well. Cartwright, and a fellow teammate named “Doc”
Adams, wrote a book that outlined the rules of baseball. “Doc”
Adams was a New Hampshire native, and was a graduate of Kimball Union
Academy. Cartwright, as a bookseller, knew that, given the popularity
of baseball, if he published their book, it would be a great money
maker. Baseball clubs nationwide bought the book and started
following the “Knickerbocker” rules.
Alexander Cartwright
The Knickerbocker rules established
the nine player rule. It established that baseball field should be
laid out in a diamond configuration rather than a square, and set
rules for the length of baselines, although had no rule for placement
of the pitcher's mound. The new rules set foul territory boundaries
and introduced the three strike rule. The practice of throwing the
ball at the runner to get him out was banned, replaced by tagging or
throwing the runner out.
It wasn't long before the bigger city
teams were offering good players money to play on their teams. The
first team consisting of all paid players – and thus the first
professional baseball team, was the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869.
Their highest paid player, shortstop George Wright, made $1,400 a
year, about $23,000 today. The Red Stockings wasn't the first team
that had
players that were paid, but it was the first team that
openly stated that the club's players earned money to play baseball. After one year, the team's manager moved them to Boston.
During the 1870's, professional
baseball clubs joined leagues, formed to organize game schedules.
Many leagues lasted only a year or two, but by 1881, the National
League and the American Association were the two major leagues. The
National League was the stronger of the two, and the stronger and
more popular American Association teams would abandon their own
league to join the National League. Finally the American Association
folded and the National League had a 12 team monopoly.
By 1900, national interest in
professional baseball waned. The National League teams weren't as
competitive, the games weren't as exciting, and only seven cities had
really good teams. Due to dwindling attendance at games, the owners
of the most popular teams got together and decided to throw the less
popular teams out of the league. Teams in Baltimore, Cleveland,
Louisville and Washington were kicked to the curb.
At the time, the biggest minor league
was the Western League, based in Detroit. Ban Johnson, President of
the Western League, realized that his league could capitalize on the
baseball vacuum left in the cities that no longer had major league
teams. Johnson renamed his league the American League, put baseball
teams in the former National League cities and announced that his
American League was now a major league. Ban Johnson
At first, the National League tried to
fight the new American League. After a couple of years, it was
obvious that the American League was there to stay. In 1903 both
leagues signed an agreement stating that the champions of both
leagues would play each other in an ultimate end of the season
baseball showdown – the World Series.
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