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Robert LifsonThe following essay (below) on the Philadelphia Olympics, written by John Thorn, appears only in the printed REA catalog, not online, so I am posting here for those interested in the history of the Olympics.
Philadelphia Story:
The Olympics and the Origin of Baseball
The offering at auction of the 1838 “Constitution of the Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia” is a great event for collectors, historians, and anyone who has ever wondered how baseball began. As an artifact it is singular—no other copy of this first Olympic Constitution is known to exist. As a document it reveals so much between the lines about how grown men rationalized the playing of a boys’ game. And despite no reference to the word baseball anywhere in the booklet’s seventeen pages, it opens a window onto a little understood phase of America’s grand old game.
A deteriorating thermographic photocopy of this amazing survivor has been in my possession for twenty-five years, and recently I shared it with the online research community before its legibility crumbled irretrievably. But mine was a copy of a copy, and I did not know whether the possessor of the original was an individual or an institution. I still don’t ... but now I know that the next owner will be someone who reads these words and is high bidder at the Spring 2007 sale at Robert Edward Auctions.
In the course of research for a book in progress, tentatively titled Baseball in the Garden of Eden, it occurred to me that baseball’s development might well have proceeded differently at a number of critical junctures, and that had it done so the modern game might not have emulated the Knickerbocker or New York model. Along the way I refined my thinking about formerly revered characters such as Abner Doubleday, Alexander Cartwright, and Albert G. Spalding, and came to appreciate the only recently noted achievements of Daniel Lucius Adams, William R. Wheaton, and Louis Fenn Wadsworth. And I reflected upon the comparative contributions of four clubs from New York: the Gotham, also known as the Washington for their primacy among New York ball clubs; the New York Base Ball Club, whose membership for some time in the 1830s and ’40s overlapped with that of the Gotham; the Eagle, which formed as a ball-playing club in 1840 but like the Gotham did not adopt baseball for several years; and of course the Knickerbocker, who have received too much credit for a hundred years now. However, none of these clubs was in my view the first organized baseball team. That distinction belongs to the Philadelphia Olympics of 1833.
Was a game called baseball played by that name earlier? Yes. In England we have early references to baseball in novels by Jane Austen (Northanger Abbey, written in 1798 though published after the author’s death in 1817) and Mary Russell Mitford (Our Village, 1824), and a miniature children’s book by John Newbery (Little Pretty Pocket-Book, 1744) ... but these references are to games played by small children and young women, and in a spontaneous manner. Regarding the earliest citation for baseball in America, I uncovered documentation for the game’s prohibition by that name in Pittsfield in 1791, but that game too was played on a pickup basis. Additionally, two nameless clubs were advertised to play a match in New York in 1823, but we do not know anything about them, nor are we certain that the game was played.
The Olympic game of ball in the 1830s has been termed town ball by later writers but we do not know for sure what it was called at the time, except that the term “playing ball” was in the air. References in current historical works to an “Olympic Town Ball Club” are a misnomer. While the 1838 Olympic Constitution offers no hint of how their game might have been played, a good approximation may be found in the entry for a pentagonal game (four bases plus a home or striker’s point) labeled as “Town Ball” in the 1864 volume issued by Dick & Fitzgerald of New York, The American Boy’s Book of Sports and Games:
“This is the game called ‘Rounders’ in England, and is undoubtedly the origin of the popular game of Base-ball.... [This was Henry Chadwick’s view in the 1860s and has prevailed until recent years, when work by David Block, Larry McCray, myself and others has shown that baseball is an older term than rounders and thus not its progenitor.] The first player on the in side takes up a little hand-bat, and the feeder pitches the ball toward him. The batsman strikes at the ball. If he misses it, or tips it behind the home, or if it is caught off his bat by any of the scouts, he is out, and the next player takes his place. If he succeeds in hitting the ball he at once flings down his bat, and runs off toward base No. 1, while the outsiders try to pick up the ball, and hit him with it, before he can get to the shelter of the base.... As soon as the feeder begins to feed, the player at any base may make a bolt for the next. The feeder knows this, and sometimes makes a feint of throwing the ball to the batsman, while he really retains it in his hand, to have a shy at the incautious player, who leaves his ground; for when a base is once quitted, there is no returning thither. The player must run on to the next, and stand his chance of getting put out by the way.”
As David Ball wrote in December 2006 on the nineteenth-century listserv of the Society for American Baseball Research, “This [confusion over terms] does point out what I think of as the nominalist fallacy, that is, the assumption that because a game is or is not called something like "base ball' (or whatever), then it must be or not be what we would call baseball (or whatever).”
So, what is baseball, and what is not? Who invented baseball in the sense of a game whose connection to the present model we might recognize?
I am persuaded that the childhood games of England and western Massachusetts are indeed baseball, in that they involve a bat; a ball that is pitched or thrown to the bat; two sides alternating innings; multiple safe havens, whether bases or stones or stakes; and a round circuit of the havens that scores a run. But the origin of ball play by young men in structured teams is first and foremost a Philadelphia story.
In 1905, as part of the research into the origins of baseball conducted for the Mills Commission, a friend of John Oliver, C.H. McDonald, recorded the old man’s early memories of playing ball at age ten in Baltimore in 1825: “To my question as to what name this base game that he played was called, he said he remembered distinctly that it was known only as BASE BALL. He further stated that he never saw men play ball until he had been in New York a few years.” The men Oliver saw playing ball in New York in the years after his arrival in 1835 are likely to have been the Gothams.
In Philadelphia the story of baseball goes back to the 1820s too, but here men played the game, and even before the Olympic constitution specified that all members be twenty-one years of age. Recently I came upon a provocative mention of ball play in the City of Brotherly Love in 1829. In “A Word Fitly Spoken,” published in The American Sunday School Magazine of January 1830, the anonymous writer observes:
There is, in the city of Philadelphia, an asylum for children who are presented to the guardians or overseers of the poor, as objects of public charity. Without stopping to admire and approve the humane and wise provision which keeps them from much evil example and influence, and gives them that instruction which is profitable for all things, even in this world,--our present object is, to state a case of much interest, which recently occurred.
Early on a Sabbath afternoon during the summer [of 1829], the matron of this asylum was pained to find a company of eighteen men, (rope-makers,) at a game of ball, in an enclosure near the building, and in view of the children. Knowing the power of such an example, she went to them—requested them to desist a moment, till they should hear what she had to say…. She then civilly requested them to leave their sport for a while, and go with her to the asylum, assuring them that what they would see, would be new to them, and perhaps interesting After a short consultation, they determined to follow her; and leaving their hats and coats behind, they all followed her to the house....
After dinner, and thanks returned, the children with great quietness went out into the yard which surrounds the building. The matron then cautioned them as to their conduct—”You know, children,” said she, “that this is God’s holy Sabbath. If you take up a plaything, or touch one, you sin. You must not work nor play, lest you offend God, who has commanded you, and me, and all of us, to REMEMBER THE SABBATH DAY TO KEEP IT HOLY.” She gave them this solemn admonition in language the most simple and affectionate, and to the wonder of her silent visiters. The children went out in a very orderly manner; the matron then turned to her adult class, that had so unexpectedly come under her care. She told them she was sincerely obliged to them for their civility; that they had seen something of the course of proceeding in that house, and she hoped they had been interested; that she should be happy to see them there at any time, but especially upon the Sabbath—when they would always see the same, or similar efforts made to train the children in the knowledge and fear of God, and in obedience to his holy law. They returned to the field, took their hats and coats in the most orderly manner, and returned home.
The next Sabbath, every one of the eighteen persons came to the asylum, decently dressed, and with a becoming deportment, and witnessed the whole course of exercises. One of them was considerably advanced, (supposed 45 or 55 years old,) and the youngest was about 17; and many of them paid a third visit! So effectually did the serious, affectionate, and judicious conduct of this matron, secure the respect and confidence of this company of transgressors.
What convinces me that this treacly tale has a basis in truth is the specificity of the men being identified as rope-makers and the fact that this Orphan Asylum still stands, at North 18th and Race Streets. My guess is that the prevailing blue laws and Philadelphia society’s religiously inspired animus toward play may have, instead of inspiring a religious awakening, persuaded the rope-makers to cross the river to New Jersey to play.
We know from Charles A. Peverelly’s Book of American Pastimes (1866) of some other young Philadelphians taking the ferry across the Delaware to play ball at an open field off Market Street in Camden, New Jersey. The location of the Olympics’ field may now, like that of the asylum ball grounds, be identified precisely: 422 Market Street, the site of St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, still standing at the location where its cornerstone was laid in 1834. (Who will erect a plaque to the Olympics here?) This event pushed the ball players a bit farther north on Market Street, where they continued to play until 1857, when they returned to their starting point of Philadelphia. (I derive the precise location of the original Olympic playing field from an historical sermon by the Rev. Dr. Garrison, in 1880, the fiftieth anniversary of the St. Paul’s Episcopal parish.)
The first occasion of Olympic ball play we know of for certain was the Fourth of July, 1831; town ball derived its name from the communal ball play attached to holidays and feast days. For that first game, according to Peverelly, who was surely leaning upon the “Early History” supplied in the Olympic Club Constitution of 1866, “there were but four players, and the game was ‘Cat Ball,’ or what is called in some parts of New England, ‘Two Old Cat.’ The players, who were then over twenty-five years old, told some of their younger friends of the pleasure and advantage they found in resuming their boyish sports, and invited them to join and make up a number large enough for a game of Town Ball.”
The Olympic Club was formed in 1833 by the union of the Philadelphia “Fourth of July” group with an association that had been playing ball in Camden since the spring of 1831. Although the 1838 constitution declares on its title page that the club was “instituted December 7th, 1837,” the 1866 booklet bears on its title page, “The Olympic Ball Club of Philadelphia, Instituted 1833.” The earlier date is supported by Peverelly’s account and by the well documented 1883 celebration of the club’s fiftieth anniversary. Sometime in the mid to late 1840s the Olympics gathered in members of a third association, and afterwards merged with a fourth club, consisting principally of graduates of the Philadelphia Central High School.
Here is more of what Peverelly recorded of the Olympics’ genesis, again very nearly word for word from the 1866 Constitution:
So great was the prejudice of the public against the game at that time, that the players were frequently reproved and censured by their friends for degrading themselves by indulging in such a childish amusement, and this prejudice prevailed to a great extent for many years. Its existence is shown by the fact that so few persons were found to join in the play, and by the long period that elapsed before any considerable number of ball clubs formed in Philadelphia, or any of the neighboring cities.
Their first Association had no constitution or by-laws, or elected members, but the absence of these formalities was not felt, and was no disadvantage; for there were no quarrels or disputes among the players, who always found the principles of good-fellowship and gentlemanly intercourse a sufficient rule for their guidance, and what the Society of Friends call the ‘weight of the meeting,’ a sufficient authority to restrain any inclination to a breach of good order.
Camden was then a very small village, comparatively little resorted to by Philadelphians, the means of communication with the city limited, slow, and imperfect, consisting mainly of two or three small horse ferry-boats, which left the wharf at the north side of Market street at intervals of about half an hour, and occupied about fifteen minutes in crossing.
The ground on which the play began and continued for several years was common and open to the street on which it bordered: no rent was paid for it, and no permission given or asked to use it. The players made their own bats and balls, and kept them at one of the public gardens on Market street, the keeper of which sent out a pail of ice-water to the ground, and supplied the ball players at his garden when the game was over, about sunset, with a bowl of lemonade, etc., [“and punch” in the 1866 Constitution] at a very moderate charge....
The other Association, which first assumed the name of the Olympic Ball Club, was originally formed for the purpose of playing Town Ball on the 4th of July. They met occasionally at other times by appointment, but had no regular days or established ground for some years. Two or three members of this club began playing regularly at Camden with the first named party, and after a time induced all the members of the Olympic to go to Camden regularly on Wednesdays and [to play] on the ground occupied on Saturday by the other party.
A match between the two parties was proposed and played before their union, and this is believed to have been the first match between two clubs or associations of ball players in Pennsylvania.
No record of this match has been preserved, but it had the effect to make the two parties acquainted with each other, and soon led to a fusion of the two into one.”
Horace S. Fogel, in a two-part story in the Philadelphia Daily Evening Telegraph, March 25-26, 1908, which was likewise based largely on the club history included in the 1866 Constitution, continued the chronicle:
The Olympics invited the other party to play with them on Wednesday, and they invited the Olympics to join them on Saturday.
The Olympics had a written constitution before the union. Little or no attention, however, was paid to it, and it fell into disuse. It was signed by a few of the original Camden party, but its existence was unknown to many of them.
The two parties, however, harmonized perfectly, and the game was continued twice a week, on Saturdays and Wednesdays, on the original ground, until the advance of population and new buildings [a reference to the 1834 church noted above] made it necessary to remove.
A ground was then selected on the north side of Market street, a little above the Camden Court House. This was also a common, and it was occupied by the now consolidated Olympic Ball Club, with the permission of the owners, until the year 1857, when for the first time a lot was procured on the Pennsylvania side of the river.
In that year the Olympics occupied new grounds at Camac Woods, in the neighborhood of Twelfth Street and Montgomery Avenue. By 1860 the Olympic Ball Club voted to replace its venerable game of town ball with the New York version, ascendant everywhere except in New England, where the old game of round ball would hold on for another five to ten years. Although the Olympics continued for another two years to play the older ball game with those clubs that preferred it, the adoption of the National Association rules alienated many of the club’s older members, who resigned en masse. In 1864 the club leased new grounds between Twenty-Fifth and Twenty-Seventh and Master and Jefferson, sharing the turf with the Athletics for a few seasons after 1870.
The Olympic ceased to arrange match games against other clubs in the following year, but continued intramural games on Tuesday and Friday afternoons from March to November. In 1878 the old clubhouse was torn down as the Olympic removed to Oakdale. By 1883, the second year of play at Pastime Park and the club’semicentennial, only six original members survived, but twenty-six veterans resolved to play a five-inning contest among themselves. With the score standing at 81-16 after five innings, all resolved to head back to the hotel adjoining the grounds for a fine collation in the old style. The Police Gazette reported on the festivities on October 20, 1883. Note its use of the word baseball throughout.
The Olympic baseball club of Philadelphia, the oldest baseball organization in America, celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their organization July 4, in Philadelphia. Among the old veterans of the club were Robert Lindsay, aged 83, Col. Peter C. Ellmaker, Kirk Wells, Robert P. McCullogh, William Hart Carr and Joseph Most. There are a large number of younger players who have joined during the last 50 years, who will gladly continue to keep baseball alive and flourishing among its members, especially as the Olympic club has held upon its rolls some of Philadelphia’s most solid citizens. The oldest members of this club played baseball when it was in its extreme infancy, in the good old days when the players had to make their own bats and balls, and the runner was put out by hitting him with the ball. In those days five stakes were driven into the ground, and the batsman had to make a circuit of these stakes before a run could be scored.
By the end of the decade the Olympics appeared to have made their own last circuit, but they had made their unique and vital contribution. It is not too much to say that without the Olympics, there is no baseball.
*****
04-07-2007, 05:10 AM
1839 Olympics item in REA
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