On This Day: First Organized Baseball Team Founded

After playing together for years at pick-up games around Manhattan, a group of men found themselves without a place to play ball in September 1845. The lot where they usually met was being developed, and other spots were increasingly hard to come by in the fast-growing city. But just across the river in Hoboken, N.J., there was a beautiful spot, perfect for all sorts of sporting events: Elysian Fields. The only problem was the $75 yearly rental fee for use of the site.

“We were all men who were at liberty after 3 o’ clock in the afternoon and played only for health and recreation... and merely wanted to join a club to set up new uniform rules,” wrote one of the baseball enthusiasts.

On September 23, 1845, the Knickerbockers Base Ball Club of New York was founded with the purpose of collecting dues to play at Elysian Fields. While drafting the documents needed to create this group, Alexander Cartwright, a founder of the club, decided to write some formal rules for play.

Among these rules were an emphasis on punctuality and good sportsmanship as well as some specific descriptions of the playing field, game play and gear. Although many of these rules echoed those used in “rounders” or “town ball,” two of baseball’s ancestors, this was the first codification of what are still used as the rules of the game. The shape of the field, the distance between bases and many others of Cartwright’s “Knickerbocker Rules,” still govern play to this day.

Unfortunately, some players weren’t thrilled about the prospect of taking a ferry across the river to practice. These fellows formed their own club, the “New York Nine,” which took on the Knickerbockers a year later for the first officially recorded baseball game on June 19, 1846.

There is a pervasive legend that Abner Doubleday, a Union Civil War General, invented baseball in a Cooperstown, New York, cow pasture in 1839. Although Doubleday never seems to have made this claim, a commission appointed by baseball’s National League president in 1905 concluded that Doubleday invented baseball.

Later historians dismissed this claim, as it was based on the testimony of a man who was determined to be mentally ill. Nonetheless, the Baseball Hall of Fame was founded in Cooperstown, N.Y., in 1939. Cartwright was among the first inductees. To this day, Doubleday is not among those honored.

Baseball’s origins go even further back, however. A diary recently unearthed in Surrey, England show that the U.S. national pastime, like the country itself, has its roots in Britain. Tricia St. John Barry owns the diary of one William Bray, which reports that “the game was a well-established sport in the 18th century and was played by men and women.”

A documentary on the origins of the sport debuted at the Third Annual Baseball Film Festival held in Cooperstown, Sept. 19–21, 2008.

Originally referring to a style of rolled-up pants worn by Dutch settlers, the term knickerbocker was eventually used to describe the oldest New York families, specifically as a fictional character named Father Knickerbocker. Cartwright’s team held the name for quite some time before it fell into disuse. In 1946, team founder Ned Irish decided to name New York City’s basketball team after the legendary baseball club from the previous century.

Born April 17, 1820 in New York, Cartwright spent his childhood playing various versions of street and stick ball. As a clerk for a Wall Street broker during his teen years, Cartwright’s afternoons were largely free, so he joined Oceana Hose Company No. 36, a volunteer fire-fighting organization. Cartwright played ball with several of his fellow volunteers in various empty lots around the city.

After founding the Knickerbockers, Cartwright worked at a Wall Street bookstore with his brother, married and had three children. During the Gold Rush of 1849, Cartwright struck out for California with his wife and family. Along the way he taught various groups his rules of baseball, and left in his wake the seeds of the national pastime.

After finding some gold, Cartwright moved to Hawaii, where he spent the rest of his years founding baseball teams, working for a volunteer fire department, building a library and expanding his family. He died July 12, 1892, from blood poisoning.