THE EVOLUTION OF A BALLPARK SOCIETY: BASEBALL

SPECTATORSHIP IN NEW YORK CITY, 1876-1890

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies

of

The University of Guelph

by

BEN ROBINSON

In partial fulfilment of requirements

for the degree of

Master of Arts

April, 2009

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••I Canada ABSTRACT

THE EVOLUTION OF A BALLPARK SOCIETY: BASEBALL SPECTATORSHIP IN NEW YORK CITY, 1876-1890

Ben Robinson Advisor: University of Guelph, 2009 Professor Susan Nance

It is the specific intention of this thesis to illustrate that, between 1876 and 1890,

New York City baseball spectators underwent a maturation process diat saw them become a distinct class of consumers. Consistently New Yorkers exerted their own will when it came to baseball, rejecting the aspects of baseball that they did not find

appealing, and championing those they especially enjoyed.

Those New Yorkers who sat in the bleachers, the grandstand, or peered through knotholes were not passive in their devotion to baseball. On the contrary, New Yorkers went to the Polo Grounds and St. George Grounds because there they could assume the position of active participants that desired to assert varying degrees of individual and collective character. Ultimately, it was the sheer breadth of attractions professional baseball offered that seduced the public and lured diem to the ballpark time and time again. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many people helped me complete this thesis. I would like to drank, first and foremost, my advisor Professor Susan Nance for her endless encouragement throughout the entire process. Her confidence in my project and ideas inspired me to give my all to this thesis. As well, I would like to thank Professor Richard Reid, Professor Alan Gordon, and

Professor Alan McDougall for their willingness to be a part of this project and for offering such valuable insights.

I would also like to thank my family and friends. Without the urging of my parents,

Ron and Ruth Robinson, it is unlikely that I would have undertaken graduate studies. Last but not least, my Grandmother Isobel Harris and girlfriend Lindsey Lorimer never failed to offer their encouragement and belief in my abilities. Without their support, especially in the final stages, this thesis would surely have looked very different.

I TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction 1

Chapter One: 'An Era of Quietness:'The Spectator in Transition, 1876-1882 19

Chapter Two: Professional Baseball Conies to New York City: The Cultivation of the Permanent Spectator 46

Chapter Three: Grandstands and Knotholes: A Portrait of the Emergent Spectator 81

Conclusion 108

Bibliography 113

Appendix., 120

n INTRODUCTION

In the 1880s professional baseball finally became a financially viable form of commercial entertainment in New York City as well as in many other places, most notably

Chicago, Boston, and St. Louis. Though much is known about the great teams and personalities of the decade, far less has been written about the spectators who afforded the promoters of the baseball business a permanent patronage after years of scattered, though often intense, interest. The underwhelming attention afforded to nineteenth century baseball spectators is surprising given the wealth of scholarly devotion to the sport. Perhaps in part it is due to the fact that those historians who have approached the subject have often found it difficult to clearly define the intrinsic characteristics of the baseball audience as a social group. Nonetheless, sport historian Steven A. Riess has asserted that because scholars have disputed the issue of spectatorship the topic naturally demands further exploration. This thesis explores the rise of the baseball spectator in New York City from 1876 to 1890 in order to more clearly identify and understand the people that patronized professional baseball matches and why they did so.

The game in the 1880s, though certainly recognizable by modern standards, was also far different. Constant tinkering with rules and playing dimensions, an ever-expanding playing schedule, and a formidable rate of franchise turnover were part and parcel of a decade marked by trade war between the two major leagues of the period, the National

League (NL) and the American Association (AA). Attendance for professional baseball in the 1880s, which had never been higher, reached a high for the decade in 1887 when over

1 Steven A. Riess, "The New Sport History," Reviews in American History 18, no. 3 (September 1990): 314.

1 four million fans visited major league ballparks.2 In New York City from 1883-1887,

approximately 1,178,9453 eager fans flocked to see the NL Giants4 and AA Metropolitans

play at their respective fields.5 Given the Metropolitans' capture of the 1884 AA

championship and popular Giants players such as John Montgomery Ward and "Smiling"

Mickey Welch, the 1880s were exciting times to be a baseball fan in New York City.

Since the 1880s, baseball has proven to be an immensely popular field for historical

study. Although extensive academic study of baseball's history in relation to American

society and culture is a relatively recent phenomenon, the sport has generated a vast

literature dating back to the earliest days of its popularity, much of it written by fans,

reporters, and promoters. Sphere and Ash: History of Baseball (1888) by journalist Jacob Morse,

who would start Baseball Magazine in 1907, provided a stepping stone for later historians by

focusing on professional baseball's important moments and people, as well as the evolution

of its rules and strategies. Morse's fact-driven work, as baseball historian and editor John

Thorn has noted, had an obvious debt to the annual baseball guides published by Robert M.

2 Based on research done by Robert L. Tiemann and Pete Palmer. Bill James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract (Toronto: Free Press, 2001), 39. 3 David Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball, Second Edition (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2006), 254-429. 4 The NL Giants were commonly referred to in newspapers as New York City's League club or as the Gothams. For the purposes of this thesis, Giants will be used as this is the nickname the club formally adopted sometime around 1885. David Nemec, The Beer and Whiskey League: The Illustrated History of the American Association — Baseball's Renegade Major League (New York City: Lyons & Burford, 1994), 103. The San Francisco Giants, which moved from New York City in 1958, continue to use the nickname today. 5 The Polo Grounds, located in Harlem, where the Giants played exclusively for the period of years covered in this study, was divided into two different, opposing fields. The Giants played on the southeast diamond. In 1885, the Giants shared the southeast diamond with the Metropolitans. The Metropolitans played at a variety of fields. In 1883 the club split time at the Polo Grounds' southeast diamond and southwest diamond while in 1884 the club played a third of its games at the Polo Grounds and the rest at the newly constructed Metropolitan Park located in East Harlem along the East River. For the last two years of the Metropolitans' existence the club played at the St. George Grounds on Staten Island. Philip Lowry, Green Cathedrals: The Ultimate Celebration of Major League and Negro League Ballparks (New York City: Walker & Company, 2006), 147-149.

2 DeWitt, Albert G. Spalding, and A. J. Reach.6 Along with entrepreneur and author Thomas

W. Lawson's The Krank: His Language and What It Means, also published in 1888, these industry guides and accounts are the only nineteenth century considerations of baseball's place in American society. Though more social commentary than history, Lawson's often witty and sarcastic examination of the "krank," or baseball fan, is the earliest and most in- depth consideration of the baseball spectator's intrinsic characteristics and emerging lexicon.

Most importantly, Lawson recognizes that, by the time of writing, spectators formed a distinct social group that, compared to spectators in the 1860s and 1870s, had "reached a high state of cultivation."7 For Lawson, what characterized the baseball spectator was much more apparent in the 1880s than it had been in the decades before.

The histories of baseball written in the years after the turn of the twentieth century extended Morse's methodology by emphasizing the game's iconography, its important moments and people as well as the game's embodiment of American character, in a commercialized and highly competitive American cultural landscape. As Thorn has said, at this time the game's past was "in the hands of folklorists, not historians."8 One time player and NL owner and magnate Albert G. Spalding's popular America's National Game: Historic

Facts Concerning the Beginning, Evolution, Development and Popularity of Base Ball (1911) revels in the myth-making process and, by recognizing that Americans seemed to indiscriminately embrace both fact and fiction, creates a "usable past"9 that selects aspects of baseball's past to communicate the story he wished to tell. What Spalding's usable past attempts to

6 John Thorn, "Introduction," in Jacob Morse, Sphere and Ash: History of Baseball (1888; repr. Columbia, SC: Camden House Inc., 1984), v. 7 Thomas W. Lawson, The Krank: His Language and What It Means (Boston: Rand Avery Company, 1888), 3. 8 John Thorn, "Pots & Pans and Bats & Balls," The Baseball Research Journal 36 (2007): 5. 9 Paul J. Zinng, "Diamond in the Rough: Baseball and the Study of American Sports History," The History Teacher 19, no. 3 (May 1986): 388.

3 communicate is his belief that the very character of America is embodied in baseball.

Spalding is overt in his approach, claiming of the sport:

It is the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness; American Dash, Discipline, Determination; American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm; American Pluck, Persistency, Performance; American Spirit, Sagacity, Success; American Vim, Vigor, Virility.10

Spalding's historical motivations and perspective carried such a nationalistic slant because he wished baseball to be an exemplar of America's distinct culture that would both grow the game and benefit his own sporting goods empire.

The National Game (1910) by Alfred H. Spink, the editor of St. Louis' The Sporting

News, exhibits a similar obsession with baseball's mythology, though his usable past does not display the same self-serving motivations as Spalding's history. Whereas Spalding, by drawing attention to his own achievements as a player and owner, presents himself as a

"founding father," Spink assembled a dense compendium of the game's notable moments and people. Like Spalding, Spink's intentions concerned posterity but from the standpoint of honoring those influential individuals who contributed to the growth of the game as stand­ out players and iconic self-made men. His comprehensive detailing of the game in different cities, the great players, and championships also reflects the early baseball historian's interest in permanendy ordering, compartmentalizing, and periodizing baseball's past in order to preserve permanendy the live performances and colloquial knowledge that constituted the sport.

10 Albert G. Spalding, America's National Game: Historic Facts Concerning the Beginning Evolution, Development and Popularity of Base Ball (1911; repr. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1992), 4. 11 Trey Strecker, "Extra Innings: Writing on Baseball (Review)," NINE: A journal of Baseball History and Culture 11, no. 2 (Spring 2003): 131. 12 Alfred H. Spink, The National Game, 2nd Edition (1910; repr. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 1.

4 Sol White's Official Base Ball Guide (1907) by ex-player and black club owner Sol White

also deserves mention here for it is, as much as those by Spalding and Spink, a history meant

to define baseball's characteristics as a distinctly American pastime. Pivotally, as with

Spalding and Spink, White's brief work is not strictly a history, that is, an account of past

events, but also a chronicle and memoir,13 the historical detail of which is driven by his own

experiences in the game. It is important to consider that those who wrote baseball's history

in the first decade of the twentieth century, such as Spalding, Spink and Sporting Life editor

Francis Richter, were personally involved in the business aspect of baseball for their work

illustrates the extent to which historical interpretation was initially a practice geared towards

the assembly of myth and, in extension,, the promotion of the game as an attractive form of

distinctly American entertainment, than it was a topic of academic scholarship.

Historical inquiry in the first half of the twentieth century was characterized by

anecdotes and dugout tales and thus academic historians in the twentieth century tended to

view such works as inconsequential and idealistic. Although there were a few notable

exceptions, such as librarian Robert W. Henderson's Ball, Bat and Bishop: The Origin of Ball

Games (1947), baseball historical writing during this period, as with all American sports,

tended to be "compilations of facts with only the most superficial efforts to relate the

chronicled activities to the social context in which they occurred."14 Though sportswriters

such as Fred Lieb produced valuable portraits of baseball, most produced journalistic

histories of the game that, though appealing to baseball fans, did not address the kinds of

questions posed by professional historians with respect to why the sport prospered and how

13 Jerry Malloy, "Introduction: Sol White and the Origins of African American Baseball," in Sol White's History of Colored Base Ball with Other Documents of the Early Black Game, 1886-1936, compiled by Jerry Malloy (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), xv. 14 Allen Guttmann, "Who's On First? Or, Books on the History of American Sports," The journal of American History 66, no. 2 (September 1979): 348.

5 it reflected social and economic change in the United States.15 Moreover, the public's enfhusiasm for the game's heroes such as Babe Ruth and Ty Cobb rooted interest firmly in the present such that the vast majority of books about baseball were not histories at all.

This "hagiographic" and understandably popular approach to baseball history, with its celebration of myths and symbols,16 was supplanted by more scholarly academic works beginning in the 1960s and 1970s as social history, which examined America from its

"cultural inside," became more prevalent, most famously in the hands of baseball historians

Harold Seymour and David Q. Voigt. During this period, interdisciplinary influences and political ferment produced in the Civil Rights era underlined earlier interpretations of the

American experience as shallow and elitist and inspired fresh inquiries into popular culture.

Subsequently, the iconography of baseball as established by Spalding and others was replaced by an urge on behalf of historians to unravel baseball's past, not as simply an inevitable part of American culture, but in relation to American culture.

As Voigt did beginning with American baseball: From Gentleman's Sport to the

Commissioner System (1966), Seymour sought to isolate the business aspect of baseball from its

"mythic allure,"19 treating baseball, not as a game, but as a commercialized amusement business.20 His first history, Baseball: The Early Years (1960), is consciously wary of the anecdote and romance that often strangled attempts to explore deeper historical themes."

15 Dorothy Jane Mills, "Ghost Writing for Baseball Historian Harold Seymour," NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 11, no. 1 (Fall 2002): 49. " Zinng, "Diamond in the Rough," 385-386 and 389. 17 Samuel Octavio Regalado, "Base Lines and Beyond: The National Pastime and Its Meanings," Reviews in American History 31, no. 2 (June 2003): 298. 18 Riess, "The New Sport History," 311; Zinng, "Diamond in the Rough," 386. 19 Strecker, "Extra Innings," 132. 20 Harold Seymour, Baseball: The Early Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960), 3. 21 Zinng, "Diamond in the Rough," 395.

6 Instead, Seymour yearned to illustrate how the game added a new dimension to the accepted fabric of America's economy, folk heritage, and popular culture.22

Seymour and Voigt's histories effectively opened the floodgates for serious historical inquiry into baseball's past. Oral histories, such as writer Lawrence S. Ritter's The Glory of

Their Times: The Story of the Early Days of Baseball Told By the Men Who Played It (1966), transcended simple summation of detail and "musings about the 'good old days'"23 to position professional baseball in relation to the expectations and challenges of American society, thus showing that the game was not a simple pastime but a subject that influenced, and was influenced by, complex social issues such as race and class. In his book Only the Ball

Was White: A History of Legendary Black Players and All-Black Professional Teams (1970) freelance writer Robert Peterson operates along similar lines as Ritter by attempting to explore the larger social issues which underscored black baseball but which had been previously overlooked in favor of individual accounts of famous players.

Increasing enthusiasm for baseball's history during this period triggered a desire on behalf of non-professional historians to delve into the game's past. Professional historians have often scorned the attempts of non-professionals, contending that their works have failed to recognize a "proper historical standard"25 by simply recounting historical detail. For historian Larry R. Gerlach, "information-driven" non-professionals' lack of methodology has meant that the history of baseball has remained "remarkably obscure"26 because those accounts have not considered the larger social issues surrounding the sport.

22 Seymour, Baseball, viii and 358. 23 Larry R. Gerlach, "Not Quite Ready for Prime Time: Baseball History, 1983-1993," Journal of Sport History 21, no.2 (Summer 1994): 119. 24 Ibid, 122. 25 Regalado, "Base Lines and Beyond," 303. 26 Gerlach, "Not Quite Ready for Prime Time," 103 and 106. Gerlach specifically references Richard Crepeau's Baseball: America's Diamond Mind, 1919-1941 (Orlando: University Presses of

7 Some historians, however, have rejected the assertion that baseball as popular history undermines the subject's historical credibility. American historian David Harlan has posited that popular history's motivations and methodologies can, in fact, better inform and contextualize academic pursuits of the topic. Trey Strecker, a professor of English, has concurred, suggesting that all texts, whether fiction or non-fiction, participate in defining baseball's historical dimensions.28 Thorn, noting that many current historians treat baseball as a "moated activity, in which 'what happened' is all that matters," has urged that writers retain the personal and passionate aspects of baseball's past as very often "issue driven baseball history is simply baseball history unread."29 Straightforward, non-academic histories that rely heavily on recounting events and stories fill in the holes of baseball's history and, thus, serve the necessary purpose of sorting and ordering period-specific detail. Though such works may be somewhat one-dimensional, the very act of pursuing and retelling baseball's various parts, by both professional and non-professional historians, has certainly added to the overall understanding of baseball's place in the American cultural landscape.

Perhaps attesting to a domain shared by professional and non-professional historians, many writers have felt that they must construct histories that are both readable and "faithful to the scholarly canon."30 Historical narratives, such as fiction writer Eliot

Asinof s Eight Men Out: The Black Sox and the 1919 World Series (1963) and sport historian

Mike Sowell's The Pitch That Killed (1989) have gready expanded, and perhaps complicated, baseball's past through the utilization of artistic license wherein baseball is the backdrop to

Florida, 1980) and Steven A. Riess' Touching Base: Professional Baseball and American Culture in the Progressive Era (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1980) as exemplary scholarly works. 27 David Harlan, ""Ken Burns and the Coming Crisis of Academic History," Rethinking History 7, no. 2 (2003): 179-184. 28 Strecker, "Extra Innings," 131. 29 Thorn, "Pots & Pans and Bats & Balls," 4-6. 30 Gerlach, "Not Quite Ready for Prime Time," 137.

8 dramatic plot and characters. Crucially, the numerous histories of baseball published in the second half of the twentieth century have shown that the game, as a historical subject, is capable of communicating a wide spectrum of values and ideologies depending on its application. Statistical analysis, narrative emphasis, and micro-history have explored such diverse issues as the game's origins, race and gender issues, and business operations.31 The creation of the Society for American Baseball Research in 1971, and the subsequent proliferation of academic journals on baseball history such as The Baseball Research Journal, The

National Pastime, NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture, and Base Ball: A journal of the

Early Game, have at once exhibited the worth of grass-roots research and supplied "an air of respectability to the field of baseball literature"32 that, perhaps more than anything, have blurred distinctions between professional and non-professional historians by bringing the two factions together to talk about the famous personalities and cultural significance of baseball.

At the same time, baseball spectatorship has not received the same level of interest from either historians or the reading public even as accounts and scholarship on the sport have expanded to include other often marginalized aspects of baseball history such as the business of baseball, the Negro leagues, and women's baseball. However, beginning in the

1980s, the most prolific decade for original baseball thought, many historians began to contribute valuable, but incomplete, insights concerning the spectator's characteristics and motivations as a considerable part of their work.

31 Such works include Robert F. Burk's Never just a Game: Players, Owners, and American Baseball to 1920 (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Press, 1994), Gai Ingham Berlage's Women in Baseball: The Forgotten History (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1994), and James A. Riley's The Biographical Encyclopedia of the Negro Leagues (New York City: Carrol & Graf Publishers, 1994). 32 Richard J. Puerzer, "Baseball Literary Journals: The Grass-roots Literature of the Game," NINE: A Journal of'Baseball'History and Culture 14, no. 1 (Fall 2005): 130 and 142.

9 George B. Kirsch and Warren Goldstein have perhaps made the most enlightening contributions to the topic of baseball spectatorship. Kirsch, an American historian, has written extensively on baseball spectators during the Civil War and the post-bellum era in

Baseball in Blue and Gray. The 'National Pastime During the Civil War (2003) and The Creation of

American Team Sport: Baseball and Cricket, 1838-1872 (1989). In discussion of increased commercialism in baseball, Kirsch has emphasized what was appealing about baseball to early fans, noting further that, despite attempts to exclude the poorer classes from attending nineteenth century baseball games, spectators came from a wide range of social groups.

Pivotally, Warren Goldstein, a professor of American studies, has contended in

Playing For Keeps: A. History of Early Baseball (1989) that baseball, like theatre, appealed to both

"roughs" and "respectables," and that many fans tended to embody characteristics of both groups. 4 Goldstein's main argument that baseball has been cyclical, generational, and repetitive35 treats the spectator as an equal player in the sport's inevitable rise as a commercialized, competitive amusement. Such historical thought is quite distinguishable from the many historical works that generalize the spectator because, rather than treat the spectator as passive, Goldstein's analysis recognizes that the spectator constituted a presence that actively influenced baseball's promoters.

More recently, historian and author Donald Dewey's The 1(f' Man: The Tan in Baseball

History (2004) and amateur historian Fred Stein's A History of the Tan (2005) have approached spectatorship as the main, rather than peripheral, focus of their research. Stein has put forth the belief that baseball enthusiasts have always come from "all walks of life, income levels,

33 George B. Kirsch, baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime During the Civil War (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 102-103. 34 Warren Goldstein, Playing For Keeps: A History of Early Baseball (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1989), 79-80. 35 Ibid, 1.

10 and social strata" 6 while Dewey's work is especially intriguing and capable of accounting for the evolution of the baseball spectator from its beginnings in the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Dewey has discussed the spectator's scholarly neglect, stating that "When not an abstract number or a nebulous demographic attesting to markets and trends, he typically has been seen only as a component of civic fervor or civil disorder, as a stereotype of generational sentimentality or class disgrundement." Dewey's analysis, which considers baseball in terms of the public's consumption of mass entertainment and the related issues of gender and class, exhibits the quality of historical interpretation that will hopefully surround baseball spectatorship in the coming years.

Of course, there exists a wealth of broader sport and cultural histories that, for the purposes of this thesis, help contextualize the analysis of baseball spectatorship in New York

City. In Sports Spectators (1986) sport historian Allen Guttmann has considered the baseball fan broadly next to the Roman arena and soccer hooliganism. Guttmann has concentrated chiefly on crowd behaviour and composition and, subsequently, has approached such acknowledged social frameworks as catharsis theory, which posits that watching sport events redirects negative energy, with considerable skepticism. Like Guttmann, American sport historian Donald J. Mrozek, in Sport and American Mentality, 1880-1910 (1983), has considered

Americans' collective relationship with sport, specifically in terms of how the acceptance of sport in the nineteenth century hinged upon the achievement of respectability. Mrozek's discussion extends to emphasize that participating in baseball, football, and other sports

36 Fred Stein, A History of the Baseball Fan (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2005), 33. 37 Donald Dewey, The 10"' Man: The Fan in Baseball History (New York City: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2004), x-xi.

11 represented a new social pattern in American life that, though prescribed along class lines, exuded a distincdy American character.

Benjamin G. Rader, a historian .of American sport, has also undertaken the attempt to account for the rise of sport in America in his book American Sports: From the Age of Folk

Games to the Age of Televised Sports (1996). As Mrozek does, Rader discusses the influence of

Victorian values on sport's institutionalization, observing crucially that achieving respectability was but a middle class ideal unshared by the "unproductive rabble" and other groups.39 American historian Elliot J. Gorn's The Manly Art: Hare-Knuckle Pri^e Fighting in

America (1986) perhaps complicates and expands this matter by recognizing that the image of respectability in sport was a veiled reality. The bourgeoisie "fancy," Gorn states, had different ideas of what boxing and manliness symbolized than the working class did but, in the late-nineteenth century, began to freely appropriate images of the sport previously associated with underworld culture for their own enjoyment.

Sport historian Ted Vincent's Mudville's Revenge: The Rise and Fall of American Sport

(1981), though it discusses respectability in sport's commercial rise, is also concerned with how this rise was connected to increased modernization, urbanization, and consumerism.

Such belief forms the basis for sport historian Melvin L. Adelman's A Sporting Time: Nen>

York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820-1870 (1986). Adelman, claiming modernization to be the most capable framework for analyzing the changes in organized sport, foregrounds

New York City as a "walking city" transformed by industrialization and urbanization to

38 Donald J. Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 1880-1910 (Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee Press, 1983), xiii and 235. 39 Benjamin G. Rader, American Sports: From the Age of Folk Games to the Age of Television, Third Edition (Upper Saddle River,' NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1996), 27. 40 Elliot J. Gorn, The Manly Art: Bare-Knuckle Pri^e Fighting in America (New York City: Cornell University Press, 1986), 252-254. 41 Ted Vincent, Mudville's Revenge: The Rise and Fall of American Sport (New York City: Seaview Books, 1981), 178.

12 explore "the relationship between sport and the urban environment" 2 quantified by horse tracks and baseball parks. Steven A. Riess has, like Adelman, emphasized the role of the modern city in shaping the rise of organized sport claiming that "The city was the place where sport became rationalized, specialized, organized, commercialized, and professionalized."43 In City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports

(1989) Riess explores the growth of sport, and its consumption by the public, in relation to issues of city space, such as the location of ballparks in town. The consideration is crucial for understanding the inherent, though challenging, relationship between the spectator and the sport he both participated in and patronized.

American historian Gunthar Barth, like Adelman and Riess, has acknowledged the role of the modern city in shaping recreation but in a broader manner that encompasses commercial entertainments beyond sport. In City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in

Nineteenth Century America (1980) Barth is chiefly concerned with the idea of personal freedom made possible by the modern city. His analysis of city space, media, and entertainment outlets such as vaudeville explains how the modem city supplied order in the face of great change caused by increasing urbanization. In extension of this idea, American historian Roy Rosenzweig's Eight Hours For What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial

City, 1870-1920 (1983) deserves mention. Rosenszweig discusses the various ways in which workers in Worcester, Massachusetts struggled for recreational space in their pursuit of personal freedom and social release.

American entertainment histories allow for a greater understanding of baseball's role as a commercial amusement and, crucially, the public's consumption of it as a product.

42 Melvin L. Adelman, A Sporting Time: New York City and the Rise of Modern Athletics, 1820- 1870 (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1986), 1-3. 43 Stephen A. Riess, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 1.

13 Working in the same vein as Barth, American entertainment historian David Nasaw, in his

book Going Out: The Rise and Fall of Public Amusements (1993), explores various amusement

venues such as vaudeville, carnival midways, and movie theatres. Nasaw's focus helps

account for the relationship between the public who thirsted for entertainment and the

• promoters who provided it. By discussing entertainment promoters' attempts to impose

respectability upon their products, Nasaw effectively communicates that a single form of

public amusement offered different kinds of benefits to different kinds of people.

American historian and professor of literature John Cullen's The Art of Democracy: A

Concise History of Popular Culture in the United States of America (1996) focuses on the production

and consumption of popular culture in America and, in doing so, stresses, as Goldstein does

in regards to baseball's murky crowd composition, that "the most resonant popular culture

becomes emblematic of the society as a whole, connecting disparate and even hostile

constituencies."44 Interestingly, considering that baseball is a perfect example of his claim,

Cullen omits sport from his analysis, admitting it to be "too unwieldy" and large to gain

inclusion. However, Cullen does recognize that the themes he discusses are immediately

applicable to the American sporting sphere.45

Lawrence W. Levine, an American historian, makes similar conclusions as Cullen in

his book Highbrow I ljowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (1988). As Cullen

notes that popular culture in America has been both resisted and appropriated by the elite

class,46 Levine extends the argument of cultural ownership, positioning that because

categorizing cultural as either high or low has always been an idealistic practice, "the

perimeters of our cultural divisions have been permeable and shifting rather than fixed and

44 John Cullen, The Art of Democracy: A Concise History of Popular Culture in the United States of America (New York City: Monthly Review Press, 1996), 15. « Ibid, 13. 46 Ibid, 14-15.

14 immutable." Levine's critique of the presumed need for cultural hierarchy, which focuses

on the appropriation of Shakespeare and the sacrilization of music in the nineteenth century,

is attributable to professional baseball. In application, Levine's argument allows for a much

truer understanding of the spectator's relationship with baseball that does not depend upon

the existence of class barriers.

It is important, given a discussion of the historical works noted above, to discuss the

primary sources utilized in this thesis beyond those early insider histories like Spalding and

Morse's accounts which effectively serve as both primary and secondary sources. The first

writers to capture the experiences and perspectives of the baseball spectator were, perhaps

not ironically, the spectators themselves. As sport historian John Rickards Betts has noted,

before newspapers fully discovered the value of continuous sports coverage in the 1880s,

"reporting had usually been assigned to fans, local correspondents, and green young

newspapermen" who could not help but bring a great deal of partisanship to such

publications as the Spirit of the Times. These writers were themselves "unabashed fans" and it

is likely that their views were consistent with the experiences of the players on the field and

the patrons in the stands as they were often a member of a club themselves or otherwise

involved in baseball circles.

The majority of primary sources utilized in this study of baseball spectatorship in

New York City are newspapers, especially the Brooklyn Daily Eagle and the New York Times,

sporting papers, and various weekly and monthly magazines. Because a majority of

nineteenth century baseball history has depended on sporting papers like the New York

47 Lawrence W. Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 8. 48 John Rickards Betts, "Sporting Journalism in Nineteenth-Century America," American Quarterly 5, no.l (Spring 1953): 52. 49 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 9.

15 Clipper and the Spirit of the Times, as well as Spalding and Reach's annual guides, a conscious decision was made to utilize a wide array of source types. Although baseball coverage is not their primary concern, the National Police Gazette, Harper's Weekly, and Frank Leslie's Illustrated

Newspaper, among other publications, are capable of offering valuable perspectives regarding the baseball spectator's characteristics and motivations within a broader late-nineteenth century context of manly entertainments. The correspondents of these publications were a combination of ardent followers of baseball, casual observers, and the uninterested. Thus, the perspectives of these publications are highly beneficial for communicating the diverse number of ways in which New Yorkers experienced professional baseball.

Using these primary and secondary sources, this thesis focuses on those people who chose to go to the ballpark, specifically in New York City, between the years 1876 and 1890.

The main focus concerns the years 1883 to 1887 when the professional Metropolitans and

Giants both strove to attract a loyal audience from the same population. After the 1887 season the Metropolitans were subsumed by Brooklyn's AA club, thus leaving the Giants alone in New York City. The coexistence of two professional teams revealed, in the span of five years, both the level to which the New York baseball-going public was interested in the game, as well as the limits of this interest.

Recognizing the role the public played in baseball's rise as a commercial business is crucial for understanding the motivations and patterns of late-nineteenth century New

Yorkers. Crucially, this study explores what attracted people to baseball and why with the understanding that spectatorship was an empowering activity. New Yorkers chose to become spectators, not because they were forced to, but because they chose to. They watched baseball games for exciting action and unpredictability, but also for more peripheral reasons triggered by the urge to witness spectacle and behave freely, to exert civic pride and

16 feel American, and to gamble. Those New Yorkers who sat in the bleachers, the grandstand, or peered through knotholes were not passive in their devotion to baseball. On the contrary,

New Yorkers went to the Polo Grounds and St. George Grounds because there they could assume the position of active participants that desired to assert varying degrees of individual and collective character.

It is the specific intention of this thesis to illustrate that, between 1876 and 1890,

New York City baseball spectators underwent a maturation process that saw them evolve into a distinct class of consumers. Consistently the public exerted its own will when it came to baseball, rejecting the aspects of baseball that it did not find appealing, and championing those it especially enjoyed. In this sense, the baseball spectator helped the sport's promoters sell the game as a form of American entertainment that catered to a wide breadth of interests.

In order to investigate the culture of New York City baseball fans, this thesis is divided into three chapters. Chapter One, '"An Era of Quietness': The Spectator in

Transition, 1876-1882," concerns the New York City baseball spectator before and immediately after the 1876 expulsion of the New York Mutuals from the NL. Amateur baseball, which spectators flocked to, is then discussed with the understanding that, due to the presence of professionalism and the public's wariness towards the sport, it had an analogous presence that nurtured a desire for the return of professional baseball. Coming full circle, the formation of the professional Metropolitans in 1880 is discussed to underline the extent to which the restoration of integrity to professional baseball, influenced by the rising image of the NL, was a perceived notion essential in providing for the rise of the devoted baseball spectator analyzed in chapters Two and Three.

17 Chapter Two, "Professional Baseball Comes to New York City: The Cultivation of the Permanent Spectator," concerns the cohabitation of the Metropolitans and Giants and attempts to dissect the various factors responsible for the development of the new, permanent baseball spectator in the years after 1883. A consideration spectatorship's acceptance, the marketing strategies of NL and AA promoters, and baseball's place in the larger entertainment industry are central to this analysis. Crucially, New Yorkers' everyday life and work patterns, influenced by notions of city space and transportation, as well as city pride, are discussed as these factors greatly influenced the level to which people chose to make professional baseball an integral part of their lives. Ultimately, this chapter illustrates how patronizing the Metropolitans or Giants required an ongoing negotiation between personal agency and social and economic forces.

Chapter Three, "Grandstands and Knotholes: A Portrait of the Emergent

Spectator," attempts to illustrate the specific motivations, desires, and characteristics of the spectator that emerged with the presence of two professional baseball teams in New York

City by describing, and expanding, the often confounding notion of the spectator's realm. I will show how the attractions offered by professional baseball, both primary and peripheral, encouraged different levels of engagement on behalf of New Yorkers at the ballpark. The chapter also explores crowd composition and explores the considerable faction of the baseball public that consumed the game "second-hand" away from the ballpark. In doing so it will be seen that, time and time again, the origin of the public's thirst for baseball, though palpable, also proved elusive and mysterious. However, it was this sheer breadth of attractions that provided for professional baseball's rise as a viable form of commercial entertainment in the 1880s.

18 CHAPTER ONE - "AN ERA OF QUIETNESS:" THE SPECTATOR IN TRANSITION, 1876-1882

In December of 1876 the professional New York Mutuals club was expelled from the NL for refusing to finish its schedule. Not until 1883 would professional league baseball be restored to New York City. This chapter explores the evolutionary arc, or reconfiguration, of the baseball spectator over this transitional period when amateur baseball was the chief form of the sport active in the city. I will use the New York Mutuals to discuss early spectator engagement with the sport and to contextualize the uncertainty spectators harbored towards professional baseball in the years following the club's fall. I will then explore amateur baseball with the understanding that it had an analogous presence that fostered a renewed hunger for professional baseball. Completing this idea, I will then discuss the rise of the professional Metropolitans to understand the public's need for integrity to be returned to professional baseball. Considered in relation to the increasingly persuasive and attractive image of the NL, it will be seen that integrity was a perceived, rather than an actual, notion. Such consideration is pivotal because it provides for the intense interest shown by New York City baseball spectators from 1883 to 1887 when the Metropolitans and Giants cohabitated York City.

Recent scholarship has rooted baseball's development in European folk recreations, specifically early bat and ball games.50 However, baseball began to take its recognizable and modern shape in New York City and its metropolis in the 1840s. People in the city, and indeed elsewhere, began to prefer the New York game of baseball, which dictated an underhand pitching delivery, four bases, and other distinctions, over the Massachusetts variety, which was played with five bases and an overhand pitching delivery, due in part to its

50 For more information on the origins of baseball see David Block's Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search For the Roots of the Game (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2006).

19 promotion in sporting publications51 and acceptance at the 1857 amateur convention. 2 At this stage baseball was the pastime of upper-middle class gentlemen who organized formal clubs for the main purpose of enjoying each other's company and holding impressive post- match banquets. Chief among these clubs were the New York Knickerbockers who, under the auspices of Alexander Cartwright, William H. Tucker, William R. Wheaton, and others, have since received the lion's share of credit for transforming baseball from a child's pastime into an adult diversion.53 But it was in Brooklyn that the game really took off. Clubs such as the Excelsiors and Atlantics, rather than concern themselves with the amateur spirit prided by the Knickerbockers, Stars, and Gothams, emphasized the competitive nature of baseball and dominated the championship matches of the 1850s and 1860s.

As with all forms of sport and recreation, public acceptance of baseball took a considerable amount of time to develop. Americans exhibited a resistance to athletics and seemingly unproductive or "idle" behavior as far back as the early-eighteenth century when

Puritan settlers scorned the New York sporting scene, then typified by horseracing, cockfighting, and animal-baiting.54 Feelings towards pleasure-seeking came to be seen as characteristically British qualities55 and, by the early-nineteenth century, an emerging middle class preached an identity achieved through hard work, not leisure. ' Though this lack of tolerance was not shared by those who had little free time to fill, such as industrial workers

51 Adelman, A Sporting Time, 126-129. 52 Frederick Ivor-Campbell, "Knickerbocker Base Ball: The Birth and Infancy of the Modern Game," Base Ball: A journal of the Early Game 1, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 55. 53 Baseball historian Frederick Ivor-Campbell has said that, by writing down its rules and constitution for all to become familiar with, the Knickerbocker club gave baseball a "public face." Ibid, 56. 54 Rader, American Sports, 8. "Ibid, 15-20. 56 Stephen A. Riess, "Sport and the Redefinition of American Middleclass Masculinity," The International journal of the History of Sport 8, no. 1 (1991): 6.

20 and children,57 middle class Americans had to be persuaded that recreation was morally and physically valuable and not something that wasted time.

Sport's acceptance and development with all classes, Adelman has asserted, can best be explained by modernization.59 By mid-nineteenth century reformers' concerns regarding

"growing urban pathology and social anomie" caused by increased industrialization were tempered through sport.60 Team sport, especially, gained preference with the middle class for it remedied the loss of independence felt by white-collar workers subordinated by factory labor's replacement of the artisan workforce.61 Sport, finally, had begun to be rationalized' as it offered a healthier alternative to dissipative habits such as drinking and carousing.63

Muscular Christianity, which stressed that sport could build character and counter effeminacy, was the chief rationale. By shifting the definition of manliness from the traditional domain of hard work and self-control to the world of athletics, muscular

Christianity illustrated how sport had begun to encroach upon religion as the sole mode of achieving spiritual and bodily renewal.65

Coinciding with modernization's influence, baseball's rise was intimately connected to the notion of American identity. Cricket, which rivaled baseball in the 1850s, dwindled in popularity over the following decades as immigrants began to latch onto baseball as a way of assimilating into American society. The Civil War, which spread baseball's reach

57Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 1880-1'910, 127'. 58 Thomas J. Schlereth, Victorian America: Transformations in Everyday Life, 1876-1915 (New York City: Harper Collins, 1991), 209. 59 Adelman, A Sporting Time, 1. 60 Riess, "Sport and the Redefinition of American Middleclass Masculinity," 6-7. 61 Ibid, 13-16. 62 Adelman, A Sporting Time, 8. 63 Riess, "Sport and the Redefinition of American Middleclass Masculinity," 10. 64 Rader, American Sports, I'b-lb. 65 Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 1880-1910, 4-11.

21 considerably, was instrumental in this process.66 Mrozek has said that, in the Spalding tradition, the distinct proponents of baseball, such as fine defense and sliding, "transformed random instinct and zest into purposeful national character."67 Baseball was faster than cricket, both on the field and in the time it. took to play the game, factors which, as Barth has said, appealed to Americans' "high-strung, eager temperments."68 As well, cricket, a gentleman's game, failed to gain acceptance among the working class and tradesmen. As noted Giants player John Montgomery Ward said in regards to baseball's widespread popularity, "like everything else American it came with a rush:. .The game is suited to the national temperment. It requires strength, courage, and skill; it is full of dash and excitement." The physical act of playing baseball rather than cricket continually reinforced

Americans' collective yearning to claim a national identity that was uniquely theirs, a theme that will be explored later.

Americans embraced baseball in great numbers, in part for these specific reasons.

Though such pursuits as cricket, roller-skating, and bicycling also captured the public's interest in the mid to late-nineteenth century,71 baseball achieved wider and longer lasting popularity because it was both easy to play and allowed people "to demonstrate a commitment to standards of excellence in a leisure-time activity."72 The National Police Gazette claimed that, especially in cities, playing baseball was "a most invaluable agency of physical culture" that cured the dyspeptic, hollow-chested American.73

66 Rader, American Sports, 67. 61 Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 1880-1910, 175. 68 Gunthar Barth, City People: The Rise of Modern City Culture in Nineteenth Century America (New York City: Oxford University Press, 1980), 181. 69 Dewey, The 10"'Man, 15. 70 John Montgomery Ward, "Our National Game," The Cosmopolitan, October 1888. 71 Schlereth, Victorian America, 220. 72 Barth, City People, 159. 73 "The Season of Outdoor Sports," National Police Gazette, May 22, 1886.

22 People not only enjoyed playing baseball but watching it as well. Though attitudes

towards leisure had loosened by the 1870s, "the moral dubiousness of merely watching a

game," Dewey has noted, had yet to give way. However, a' faction of the American

population never seemed to succumb to the idleness that spectatorship supposedly

encouraged. A sporting fraternity,75 or "fancy," comprised of upper class hedonists, workingmen, ethnics, bachelors, and saloonkeepers, had arisen in the 1850s which sought

"male camaraderie, shared excitement, and a refuge from femininity, domesticity, and the

demanding routines of the new economy." The baseball fraternity of spectators developed at

the same time.76

To understand the new brand of spectator that emerged with the sudden abundance

of professional baseball in New York City between 1883 and 1887, we should consider the baseball spectator that existed in the years before. The Excelsiors' 1860 tour of upper-New

York State, which helped extend the game out of the metropolis, also exposed how the baseball spectator, by adopting rowdyism, umpire-baiting, gambling, and partisanship as

distinct facets of its character, was beginning to mature.77 These "first New York fans," as

Dewey has called them, "would become synonymous with the consequences of urbanization, the social structures of mass leisure, and, to close a devolutionary cycle from

the phenomenal to the pestilent, a syndrome labeled 'spectatoritis.'"

Spectators in the 1860s were not too unlike the larger, more permanent patronage that emerged in the 1880s as they were attracted to skillful play, a degree of competitive

7+ Donald Dewey, The 10"'Man, 9. 75 The term "sporting fraternity," as with any use of the words "sport" or "sporting," implied social deviance in the minds of the middle class for much of the nineteenth century. Gorn, The Manly Art, 13 and 137. The rise of muscular Christianity in the 1880s probably best provides for the middle class' change in attitude towards sporting circles. 76 Rader, American Sports, 31-33. 77 Adelman, A Sporting Time, 132-134. 78 Dewey, The 10"' Man, 7.

23 spirit, and the chance to gamble. At this time, the public turned out in the biggest numbers for championship contests (unlike exhibitions championship games determined regional and national titles) which featured the Brooklyn Atlantics, Excelsiors, Eckfords, and others.

These special contests, Kirsch writes, "produced a carnival atmosphere, as the great crowds attracted con artists, traders, vendors, and thieves."81 Often the excitement these people experienced at the ballpark led to a compromise of self-control in part mirrored after the unruly behaviour exhibited by the players82 and fueled by undesired umpire decisions. The final game of the Atlantics-Excelsiors 1860 Championship series, forced to end in a draw due to fan rowdiness, is a good example.

In the early 1860s promoters such as William Cammeyer began to think beyond the expansive, open playing grounds, such as the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, that baseball fans were used to visiting. The enclosure movement, illustrated by the construction of the Union and Capitoline Grounds in Brooklyn, effectively birthed the modern baseball spectator. These fenced-off diamonds' main function was to facilitate an admission charge and necessarily excluded anyone unable to pay. Dewey has commented that the closest that lower class patrons got to the action was "in the panegyrics about how baseball games supposedly brought together all classes in some Edenic democratic assembly." However, some historians, such as Kirsch, have claimed that the "lower ranks of society" proved willing in these days to pay the admission charged for championship contests and, even if they did not choose to pay, they gathered outside the enclosure or peered through

79 George B. Kirsch, The Creation of American, Team Sports: baseball and Cricket, 1838-1872 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989), 184-188. 80 Adelman, A Sporting Time, 158. 81 Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports, 189. 82 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 32-34. 83 Dewey, The 10"' Man, 31.

24 knotholes. Goldstein has agreed with this claim, adding further that at no point has the working class and the "unsavory element" been completely eliminated from baseball.85

Though lower class patrons were afforded much of the blame for unruly behavior by early sporting journals, all too often it was actually the middle class patrons who caused most of the disturbances in the 1860s86 based on the fact that the grandstand was often the scene of much rowdy behaviour. Whatever the true composition of these early crowds, Goldstein has been quick to suggest that, more so than class conflict, it was the competitive spirit of baseball in the form of overt partisanship that produced unkindly feelings.87

Though baseball had, by the end of the 1860s, reached unprecedented heights of popularity, growing concerns regarding hippodroming, the act of losing on purpose,88 and gambling stressed the presence of commercialism in the game and threatened to erode the public's interest. Subsequendy, these issues challenged spectators' faith in baseball as a worthy form of entertainment. For spectators, baseball had to be played with skill and, equally important, with zeal and honesty. Kirsch has written that "By the late 1860s the increasing problems of the new system of commercial and professional baseball forced many sportsmen to reevaluate the latest developments"89 that seemed to inject self-interest and unfair play into baseball. The first professional association, the National Association of

Professional Base Ball Players (NA), formed in 1871, was unable to control teams and players which gready perpetuated the public's perception that professional baseball was a

84 Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports, 181-183 and 236. 85 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 79-81. 8(5 Dewey, The 10"' Man, 33. 87 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 75-77. 88 Hippodroming benefited both teams. It usually occurred during three game series when one team, .having won the first game, would supposedly conspire to lose the second game, thus necessitating a third and deciding game. The act guaranteed another day of gate-receipts for both clubs. Seymour, Baseball, 53-54. 89 Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports, 247'.

25 dishonest institution. ° Despite the NA's claim that it offered the very highest brand of

baseball, fans became increasingly wary over continued hippodroming, the failure of many

teams to consistently meet their schedule obligations, and competitive imbalance which,

because only a handful of clubs had a realistic chance of winning, facilitated the financial

failure of professional league baseball in countless cities.

While professional baseball's promoters found that their fan base was at stake, the

spectator also stood to lose. Dewey has stated that "an onlooker's identification with a team,

an aesthetic appreciation of the game, perhaps even a captivity to the relentless propaganda

about what baseball was supposed to mean to the national soul" were threatened as watching

a game had, for many, come to involve idleness, that is, inactivity. Fixed games put clubs like

the New York Mutuals in bad repute and eradicated the notion that a spectator could

control his destiny through a wager. Such an environment reflects American historian Ann

Fabian's conviction that gambling in nineteenth century America was a "negative analog" which made other forms of gain, such as investing in the stock market, appear normal.93 For baseball spectators nonplussed over gambling on moral grounds, making a wager was harmless and, as will be seen in Chapter Three, an attractive part of the baseball experience.

But hippodroming soured the act of gambling. Crowds diminished as these elements effectively "put a lie to spectatorship itself."94 Indeed, many baseball spectators grew increasingly concerned with the presence of money in the game most visible in player salaries and game throwing. In 1870 the Spirit of the Times, convinced that the business aspect of baseball was destroying the sport's reputation, supplied readers with a breakdown of each

90 Seymour, Baseball, 75. 91 Dewey, The 10"'Man, 51-53. 92 Ibid, 47-48. 93 Ann Fabian, Card Sharps, Dream Books, and Bucket Shops: Gambling in 19"' Century America (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1990), 4. 94 Dewey, The 10"' Man, 47-48.

26 NA club's salary obligations "in order that the public may judge for themselves whether a club is entitled to their sympathy and support."95

Dewey has noted that the solution to the spectator's wariness "turned out to be the most venerable one of all where mass entertainment tastes were concerned — the audience deciding it didn't want to be entertained any more by this particular show. So the show had to be changed."96 The NL was formed in 1876, in part to supplant the failings of the NA and to better capitalize on the sport's financial potential, but its leaders found that reforming baseball was not an easy task. During the NL's inaugural season the New York Clipper declared that

There are thousands ready to liberally patronize contests between nines thoroughly reliable. There is no falling-off in the attractive power of the game itself — that is as strong as ever; but people will no longer pay to see hippodroming or to witness 'pool-ring' contests."98

A year later, in 1877, the New York Times warned that players and managers were "gamblers in disguise" who, if persistent in their tactics, would cause the promoters to realize they could find "nobody simple enough to attend their humbug shows."99 But the NL had, by the beginning of the 1877 season, begun to take measures to secure an image of integrity for its baseball product. For New York City baseball enthusiasts, however, the NL's devout mission came at the expense of the Mutuals.

95 "The Base-Ball Field," Spirit of the Times, November 26, 1870. 96 Dewey, The 10"' Man, 39. 97 Ted Vincent has suggested that the NL was formed on Hulbert's belief that baseball should be run like any other business enterprise in terms of labor and capital. Vincent quotes Spalding who, looking back, said in regards to the formation of the NL that "Base Ball depends for results on two interdependent divisions, the one to have absolute control and direction of die system, and the other to engage [in] — always under the executive branch — the actual work of production." Vincent, Mudpille's Revenge, 135. 98 "The League and Suspected Players," New York Clipper, October 14, 1876. 99 "Gambling in Outdoor Sports," New York Times, July 16, 1877.

27 Over the course of the Mutuals' existence, the club embodied all the problems that plagued professional baseball. The Mutuals had been formed in 1857 and, though they originally played in Hoboken, they began playing at Brooklyn's Union Grounds in 1862. The

Mutuals were originally sponsored by corrupt Tammany Hall politician William "Boss"

Tweed and comprised of firemen from the Mutual Hook and Ladder Company #1 but by the time the club captured the championship in 1870 the landscape of the game had changed and top professional players, given patronage jobs in city agencies, had filled out the ranks.100

The Mutuals attracted suspicion from the public and the press long before they ever joined the NA and NL, having been involved in baseball's first public scandal, which concerned game-throwing charges against Mutual players Ed Duffy, William Wansley, and

Thomas Devyr in 1865.101 However, despite constant rumors of shady play and ownership, die Mutuals were certainly capable of attracting a good crowd of enthusiasts. In June of 1871

6,000 proved willing to pay fifty cents to enter the Union Grounds while another 4,000

"watched for free from rooftops or by standing on pushcarts outside the fences."

Consider also the Spirit of the Times' description of a scene from the fourth of July, 1873 between die Mutuals and Adantics:

Every car came packed like a sardine box. Sidewalks were jammed, and the living stream did not slacken until over 7,000 people had passed through the gate. Every seat was occupied, and every available spot of grass had its squatter, nearly all the way around the grounds; the club-house was beset for the first time; the fences were lined, while every house and tree that could be obtained were filled.

100 James L. Terry, Long Before the Dodgers: Baseball in Brooklyn, 1855-1884 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers, 2002), 17. 101 Wansley recruited Mutuals teammates Duffy and Devyr with $30 bribes to lose a game to the Eckfords in order to fulfill an obligation made to gambler Kane McLaughlin. A month later the three men confessed and were banned from the NA although they were all later readmitted. William J. Ryczek, Blackguards and Redstockings: A History of Baseball's National Association, 1871-1875 (Wallingford, CN: Colebrook Press, 1992), 65. 102 Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia ofNineteenth Century Major League Baseball, 13. ™ "Baseball Matters," Spirit of the Times, July 12, 1873.

28 However, the club's moments of glory could not, ultimately, silence criticism from the press. In 1876 the New York Times noted the Mutuals' familiar indifferent play and the fact that die betting men were wagering "$100 to $40" against them.104 Such odds were very often worthy of mention in the newspapers. Earlier, in 1874, the New York Clipper observed the presence of "Dame Rumor" at most of the Mutuals' matches that season which communicated an aroused sense of suspicion regarding how well the team might play on any given day.105 Though the club would last two more seasons, its fate seems to have been irreversible by this point as the public and press were convinced that their play was dishonest. The New York Clipper stated that same year, regarding a Mutuals match that drew only three to four hundred spectators, that the club, which was "very generally regarded as the least reliable nine of the fraternity," was not capable of attracting a large crowd due to a reputation they had brought on themselves. "The fact is," the New York Clipper stated, yearning for a club that could represent the city well and play fairly, "a new New York nine is wanted."106

Indeed, attendance figures illustrate that New York City baseball fans proved less and less willing to patronize Mutuals contests in the years leading up to the clubs' demise.

The Mutuals drew 40,500 (third in the NA) in 1871 over nineteen home games, 46,000

(second) in 1872 over thirty-one games, 35,500 (fourth) in 1873 over thirty-three games,

44,000 (third) in 1874 over forty games, and a paltry 33,500 (seventh) in 1875 over thirty- four games. Finally, in their first and only year in the NL, the Mutuals managed to draw only

m "Base-Ball," New York Times, September 13, 1876. 105 "Atlantic vs. Mutual: Another Close Fight," New York Clipper, "Base Ball Scraps 1874," BA SCR 65, Baseball Hall of Fame Archive. ™ "Mutual vs. Hartford," New York Clipper, "Base Ball Scraps 1874," BA SCR 65, Baseball Hall of Fame Archive.

29 23,000 fans over thirty-three home games which was good for seventh, or second last, in the

1 107 league.

Along with the Athletics of Philadelphia, the Mutuals were expelled from the NL after the 1876 season for refusing to finish their schedule. Mutuals' owner William

Cammeyer justified his decision to skip a late season western road trip on the grounds that, because they could not possibly capture the championship, it would only incur unnecessary expenses. Cammeyer flaunted the NL's rules because he had done so with the powerless

NA and remained convinced that the NL needed the populous city of New York more than

New York needed the NL. Given the NL's financial struggles in the years that followed,

Cammeyer was probably correct and, as Seymour has suggested, "the temptation [on behalf of the NL] to retain (New York and Philadelphia's clubs] must have been strong."110

Amateur historian Preston D. Orem, though admitting that the Mutuals and Athletics had become liabilities to the NL, has put forth that the NL should have attempted to "enlist new capital in these cities and place responsible representatives from New York and Philadelphia in the League." However, Orem notes, William A. Hulbert, the president of the NL, was adamant and "ran things just about as he liked."

The expulsion of the Mutuals and Athletics, along with the banishment of three

Louisville players following a game-throwing scandal in 1877, was the prime example of the

NL's mission to assert an authority over the game that would redeem baseball from the

NA's hands and present it as a respectable, wholesome product. But these disciplinary

107 Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball, 19-116. 108 Preston D. Orem, Baseball (1845-1881) From the Newspaper Accounts (self-published, 1961), 263. ™ Seymour, Baseball, 221-222. »° Ibid, 88. 111 Orem, Baseball (1845-1881) From the Newspaper Accounts, 264.

30 actions could not instantly cure the public's cynicism. In 1878 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote that

For a while we clung to base-ball, our 'national game,' as an honorable and healthful sport. But when gate-money, pools, and side-bets became associated with the sport, the inevitable tendency to 'jockeying' and 'selling-out' was developed^ and public confidence in this, as in some other manly games and contests of skill, disappeared. "

New York baseball spectators felt they deserved a professional club that played with skill and integrity. The dissolution of the Mutuals left New York City baseball fans without a professional baseball team, honest or otherwise. Seymour, in regards to how spectators responded to the club's demise, has said that "the disgrace of the Mutuals forced New

Yorkers to be satisfied with a number of undistinguished semi-pro and amateur clubs — especially since League clubs took their pick of both Mutual and Athletic players when those clubs were expelled."m A small number of stock-company and co-operative professional clubs114 existed in the metropolis from 1877 to 1880 but, overall, the period was a transitional one for New York City baseball spectators because, aside from the odd NL exhibition match, amateur baseball was the most available form of the sport.

It is important, in this regard, to consider the impact of professionalism upon the game of baseball, especially in relation to its absence in New York City after the fall of the

Mutuals. "Latent professionalism," when players received salaries under the table, began at

»2 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 4, 1878. 1,3 Seymour, Baseball, 136. 114 These clubs were independent clubs that were not members of the NL. A stock-company club was one in which "capital was raised through the issuance of common stock and contributions from the club members" which paid for such things as player salaries. A co-operative club was one in which players received a share of the gate receipts rather than a salary. Stock-company clubs were much stronger financially and, thus, had a far better chance of surviving. William J. Ryczek, Blackguards and Red Stockings, 35. The Metropolitans, upon formation in 1880, were a stock-company professional club. 115 Though the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) forbade it, players such as Jim Creighton and A.J. Reach received salaries under the table as early as 1860 and, later, many

31 the turn of the 1860s and, as the decade marched on, ultimately divided those who supported professionalism and those who did not.116 Seymour has called this period, which lasted until 1868 when the National Association of Base Ball Players recognized the formal existence of two distinct factions, a "twilight" era in which the batde over professionalism and amateurism produced endless hypocrisy. For all intents and purposes, when the

Cincinnati Red Stockings openly paid each of its players for the 1869 season, professionalism was becoming a commonly accepted practice. Professional teams came to represent the best a city could put forth and, as civic representatives, captured the interest and pride of baseball enthusiasts.

The rise of open-professionalism did not eliminate amateurism. Rather, it created a spirit of amateur revivalism among some old clubs, such as the Knickerbockers, Eagles, and

Gothams, who had played for fun, and supposedly devoid of competition, in the decades prior. In 1871 these clubs and others formed the National Association of Amateur Base Ball

Players (NAABBP) in order to "recreate a bygone era" that would allow them to be heard, respected, and not marginalized by the professional circle.118 Many historians have highlighted the futility of such restorative attempts, noting that professionalism was inevitable. Goldstein has claimed that the amateur movement, though formed on moral principles, was actually in opposition to the greater good of baseball's development.

Kirsch has agreed with Goldstein writing that "Despite the efforts of those who wished to retain the simplicity and idealism of the amateur era, baseball's future clearly belonged to

club owners gave players such as Albert Spalding paying jobs which, by requiring no real responsibility, effectively skirted the rule. Seymour, Baseball, 47-56. 116 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 85-99. 117 Seymour, Baseball, 51. 118 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 125-6. 1,9 Ibid, 122-123.

32 commercialism and professionalism," adding further that it was professionalism which supplied the boost baseball needed to be a vital aspect of American life.120

The reality that professionalism had come to stay aroused, for many, a sense of nostalgia for the days that came before. The refuge of the "good old days," which has existed ever since, sought to invoke a purer past that could take the place of a complicated present.121 As Rader has said, baseball, in regards to professionalism, "frequently drove a wedge between generations" in the late-nineteenth century as elders warned their sons that the professional game, diametrically opposed to the game they had played, was too overrun with "moral perils."122 However, this wedge that professionalism caused brought also an emphasis on competitive spirit, both on the field and for higher salaries, which ultimately enabled baseball to evolve in terms of the skill with which the game was played.

All of this is supremely important for a consideration of spectators in the years after the removal of professional baseball from New York City when amateur baseball reigned.

During this period New York baseball spectators, more than ever before, were aware of the driving business forces of baseball, namely professionalism and commercialism, which appeared to be shaping the direction of the game. Amateur baseball functioned as an analogous presence in New York City. Though supposedly a purer form of the game,' amateur baseball's principles were compromised by the professional game's influence and, ultimately, it intensified the spectator's urge to have professional baseball restored to New

York City. The act of restoration is a pivotal notion here for, as will be discussed, not only did professional baseball have to be physically restored but it needed also to be idealistically restored to a state devoid of the persistent evils which had turned many New York Mutuals

120 Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports, 230 and 255. 121 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 67, 100. 122 Rader, American Sports, 61.

33 fans sour in the first place. Surprisingly, and extending Goldstein's idea, professional baseball, not amateur baseball, was the form most capable of exuding honesty and integrity because, rather than deal in duplicity as amateur baseball did, it was outright in its intentions as an entertainment business devoted to delivering the highest brand of baseball which was what the public wanted. Moreover, professional baseball's legitimacy was increased due to the high skill level with which it was played. However, as will be seen, audience perception of professional baseball was also the result of continuous promotion on behalf of the NL.

It is difficult to determine the extent to which New York City baseball enthusiasts were discouraged with the state of baseball after 1876. However, because professionalism had so infiltrated the baseball realm by the mid-1870s, the very presence of amateur baseball in New York City before and immediately after the expulsion of the Mutuals was, on some levels, problematic. Though spectators enjoyed amateur baseball stricdy for its merits, amateur baseball's series of contradictions enhanced the frustration and confusion fans already harbored towards the larger baseball institution. Amateur clubs, by modeling themselves after professional clubs, effectively presented a product akin to second-rate professionalism and thus lessened the degree to which amateur sentiment and spirit could remain relevant in an increasingly commercial baseball environment.

New York City and metropolis had a large number of amateur clubs and many associations including the Long Island Amateur Association. Though the Hudson,

Daundess, Commercial, and other clubs doubdess played for fun, the environment in which they did so had changed dramatically from the amateur days of the 1850s. Because it appeared that die professional teams had begun to define the epitome of the sport, amateur baseball teams and fans proved unable to completely distinguish themselves from the people

34 who organi2ed and ran the professional teams.123 They modeled themselves after professional clubs by going on tours as the Flyaways of New York City, certainly charging an admission, did in 1874, and competed for local and regional championships which the

Knickerbockers and others certainly never did.124

Indeed, the basis for various clubs' claims of amateur status was repeatedly called into question by the press which desired baseball to have a clean, legitimate image. The Spirit of the Times reported on this reality as early as 1870, admitting that "Of course an amateur club, when they play a match at home, have an interest in the money taken, but this goes towards defraying their traveling expenses."125 The NAABBP, which the Knickerbockers had helped create, dissolved in 1874 due to constant debates over gate receipts and whether or not to play professional clubs.126 In 1877 Forest and Stream, reacting to the formation of the

NL, made a call for "genuine amateur clubs" to that year's amateur convention but recognized the difficulty of their challenge due to the fact that there were precious few amateur clubs operating as most were "gate money amateur nines." The New York Clipper shared this sentiment asking, in 1877, why such amateur teams as the Hudsons of Brooklyn and the Confidence of New Rochelle played so frequendy at professional grounds such as the Union and Capitoline Grounds rather than at Prospect Park since "When they are to be seen playing only with clubs on inclosed grounds, the inference is natural that they go in for a share of gate-receipts."

123 For more information see Richard Hershberger, "The Borderlands of Professionalism: Cooperative Clubs and the Formation of the National League," Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game 1, no.l (Spring 2007): 103-119. 124 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 130-131. 125 "The Base-Ball Field," Spirit of the Times, November 26, 1870. 126 Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports, 251-252. 127 Forest and Stream, February 15, 1877. 128 "Gate-Money Amateurs," New York Clipper, April 21, 1877. Since at least 1877 all clubs who wished to use Prospect Park's Parade Ground, where baseball was played, needed to acquire a

35 The result of amateur clubs' inability, or unwillingness, to establish themselves as a faction that was separate from the professional fraternity meant that amateur baseball suffered from the public suspicion historians have typically attributed to the professional arena. Despite the Brooklyn Daily Eagle's frustrated claim that the professional game

"overshadowed amateur baseball" thereby supplying "color and tone to the picture of the game viewed by the public at large" the amateur fraternity was far from infallible. In 1876 the New York Times reported that at least two men playing in a New York and Brooklyn amateur exhibition match had arranged to lose the game, supposedly to secure a profit from gamblers, a fact that captured the ire of those in attendance who witnessed atrocious fielding.130 Such a "disreputable proceeding"131 was certainly not reflective of the amateur spirit and illustrated how competition and pecuniary concern, characteristics of professionalism, had come to occupy the amateur faction as well. As Goldstein has noted, these clubs "showed they could display just as much 'ill-feeling' and inappropriate behavior on the field as their less gentlemanly professional brethren."

Prospect Park in Brooklyn provides the best example of spectators' interaction with baseball during this period of transition by illustrating the extent to which amateurism had come to resemble professionalism. Prospect Park was a steward for baseball after the

Mutuals' fall and a place where "rich and poor, high and low" could supposedly all congregate.133 Certainly Prospect Park's popularity attests to baseball historian David

Pietrusza's claim that "Viable baseball still existed in the League's jilted cities," especially in

permit. Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 8, 1877. Furthermore, use of the Parade Grounds was restricted to "regularly organized clubs." "The Prospect Park Championship," New York Clipper, May 12, 1877. 129 "Base Ball," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 3, 1878. 130 "Base-Ball," New York Times, September 21, 1876. 131 Ibid. 132 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 130. 133 "The Park," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 23, 1881.

36 New York where spectators proved the sentiment to be the strongest.134 The Spirit of the

Times called Prospect Park "the great rende2vous of pretty nearly all the amateur clubs in this vicinity,"135 a sentiment shared by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle which claimed, in 1877, that amateur baseball flourished there like never before and cultivated a high level of local pride and interest. A year later the New York Clipper furthered this statement writing that

Prospect Park was proof "that the national game never had a greater crowd of votaries [that is, supporters], or more expert exemplars in the amateur fraternity than it has now."137

Prospect Park's parade ground, where baseball matches were played, was often completely full. Three thousand spectators on a Saturday afternoon was common138 and often the number was much higher. Championship games, due to heightened stakes, proved especially popular. In 1880 Prospect Park patrons anticipated six championship matches scheduled for the fourth of July "when the sport will begin at 4 o'clock in the morning and not terminate until near 8 o'clock at night."139 Two years later, fourth of July festivities started at the more decent hour of 5 a.m.140

Although Prospect Park attracted a multitude of people content simply to witness

"the 'sphere cleave the ambient air,' or 'mow down the modest daisy'"141 and doubtless offered many visitors health and moral benefits,42 a good number watched the baseball games for skillful, exciting action, and, in many cases, to gamble and behave without

134 David Pietrusza, Major Leagues: The Formation, Sometimes Absorption, and Mostly Inevitable Demise of 18 Professional Baseball Organisations, 1871 to Present (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1991), 61. 135 "Base-Ball Matters," Spirit of the Times, August 1, 1874. 136 "Sports and Pastimes," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 27, 1877. 137 "Games at Prospect Park," New York Clipper, April 20, 1878. 138 "Base-Ball Contests," New York Times, June 20, 1880. 135 "Sports and Pastimes," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 2, 1880. 140 "Base Ball, Cricket and Archery," Brooklyn Daily Eagel, July 3, 1882. 141 "Base-Ball Matters," Spirit of the Times, October 3, 1874. 142 "Prospect Park and its Varied Opportunities," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 28, 1886.

37 decorum. Such activities were in great contrast to the audiences that supposedly existed in

the 1840s and 1850s when socializing, not victory, was the chief concern. New Yorkers wanted to see baseball and, as such, their engagement with the game exposed varying desires.

For example, spectators demanded good competition. The baseball played at Prospect Park

fostered a competitive spirit which naturally bred fickleness on behalf of the fans. The

Brooklyn Daily Eagle observed that the "regular habitue's of the Park generally select the field where the smallest scores are likely to be made, a larger score generally driving them to other

fields."143 Accordingly, in 1881 the Commercials' 10-0 lead over the Dauntless club proved uninteresting due to its lack of competition and the suspense that came from not knowing who would win until the very last moment, so "the crowd left for more attractive sport" at

one of the dozen other games taking place.

Though the Brooklyn Daily Eagle stressed that baseball at Prospect Park was played

"on its integrity for recreation alone,"145 often those in attendance, and indeed even those on

the field, were prone to defying the spirit of amateurism. In 1877 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, ironically perhaps, spoke plainly in regards to bad behavior observed at Prospect Park, instructing amateur players to "avoid all demonstrations in going to and from the Park which will lead people to think that a party of picnic roughs, and not gentlemanly ball players, are passing by." The article also touched on the presence of gambling, advising that

"If you bet on a match do it quietly. Don't make yourself vulgarly conspicuous by offering wagers before a crowd of spectators. You only announce yourself as a professional gambler by such acts."146 This account infers that betting was a pleasure regularly indulged in by amateur players and, though specific mention is not made, certainly the spectators as well.

143 "Ball and Bat," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 11, 1880. 144 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 31,1881. «5 "Big Base Ball," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 16, 1882. 146 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 4,1877.

38 That these people needed to be reminded how to behave illustrates that the spirit of amateurism was transforming.

James L. Terry, a social science librarian and amateur historian, has discussed this notion that the crowds that frequented Prospect Park did not always live up to the spirit of amateurism, defined by honest and friendly competition, idealistically touted by Brooklyn

Daily Eagle writer Henry Chadwick.147 Despite claims that no bad language or behavior occurred at Prospect Park, as early as 1874 ball players on the grounds were categorized by

Chadwick himself as "idle young roughs" whose bad language and low discourse caused

"respectable people" to look upon them as they did "an assemblage of a political chowder party." Chadwick expounded:

This class of offenders against the laws of society too, are most frequendy to be found well dressed, and generally members of the well-to-do class of the community. This only makes their actions as 'roughs' more inexcusable. It is bad enough to meet with ignorant blackguards connected with base ball, but still more discreditable to find such low, degrading habits of thought and language indulged in by those taught to know better.

The presence of rough spectators, of whatever class, at Prospect Park had existed even before the Mutuals' expulsion from the NL. The Brooklyn Daily Eagle observed in 1872 that the Barromeo amateur club had a "rather rough crowd of followers" that shouted at the umpire, used foul language, and encroached upon the diamond. Amongst them were "a number of young thieves prowling around ready to steal balls, bats, coats, or anything they could lay their hands on." The publication called for police patrols to curb "the excesses of drunkenness, rowdiness, and thievery."150 It is clear that spectators at Prospect Park did not always watch games for the chance to bask in an amateur spirit. For many the experience

147 Terry, Long Before the Dodgers, 106-107. 148 "Base-Ball Matters," Spirit of the Times, August 1, 1874. 149 "Rational Pastimes," Forest and Stream, March 26, 1874. 150 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 20, 1872.

39 was undoubtedly a way to exert gentlemanly laurels. But the impact of professionalism, most overtly illustrated by the eventual presence of professional clubs holding spring exhibitions in Prospect Park by 1879151 and perhaps earlier, had made fans recognize that baseball was, ultimately, capable of offering benefits far beyond exercise and sociability such as gambling and the chance to act freely. For better and for worse, amateurism had been supplanted by a game driven by competition and these peripheral interests.

The crossroads at which professionalism and amateurism met at Prospect Park and elsewhere positioned the New York City spectator for the return of professional baseball in the form of the Metropolitans in the autumn of 1880. The Metropolitans were afforded the lion's share of credit for restoring honest professional play to the city of New York by the

Brooklyn Daily Eagle^2 while Harper's Weekly claimed that the Metropolitans had afforded baseball in New York City a "new lease on life" and, on the whole, had fostered a revival of interest in the sport.153 The New York Times also shared this sentiment, writing in regards to the large number of spectators that flooded the Polo Grounds in the spring of 1882, that it

"looks very much as if the old-time interest in the game is to be revived."

The sheer amount of credit given to the Metropolitans tended to oversimplify, or generalize, the reasons why the public patronized professional baseball. The 1883 Reach's

Official American Association Base Ball Guide assessed the process quite plainly, stating that the

"era of quietness" brought on by the demise of the Mutuals coincided with the formation of the Metropolitans when baseball patrons "perceived that honest play had been revived, the

151 "Sports and Pastimes," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, March 17, 1879. 152 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 21, 1884. 153 "The Metropolitan Nine," Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilisation, August 5, 1882. 154 "Base-Ball," New York Times, April 30, 1882.

40 old time love of the game was developed again with all its pristine force."155 The New York

Times reported in 1882 that

the 'crookedness' which characterized games when base-ball was at its height before in and about New-York is missing. No betting is allowed on the grounds, and next season, when the club enters the League contest, no liquors will be allowed to be sold within the inclosure.156

The wholesale acceptance of the Metropolitans as saviors of professional baseball in New

York City must be seen as a perceived notion. The duplicitous presence of amateur baseball aided mightily in tHs perception and it was ultimately cemented by the NL's continued efforts to persuade the public that it offered the very best, and therefore most attractive, brand of baseball. In this environment, the integrity of professional baseball for New

Yorkers came to be embodied, not by a sudden physical absence of dishonesty, but by the decidedly more attractive image exuded by the NL on which the Metropolitans were able to capitalize.

Pietrusza has noted that "It was not immediately apparent to professionals of the

1870s that [the NL] was the only way to operate."157 Many professional clubs during the

1870s were hesitant to join the NL because doing so meant paying high salaries and undertaking demanding travel obligations. A large number of independent professional clubs were content to simply make profits from exhibition games against other like-minded clubs as well as exhibitions against NL clubs.158 The Metropolitans operated in this fashion in the first years of its existence before joining the AA in 1883.

However, the NL had, since its inception in 1876, worked hard to establish a reputation as the preeminent professional baseball organization. Pivotally, the organizational

155 1883 Reach's Official American Association Base Ball Guide (1883; repr. Espanola, NM: Horton Publishing Company, 1991), 7-8. 15« "Base-Ball Matters," New York Times, November 13, 1882. 157 Pietrusza, Major Leagues, 47. 158 Ibid, 47-8.

•41 collapse of the rival International Association (IA) after the 1879 season meant that the NL was able, for the first time, to boast a majority of the country's finest players on its rosters.

This helped make the NL, finally, financially appealing.159 Ted Vincent has surmised that the

IA was "up against an organization [the NL] predicated on turning the sport into an amusement business, and doing so regardless of the negative consequences" such as the extinction of rival leagues, like the IA, and, subsequendy, the number of professional clubs operating in the country. For those independent professional clubs not yet convinced of the benefits of associating with the NL, by 1880 "to play in 'the League' was coming to be something of a status symbol."161

The rising status of the NL in the wake of the IA's demise was not only recognized by players and management, but by spectators as well. An important point can be made here in relation to the formation of the Metropolitans and spectators' renewed urge to patronize professional baseball. Vincent has proposed that, at this point, "in the burgeoning metropolitan cities 'big league ball' could become the choice of hip sports fans, who had earlier given their loyalty to a club of more intimate acquaintance."162 As the NL more assuredly proved itself to be an institution of the highest caliber, it subsequently came to exude a sense of legitimate integrity as a form of entertainment fhat it had formerly lacked.

Thus, the time was ripe for the formation of the professional Metropolitans whose immediate success, both financially and as a civic institution, attested to the readiness of the

New York baseball public to embrace professional baseball.

New Yorkers exhibited an eagerness to be associated with the NL and, though the

Metropolitans did not have membership in the NL, the club did manage to bring spectators

159 Vincent, Mudville's Revenge, 152. 160 Ibid, 144. 16' Ibid, 151. 162 Ibid, 152-153.

42 into its realm. The Metropolitans played exhibitions against amateur and college nines, but it was the exhibitions they played against NL clubs that brought in the most money.163 The

Metropolitans averaged 3,000 spectators over sixty-one exhibition games with NL clubs in

1881, almost all of which were played in New York City, the revenue from which helped not only the Metropolitans, but perhaps the NL as well.164 Manager Mutrie knew that, to draw a large crowd, his team needed to be able to "play on even terms with the strongest professional clubs in the country." The Brooklyn Daily Eagle recognized that part of the reason for the Metropolitans' success was due to its membership in the League Association, a subsidiary of the NL that united independent professional clubs, which meant it had "a responsibility in keeping its public engagements."166 This association with the NL, and aspiration to be as good as its clubs, certainly enhanced the image of the Metropolitans as a legitimate club. As Orem has said of the Metropolitans' rise, "The press supported the venture from the start as it was seen that, at last, New York was to have a well financed, respectable club."167 Pivotally, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote in April of 1882 that "since the bygone years of cracked play in the Metropolis professionalism has improved in its status gready, and that now it is worthy of recognition." Clearly New Yorkers had an interest in patronizing a club that could compete and, thus, represent the city sufficiendy on a grand scale.

The success of the Metropolitans no doubt ushered in the new, permanent spectator which will be explored in the next two chapters. But the club's success was made possible, to

163 Robert H. Schaefer, "The Wiman Trophy and the Man For Whom It Was Named," Base Ball: A Journal of the Early Game 1, no.2 (Fall 2007): 50. 164 Orem, Baseball (1845-1881) From the Newspaper Accounts, 341. 165 "Base-Ball Matters," New York Times, November 13,1882. 166 "Sports and Pastimes," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 3, 1881. 167 Orem, Baseball (1845-1881) From the Newspaper Accounts, 341. 168 "Sports and Pastimes," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 1, 1882.

43 a good extent, by the cynicism and uncertainty that existed in the city after the demise of the

Mutuals which facilitated the restoration of honesty and integrity to the game, however idealistically accomplished. The professional game in die hands of the NL, and later the AA, was healthier in the years after the Metropolitans' rise and refrains from the press regarding honesty's role in the game continued for years. In 1885 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote plainly that

The great hold base ball has upon the popular favor is owing to the general belief that it is almost the only honestly conducted sport to be enjoyed. Shake that belief and you strike a mortal blow at the game itself. Compared to this, it is a small matter whether Chicago or New York, Oshkosh or Bungtown win the championship.170

In 1886 Sporting Ufe claimed that baseball businessmen were guaranteed of a sure thing, so solid and widespread was the interest and patronage. Over and over, honesty was put forth as the main reason for professional baseball's success. The New York Clipper stated that it was chiefly the restoration of public confidence in New York City and the metropolis in 1881, the Metropolitans first full year of play as an independent professional club, that made it possible for the AA to challenge the NL's stranglehold on the baseball market, not the AA's cheaper tickets, beer-sales, and Sunday ball amenities.172 In 1883, the same publication cautiously observed the immense popularity of baseball at the Polo Grounds, Prospect Park,

169 Many calls for honesty came from journalist Henry Chadwick who, at different times, wrote for the Brooklyn Daily Eagle (1888-1908), the New York Clipper (1858-1888), and Outing. Chadwick's views, subsequendy, are reflected extensively in this thesis. The years supplied are from Alfred H. Spink's The National Game, Second Edition (1910; repr. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000), 326-327. 170 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 4, 1885. 171 Sporting Ufe, reprinted in "Alleged Baneful Influence of the Metropolitan," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, January 3, 1886. 172 "American Association Campaign of 1882," New York Clipper, October 11, 1882.

44 and elsewhere and believed that it "will likely continue to exist just as long as the game is honestly played, and no /onger."m

As will be seen in subsequent chapters, however, perceived honesty may have been important in swelling New York City's baseball patronage during the period of the

Metropolitans' formation and even after, but it was the breadth of attractions that professional baseball offered that ultimately lured these spectators back again and again. One writer with the New York Times, in regards to what he saw as the boring last days of the 1886 pennant race, wrote that "If the several managers had induced their teams to 'play to the gate' the race would have been much closer and the public interest correspondingly active." This endorsement of hippodroming, though probably sarcastic, does emphasize the culture of professional baseball more accurately than the endless accounts which praised the NL for supplying the public with a clean baseball product.175 Professional baseball was not free of gambling and discord in the commercially profitable 1880s. However, it was becoming increasingly bigger and better at catering to the spectator's desires. Subsequently, spectators proved unable to resist professional baseball's spell.

173 "Opening of Washington Baseball Park: Brooklyn vs. Trenton," New York Clipper, May 19, 1883. 17+ New York Times, September 22, 1886. 175 For example, the National Police Gazette wrote in 1883 ("Base-Ball," April 21, 1883) that "It is the League whom the admirers of the manly and invigorating game of base ball have to thank for elevating the game from the rut into which it was rapidly sinking." In June of 1886 Outing claimed that a scene at the Polo Grounds showed "to what a high position professional ball playing had reached under the auspices of the National League."

45 CHAPTER TWO - PROFESSIONAL BASEBALL COMES TO NEW YORK CITY: THE CULTIVATION OF THE PERMANENT SPECTATOR

In a very real sense, watching baseball was a popular pastime of New Yorkers after

the 1876 demise of the Mutuals as amateur and commercial nine contests at Prospect Park

and elsewhere proved capable of attracting a considerable patronage. However, the full

extent of the baseball-going public's appetite had yet to completely develop. The arousal of

New Yorkers' true devotion to, and willingness to indulge in, the sport required the presence

of professional baseball which was a slick, attractive commodity whose promoters made it

their business to appeal to fans' needs and desires in order to build continued spectator

interest. The NL's bold stance that New York City was too overrun with gambling and

corruption to put forth a respectable team (evidenced, the NL said, by the Mutual club), and

that the league did not need the city, was a misguided and arrogant conceit. New York City

represented a population waiting to be properly exploited by professional baseball and, once

it was, the NL's paternalistic devotion to upholding the game's nobility began to extend

more dramatically than ever towards commercial pursuit.

This chapter attempts to dissect the various factors responsible for spectators'

patronage of professional baseball in the years 1883-1887 when professional league baseball returned to New York City after an absence from 1877 to 1882. Central to such an analysis is a consideration of the shift from participation to spectatorship, the marketing strategies of

NL and AA promoters, and baseball's place in the larger entertainment industry.

Subsequently, this chapter also explores how New Yorkers' everyday life and work patterns, influenced by notions of city space and transportation, as well as city pride, shaped how people chose to accommodate baseball into their lives. The reward of watching the

Metropolitans or Giants required a daily compromise between personal agency and social

46 and economic forces that, though out of the spectator's immediate control, were confronted on a daily basis. The spectator's persistent negotiation, spurred by the increasing appeal of professional baseball, saw a fuller, more confident interest in the sport supplant the uncertain, though palpable, attraction that had characterized New York City in the years prior to the Giants and Metropolitans.

New York City in the 1880s was a testament to continued growth, prosperity, and change. From 1820 to 1870, Adelman has said, New York was not so much an industrial city as it was a city that prospered through the economic thrusts of commerce, finance, and land.176 By the 1880s, however, New York's importation of cotton, dairy products, tobacco, kerosene, and manufactured goods signaled that the city had "moved on to an industrial regime."177 Coinciding with this shift, no longer was it enough for New Yorkers to simply be in business and make money. Rather, those engaged in commercial pursuits needed to be the biggest and most successful in the nation. Certainly, during the Gilded Age, New York City was not a city "given to excess modesty."

As with industry, the demographic and cultural character of New York City was, especially in the latter half of the nineteenth century, in great flux. Stability, historian James

D. Hardy Jr. has said, was but a memory as electricity, the telephone, and other inventions reshaped daily life.179 From the mid-nineteenth century on New York City witnessed an intense flood of immigrants, especially from Germany and Ireland. The communities that

176 Adelman, A Sporting Time, 22. 177 Francois Weil, A History of New York, trans. Jody Gladding (New York City: Columbia University Press, 2000), 75. 178 Eric Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City: A Visual Celebration of Nearly 400 Years of New York City's History (New York City: Henry Hold and Company, 1994.), 91. 179 James D. Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club: The Growth of a Team and a Sport, 1870-1900 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company Inc., 1996), 48.

47 these immigrants established, such as "Kleindeutschland," or Little Germany,180 emphasized the fact that New York City seemed to "constitute a collection of parts rather than a whole."181 In effect, American historian Eric Homberger has said, due to immigrants' twin desires to both assimilate and keep their old traditions, New York was, by the 1880s, a city that embodied "Two Nations." The rapid pace at which immigration occurred, along with an equally intense rate of industrial expansion, made New York "a place without roots, or reverence for the past."183

The influence of modernity dictated how New Yorkers interacted with their surroundings. The notion of the "walking city," mentioned earlier, had, by the 1880s, become an image of the past and increasingly, Riess has stated, urban development made streams and empty lots harder to reach.184 On multiple occasions in the 1880s, due to the

"endless appropriation of land" along the East and Hudson rivers, federal reports considered the limits of expansion.185 As a result of escalating infrastructure problems transportation, best typified by the el-train, without which by 1890 "the city had become unthinkable,"186 was a permanent civic issue.187

The rate of constant change New York underwent in the late-nineteenth century eventually necessitated a reconfiguration of the city's physical boundaries. The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883 heightened Brooklyn's already strong relationship with New

York and in 1898 the flourishing city, along with Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island, where the Metropolitans would play for two years, were consolidated with Manhattan to

180 Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City, 94. «i Weil, A History of New York, 117. ,82 Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City, 94. i« Ibid, 93. 184 Riess, City Games, 53. 185 Weil, A History of New York, 80, 99. 186 Homberger, The Historical Atlas of New York City, 107. 187 WeH, A History of New York, 99-100.

48 form Greater New York. New York's physical expansion, historians Edwin G. Burrows and

Mike Wallace have posited, was to be "a municipal-counterpart of the giant corporations busily being born,"188 .that is, an extension of the city's intense devotion to monopolistic economic pursuit. The amalgamation was originally conceived a decade earlier over the concern that New York might soon be relegated to secondary status by rising cities such as

Chicago, not only in population, but in arts, culture, and politics as well.189 Such consideration on behalf of the New York Chamber of Commerce clearly reflected the desire of New Yorkers to be the best, whether in commerce, culture, or sports, an issue discussed later in regards to the relationship between New Yorkers' pride for their city and subsequent devotion to the Giants rather than the Metropolitans.

After the 1880 season the financial success of the independent professional

Metropolitans afforded the club the opportunity to move into, and eventually up, the league ranks. In 1881 the Metropolitans joined the short-lived Eastern Championship Association and captured the championship.190 The next year, Cincinnati sportswriter O.P. Caylor, upset over the expulsion of his city's ball club from the NL for playing on Sunday prior to the

1881 season, decided to challenge the NL's monopoly on professional baseball by forming a new league called the American Association. The rival league, amateur historian and author

David Nemec has contended, fashioned itself in opposition to the NL's respectable demeanor. Though lasting only nine years, the legacy and influence of the AA has persisted to today through its introduction of affordable ticket prices (the AA charged a minimum

188 Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace, Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (New York City: Oxford University Press, 1999), 1219. 189 Ibid, 1223. 190 Pietrusza, Major Leagues, 62.

49 twenty five cent admission in contrast to the NL's minimum fifty cent admission), "a

carousel atmosphere," that is, a variety of attractions beyond baseball, and Sunday ball.

From 1882 to 1891, the NL and the AA existed alongside each other as rival

professional major leagues. Though Metropolitans' manager Jim Mutrie originally declined

the invitation to enroll his club in the AA so that he and president John B. Day, who ran the

club on behalf of the Metropolitan Exhibition Company (MEC), could continue to profit

from exhibitions with NL teams, the AA's first year success persuaded him to enter the

club for the 1883 season. However, 1883 also saw Day form a second club, the Gothams,

soon renamed the Giants, for entry in the NL. Due in part to the reputation of the NL, New

Yorkers latched onto the Giants immediately, Sporting Life calling the club "probably the

strongest one that has ever represented this city." By creating the NL Giants Day

effectively gave New Yorkers a choice when it came to the professional baseball it

patronized. This was, of course, in stark contrast to the period after the expulsion of the

Mutuals when New York City had no professional representation save for the woefully

unsuccessful Hartfords who played in Brooklyn in 1877.

The sudden presence of the NL and AA in New York City, and the public's

willingness to patronize the Giants and Metropolitans, emphasized how the physical act of

spectatorship was beginning to gain acceptance as a way to experience baseball. As

Americans' attitudes towards leisure loosened by the 1870s, "the moral dubiousness of

merely watching a game" remained.194 The consumption of baseball in New York City, as well as the rest of America, required a debate over morality. Baseball was not inherently

acceptable to all Americans for it carried a stigma of dissipation and idleness. Vincent has

191 Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball, 217-8. "2 Seymour, Baseball, 138. "3 "New York Talks," Sporting Life, April 22, 1883. m Dewey, The 10"' Man, 9.

50 observed that "It appeared to some representatives of propriety and morality that baseball was about to die out. In their view it had never been more than a fad in the first place."

The New York Times wrote in 1879 that the presence of gambling in baseball "does not speak well for the 'muscular Christianity' of our day and country. For it shows that athletic sports have not only sunk to the lowest possible level, but that this degradation of them is recognized and accepted by those who profess to be their devotees." In 1888 the Christian

Union wondered aloud what chance a young Christian man had in withstanding the evils of baseball.197 This is to say, very litde. The Christian Recorder was just as adamant, stating that

"Every considerate and credulous observer must admit that this game, as innocent and sinless as some pretentious Christians would have it appear, is without refutation associated with the popular evils of society."198 The New York Clipper bemoaned that the presence of pool-selling in baseball was "too great a temptation to be resisted by those of weak moral instincts."199 It is crucial to understand, however, that those New Yorkers who paid to watch professional baseball were probably not overly concerned with moral issues. These fans either decided that gambling, rowdiness, and liquor-consumption did not bother them or else realized that contact with baseball was a valuable, empowering activity. As discussed in the previous chapter, all of this is somewhat ironic considering that the NL cultivated its image based on respectability.

A major justification of New Yorkers' engagement with baseball on a spectatorship level could be found in definitions of American character and spirit, notions with which

195 Vincent, Mudville's Revenge, 151. 196 "Gate-Money," New York Times, February 2, 1879. 197 "Concerning Base-Ball," The Christian Union, April 12, 1888. 198 "A Few Pebbles From the Gospel Sling at Giant Baseball," The Christian Recorder, Nov 10, 1887. 199 "Pool-Selling and Baseball," New York Clipper, Oct 7, 1876.

51 baseball, by accommodating Americans' increasingly urban, busy lifestyles,200 had natural association. People gravitated to sports like baseball because they considered them to embody attributes that were peculiarly American. As mentioned earlier, it was for this reason that baseball gained widespread popularity at the expense of cricket. The process of defining

American character, Mrozek has written, was "an effort to ensure stability in the midst of great change."201 Noted Giants player, and leader of the Brotherhood of Professional Base

Ball Players union, John Montgomery Ward wrote that baseball required pluck and athletic skill, manly attributes to which Americans inherendy flocked.202 Dewey has thoughtfully expressed the power fhat baseball spectatorship had to instill Americans with strong feelings for their country. The rest of the world's hesitance to latch onto baseball during Spalding's

1888/1889 World Tour was reworked in newspapers to connote, not failure, but a success specific to America. Dewey says that "Rhetoric of the kind not only told the fan he was being an American by supporting baseball, but that his support made him better than the other peoples of the earth who couldn't get excited about an opposite-field double." 3

Associating with baseball as a spectator was empowering because it meant being representative of the cultural values that made America distinct from the rest of the world.

By associating with baseball as a spectator, New Yorkers became part of a collective that was a unique, and particularly American, social group. Such association highlights New

Yorkers' conscious and subconscious need for a sense of belonging. For working men, the baseball park often supplanted, or at least extended, saloon life which was probably the most

200 Barth, City People, 181. 201 Mrozek, Sport and American Mentality, 161-7. 202 Ward, "Our National Game," The Cosmopolitan: A Monthly Illustrated Magazine, October 1888. 2»3 Dewey, The 10th Man, 81.

52 popular leisure environment for male workers from the 1870s to Prohibition. As Rader

has noted, the saloon, while openly spurning middle class values, offered instant

gratification.205 Given that sport conversation punctuated the saloon atmosphere,206 it is only

natural that these men would attempt to transfer elements of saloon life to the ballpark.

Aside from the saloon, the shared patterns of sociability that baseball spectatorship

offered fans were quite similar to those of other urban communities such as the prize­

fighting circle, fire companies, and militias.207 By 1890, nearly forty percent of males over the

age of twenty-one were a member of some temple, clan, castle, conclave, hive, or lodge for

the purpose of achieving an escape from work life. As American cultural historian Thomas J.

Schlereth has said, lodges and clans supplanted work life by offering members a sense of mystery, pageant, and make-believe.208 For immigrants to New York City, such groups were a way to get together and overcome the xenophobia they often faced. African-Americans and Irish and Scottish immigrants found "a means of preserving traditions and bolstering larger ethnic and racial communities." 10

Baseball spectatorship, by offering a form of pageantry and escape from work, was itself an experience similar to that of voluntary organizations. However, associating with the

Giants or Metropolitans was a public act that emphasized assimilation rather than seclusion.

Baseball spectatorship promoted freedom of association, a notion many historians seem to have observed. Watching baseball games, Rader has said, "could blur status, ideological and

204 Schlereth, Victorian America, 225. 205 Rader, American Sports, 25-28.

206 R0y Rosenzweig, Eight Hours For What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870, 1920 (New York City: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 36-62. 207 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 29-30. 208 Schlereth, Victorian America, 213. 209 Weil, A History of New York, 141-2. 210 Rader, American Sports, 65-67.

53 personal differences within ethnic communities." Nasaw has contended that, for second-

generation immigrants, commercial entertainment offered a "refuge from social tensions"

that could allow for Americanization.212 Michael S. Kimmel, a sociologist and author, has

stated that the ballpark was a "haven in a heartless world." For lower-middle class men, he

says, "the community and solidarity they found there, however based on exclusion,

facilitated their accommodation to their position in society."213 Affiliation with baseball as a

spectator meant embracing a public collective spirit which afforded social and personal

mobility.

It is important to state that, though men undoubtedly made up the majority of those

in the stands, active female spectatorship was widespread. The presence of female patrons

was used by both the press and promoters as a measure of baseball's "worthiness, popularity,

and respectability" as early as the 1850s. Indeed, even in the 1880s female fans gained

special recognition in newspaper accounts.215 Guttmann has posited that because of certain

elements of the game such as beer-drinking and rowdiness it is not surprising that middle

class women have oftentimes resisted the game.216 Nonetheless, as will be seen later women

accounted for a relatively considerable proportion of New York's baseball spectatorship.

211 Ibid, 69. 212 Nasaw, Going Out, 45. 213 Michael S. Kimmel, "Baseball and the Reconstruction of American Masculinity, 1880- 1920," in Baseball History From Outside the Lines: A deader, ed. John E. Driefort (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2001), 58. 214 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 38. Since the 1850s, female spectators have not always been seen as a positive presence. In 1900 Charles Ebbets complained about the ladies that brought their children to see his Brooklyn NL club due to the fact that they turned the park into a "conversation bee." Stein, A History of the Baseball Fan, 30. 215 A few representative examples include an account from an 1883 Metropolitan game held at the Polo Grounds that had "about fifty ladies who occupied seats in the grand-stand." "Metropolitan vs. Cincinnati," New York Clipper, "Scrap Book of Base Ball, 1879-1903, 1879-1895," BA SCR 90," Baseball Hall of Fame Archive. An 1881 Metropolitan game was played in front of a "large number of spectators, many of whom were ladies." "Base-Ball," New York Times, April 22, 1881. 216 Allen Guttmann, Sports Spectators (New York City: Columbia University Press, 1986), 114.

54 By the 1880s, the act of watching baseball was becoming increasingly accepted and rationalized by the men and women who enjoyed the sport. When it came to watching baseball rather than playing baseball, however, men were, due to their greater involvement as players, much more likely to make the transition. Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper commented that the man who played baseball was likely to exhibit the same enthusiasm when watching a game. The National Police Gazette wrote that "If one is too old, or too lazy, or too feeble, or too clumsy to play baseball himself, he will find attendance upon a game — provided, always, it is coupled with a knowledge of its rules and hearty appreciation of good play — the next best thing." The Brooklyn Daily Eagle relayed the belief, in observance of

Polo Grounds patrons, that "when a man grows cumbersome [that is, no longer able to play himself] athletics have a charm for him."219 Writing years later in 1929, psychiatrist A.A. Brill concluded that the fan benefited physically, mentally, and morally from watching sports.

Watching, Brill wrote, was a "salutary habit" and was preferable if one could not achieve a high level of success as a participant.220 A typical baseball fan's transition from diamond to grandstand was, pivotally, seen as a natural one.

Certainly professional baseball intensified the influx of spectator interest by offering the public a myriad of amenities that they were not supplied with the same frequency before.

Kimmel has noted that mass spectator sport, which represented a "shift from a culture of production to a culture of consumption," altered the composition of the baseball fan as

"The values that were thought to be installed by playing baseball had made the imaginative

217 "Base-Ball Cranks," Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, August 24, 1893. 218 "The Season of Outdoor Sports," National Police Gazette, May 22, 1886. 219 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 31,1885. 220 A.A. Brill, "The Why of the Fan," North American Review 228 (July-December): 429-433.

55 leap to an ability to be instilled by watching baseball." Schlereth has noted that professional sport increased player skill and specialization and, subsequently, put "unpracticed spectators in the stands." 22 Certainly the onset of professionalism created a much larger gap between those who could expertly play baseball and those who could not.223 This is to say that many spectators were not necessarily accustomed to playing the game they 'watched. Aided by sporting journals such as Spirit of the Times and the New York Clipper since the 1860s, many people had become intimately more aware and knowledgeable of the sporting spectacle that surrounded them as spectators224 and did not believe that playing baseball was a necessary adjunct to achieving enjoyment through contact with the sport.

The widespread acceptance of baseball spectatorship represented an evolution of the ways in which one typically engaged with baseball for no longer did the belief exist that a person needed to play baseball to be involved in it. Though Ward thought that the Giants fan, by being unable to physically help his team win, was in a powerless and "trying position,"225 he did not seem to grasp that the spectator allowed himself to be in that position. As Barth has noted, people in the 1880s began to see the ballpark as a place for diversion and "were satisfied with being represented on the field by their sports idols."226

Pivotally, communications professor Dolf Zillmann et al have posited that very few can be active participants, especially in the professional arena, while nearly everyone can reap the

221 Kimmel, "Baseball and the Reconstruction of American Masculinity, 1880-1920," 50 and 58. 222 Schlereth, Victorian America, 223. 223 Levine has made this point in regards to late-nineteenth century American classical music which, through attempts at making performances more exclusive and "divine," served to perpetuate the belief that only trained professionals had the knowledge and ability to perform classical music. Levine, Highbrow/'Lowbrow, 132-139. 224 Barth, City People, 155. 225 Ward, "Our National Game." 226 Barth, City People, 179.

56 diverse interests that "Recreation through spectatorship" fosters.22 New Yorkers increasingly found that they no longer needed to play baseball themselves to get something out of the game. Simply watching the action was marvelously enjoyable as well. However, as will be seen in Chapter Three, baseball fans did not simply watch baseball. The coming of two professional baseball clubs to New York City in 1883 showed that spectatorship meant engaging with baseball on a number of different levels.

Baseball enthusiasts flocked to New York City ballparks in the 1880s as they did other forms of commercial entertainment. Since the rise of open professionalism in the late

1860s, baseball was always on the cusp of becoming a major form of commercial entertainment. At the rime of the NL's formation in 1876 baseball was set to satisfy increasing demands for commercial amusement brought on by urban America's ever­ growing "culture of consumption."228 In 1885 The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine observed that "The ideals of the people are shaped, and their sentiments formed, to a large extent, by popular amusement."229 Buying goods and services had become a means for coping with life's challenges and the world of commercial entertainment "suggested that fun could be bought like anything else."230 Professional baseball proved no exception. Those

New Yorkers who patroni2ed the sport essentially formed a "consumption community," that is, a group of people "drawn together, not by political persuasion, nor by racial or ethnic identity, but rather by buying and using the same products."-

227 Dolf Zillmann et al., "The Enjoyment of Watching Sports Contests," in Sports, Games, and Play: Social and Psychological Viewpoints, ed. Joseph Goldstein (Toronto: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Publishers, 1979), 298-306. 228 Glenn Moore, "Ideology on the Sportspage: Newspapers, Baseball, and Ideological Conflict in the Gilded Age," Journal of Sport History 23, no.3 (Fall 1996): 228. 229 "Christianity and Popular Amusements," The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, January 1885. 230 Schlereth, Victorian America, 141-142. 231 Ibid, 162.

57 Baseball did well in a commercial environment that offered New Yorkers a wide variety of entertainment options, managing to at once resemble, and be unique from, competing forms of popular amusement. Like vaudeville, baseball underwent efforts of reform and sanitization aimed at attracting a middle class audience.232 But, as will be seen, these efforts met with only a modicum of success. Also like vaudeville, baseball was capable of causing different parts of the community to come together, meet, and observe each other.233 Professional baseball closely resembled such amusements as the carnival midway which drew salesmen, families, clerks, shop girls, professionals, and laborers, as well as

Barnum's American Museum which welcomed a mixed crowd.234 Coney Island and other midways, Schlerefh has explained, "loosened Victorian codes of behavior," chiefly because

"Release rather than restraint characterized the mood."" Because professional baseball in

New York City and elsewhere, unlike the union hall or saloon where patrons were likely to know each other intimately, was a public amusement, it drew "more strangers than friends"236 and, thus, allowed for the transcendence of class divisions created by the rapid increase of white-collar, clerical-based positions.

Professional baseball was, for many New Yorkers, not unlike stage drama for it offered many of the same perks. Erastus Wiman, owner of the Metropolitans from 1886-

1887, having observed the growth of a distinct leisure class in New York City that had the money and time to frequent commercial entertainment, thought baseball should be elevated

232 Ibid, 230. 233 Cullen, The Art of Democracy, 133. 234 Weil, A History of New York, 144. 235 Schlereth, Victorian America, 238-240. 236 Nasaw, Going Out, 1-4. 237 Ibid, 36-45. 238 "Baseball at the New York Polo Grounds," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, June 23, 1889.

58 "to a level as high as the average theatrical performance." In 1886 the MEC escaped a charge that would have forced the company to acquire a theatrical license for exhibiting baseball at the Polo Grounds, the verdict stating that baseball "was not played on a stage" and thus was an exhibition distinct from theatre.240 The most ardent baseball spectator might have disagreed with Judge Peckham's distinction in favor of Dewey's belief that baseball's rules, rituals, and skills made for a "commodity demanding total suspension of belief in any world other than its own."241 Though the viability of baseball as a commercial enterprise was hindered by dishonesty and a lack of integrity in the years leading to the rise of the

Metropolitans in the autumn of 1880, when the Giants and Metropolitans secured twin- occupation of New York City in 1883 a large number of New Yorkers, having perceived a restoration of integrity to professional baseball, proved ready to fully patronize the product.

By 1886 the New York Times wrote that baseball had grown more rapidly than any other form of American industry, "affecting the ebb and flow of money to greater degree than either the

Bell telephone or a circus.""" That same year the Brooklyn Daily Eagle concurred, writing that

The game never before drew the patronage it now elicits, and moreover, it is not the fleeting patronage of a furor, but the steady, enduring public endorsement of a permanent national sport, and the professional associations have it entirely in their own hands as to whether the patronage they now command is to be permanent or not.243

Of course, to be purchased pleasure had to be properly packaged.244 The Giants and

Metropolitans' joint occupation of New York City from 1883 to 1887 illustrated the specific intentions baseball's promoters had in appealing to spectators for the patronage of their

239 "Business Aspect of Baseball," New York Times, January 1, 1886. 2* "No License Needed," New York Times, July 28, 1886. 241 Dewey, The 10"' Man, xii. 242 "Revised Baseball," New York Times, November 18, 1886. 243 "Remarkable Popularity of the National Game," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 12, 1886. 244 Dale Somers, The Rise of Sport in New Orleans, 1850-1900 (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1972), vii-viii.

59 product. Professional baseball promoters such as the NL's Albert G. Spalding, owner of the

Chicago club, and the AA's Chris von der Ahe in St. Louis, appealed to the baseball public in the hopes that they would respond and consume their baseball product. To properly position the ways in which willing spectators went about their negotiation of the sport in

New York City, it is necessary at this point to discuss exactly how NL and AA promoters first attempted to corral the baseball public.

The NL and AA used a variety of methods to entice New Yorkers to come to the ballpark including advertising on streetcars, sign boards on street corners, handbills, posters, and boys carrying banners.245 The decade of the 1880s also saw baseball become part of

America's popular culture through the proliferation of its presence in Currier and Ives prints, vaudeville, poetry, and song.246 Professional baseball's relationship with the press, however, may have been the most successful method of promotion. As Schlereth has said, the sports page, pioneered by weeklies such as the Spirit of the Times and expanded by the New York Sun and the New York World in die 1880s, acted as a "surrogate" for men and children who could not make it to the ballpark.247 Due to cheaper printing costs and methods, sports writing in the 1880s benefited from the significandy enlarged daily newspaper format. Whereas in the

1860s the Spirit of the Times relayed the general atmosphere of games,249 sports reporting in die 1880s became increasingly devoted to detailed summaries of batting and fielding reflected by box scores and statistics.250 Such coverage, Barth has said, "steadily expanded

245 Seymour, Baseball, 196. 246 Rader, American Sports, 62. 247 Schlereth, Victorian America, 183-184. 248 Vincent, Mudville's Revenge, 158. 249 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 41. 250 Schlereth, Victorian America, 184.

60 the vocabulary of sports writers and stimulated patterns of speaking that made sports jargon part of everyday speech."251

By the latter half of the 1880s the NL and AA had firm working relationships with the sporting press to an extent that "sportswriters already knew what to print."252 At an 1887

NL meeting the league's magnates agreed that it was in their collective interests to work closely with the press. The league secretary was instructed to regularly provide such publications as the Daily Base Ball Gazette, Sporting Life, Sporting Times, and Sporting News with

NL news and promotional materials.253 Conversely, Guttmann has stated, the readers of sports writing came to know what to expect as "the overall effect of the print media was to civilize the fans."254 Importandy, many newspaper men were actively involved in the baseball business as owners and promoters, a fact that emphasizes professional baseball's dependence on the press. Game accounts by Henry Chadwick, O.P. Caylor, and Alfred H. Spink put forth the image that "baseball the institution [was] in capable hands precisely in those years when the frenetic coming and going of franchises and leagues was arguing the opposite."2 5

The magnates of professional baseball, especially those working in the NL, believed that they had control over those who frequented their parks. As Dewey has said, the owners truly believed that "whatever the fans wanted, they were the ones to provide it. Their monopoly wasn't just over geographical markets, but over personal tastes, inclinations, and habits translated as mass demand."256 The owners' collective conviction was more feigned confidence than reality for, if anything, the urges and desires of the fans resulted in a

251 Barth, City People, 152. 252 Moore, "Ideology on the Sportspage," 250. 253 NL Meeting March 9, 1887, "National League Minutes: Scrapbook, 1881-1891," BA SCR 134,47. 254 Guttmann, Sports Spectators, 86. 255 Dewey, The 10"'Man, 78-79. 256 Ibid, 105.

61 compromise of the promoters' marketing strategies. Professional baseball's promoters

certainly stirred and then encouraged the interests of baseball fans but they were also

influenced greatly by them.

The AA's strategy to appeal to the "masses" direcdy contrasted with the NL's

mission to appeal to a middle class clientele. By charging twenty-five cents for admission,

selling liquor at its parks, and playing Sunday games where it was legal, Nemec has said, the

AA intended to "flaunt Victorian standards of propriety."257 The magnates of the NL, on the

other hand, saw themselves as "saviors of the professional game, and they jealously guarded

their role as such."258 According to Vincent, the NL wished to "flush out from the

grandstand the allegedly foul-mouthed, odorous, and tacky-looking working-class and

replace them with a higher class of people willing and able to pay double the standard ticket

price."259 Day supported the NL's mission from the start with his Giants, Sporting Ufe noting

that

The Metropolitan Exhibition Company have determined to make the inaugural game of the League championship campaign in that city an event of special interest and in order to give due eclat to the occasion they have issued nearly a thousand invitations to parties of note and influence, reserving seats for them in the ladies' gallery of the grand stand.

Invitations were extended to General Grant, college presidents, mayors, and New York City

aldermen.260 The effort to impose exclusivity at the Polo Grounds was also evident, Riess

257 David Nemec, The Beer and Whiskey League: The Illustrated History of the American Association — Baseball's Renegade Major League (New York City: Lyons & Burford, Publishers, 1994), 16. 258 Larry G. Bowman, "The First World's Championship of Professional Baseball: The New York Metropolitans and the Providence Grays, 1884," NINE: A journal of Baseball History and Culture 6, no.2 (Spring 1998): 3. 259 Vincent, Mudville's Revenge, 136. 260 "A Big Blow-Out," Sporting Life, April 29,1888.

62 contends, in the fact that Giants games started at 3:30 so that the Wall Street crowd would have time to get to the park after the markets closed at 3:00.261

As discussed in the first chapter, the NL began to finally achieve an image as the best and most attractive professional baseball league after the fall of the IA in 1879.262 The NL was, in the course of the AA's existence, far more popular with fans. However, despite the

NL's success at attracting patronage the extent to which the league actually carried out its respectability-based constitution is hard to gauge. It does not seem as if the NL was as loyal to its principles of respectability in practice as it was to them in theory. The willingness of the AA to cater to "lower" tastes, and the public's subsequent willingness to consume liquor and the other amenities it offered, necessitated that the NL engage in duplicity. As Goldstein has so crucially noted:

One of the ironies of the game's history is that, on the one hand, its ideologues and promoters have always maintained that one of its most important virtues has been the democratic mix of classes and ethnic groups (more recently, colors) in the stands, a microcosm, so they argue, of America itself; while on the other hand, they have usually worked hard to enforce a standard of conduct at games based more exclusively on respectability and the genteel middle-class culture of white, native- born Americans.

One time NL president A.G. Mills' claim that "Base Ball is essentially the people's game, in that it is equally accessible to the sons of the rich and poor"264 quietly admits the NL's inability to truly control what kinds of people came to its ballparks. As Guttmann has noted, the promoters of NL baseball, realizing that they could not keep away entirely that class of

261 Riess, City Games, 67. 262 The NL's creation of the reserve clause in 1879 helped solidify the league's monopoly on player talent. Originally the reserve clause allowed each team to retain five players for the following season. However, the number of players a club was able to reserve grew each year. By the end of the 1880s clubs could effectively retain full rosters from season to season. 263 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 74. 264 Spalding, America's National Game, 248.

63 people they wished to exclude, sought instead to transform their behaviour.26 The NL's duplicity existed in part because, at the end of the day, as long as people paid for its product, who these people were, or how "respectable" they were, hardly mattered.266 Cullen has noted the futility of attempts to rank cultural forms, stating that working class men were interested in "elite" art and, conversely, the elite class was attracted to "lower" entertainments such as burlesque. Certainly the NL and AA, by attempting to appeal to specific factions of the public, recognized that their true audience was somewhere in between and that, as Levine has surmised regarding different forms of popular culture such as opera, baseball's cultural parameters, though exposed to idealistic constructs, were "permeable and shifting rather man fixed and immutable."

If the NL attempted to exude a respectable image, the AA, Hardy Jr. has said, "did not try to mix business with morality."269 This is an important observation because it seems to speak also for how spectators approached baseball for, despite all the NL and AA's posturing, the baseball public rarely concerned itself with the leagues' strategic agendas. A visible divide existed between the promoters and the spectators they tried to capture.

Generally, spectators have expected the baseball park to provide them with a pleasurable domain. The 'National Police Gazette proclaimed in 1887 that "The public do not attend the ball games to benefit the League magnates The public do not care the snap of their finger for the stockholder of a club, who reap the benefit of their patronage."270 The same publication stated also that "The public go out to see the ball players do their work in an

265 Guttmann, Sports Spectators 121. 266 Dewey, The 10th Man, 33. 267 Cullen, The Art of Deomocracy, 94. 268 Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow, 8. 269 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Bali Club, 32. 270 "Baseball Monopoly," National Police Gazette, December 17, 1887.

64 artistic style, and not to swell the coffers of the managers."271 This might partly speak to spectators' grumbling over ticket prices. It is also to say that, though the public thirsted for solid fielding and exciting base-running, it did not care how such a product was made available to them just so long as it continued to be provided.

Crucially, it is not clear that the NL really concerned itself much with business and morality either. Consider the NL's feigned outrage over the AA's willingness to sell beer at its parks. Orem has stated that NL owners were horrified, "or they pretended that they were." Orem has noted that, during the Giants' inaugural season, "Day dispensed not only beer but every other kind of alcohol, including mixed drinks. Although this was a direct violation of the League rule against such practices the acts were simply winked at by Day's fellow [NL] magnates."272 According to Hardy Jr., Day felt that liquor was essential to enjoying a game.273 An 1885 article from Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper backs up this account. The nonpartisan reporter, sent to the Polo Grounds in an observational capacity, wrote that

Underneath the structure [presumably the bleachers], liquid refreshment, in the guise of lager beer, is not wholly unattainable; indeed, it may be had, together with its traditional concomitant, the cheese sandwich, of shirt-sleeved deputies, who march up and down and loudly invite you to 'Give your orders!'274

The illegal presence of alcohol must not have served as much of a surprise for the writer as this aspect goes unmentioned. Such examples tend to undo Spalding's claim that the NL never drifted from its principles of providing a legitimate, respectable baseball product and echoes cultural historian James Cook's observation, regarding girlie shows, that "nothing so

271 "Ruinous Baseball," National Police Gazette, January 14, 1888. 272 Orem, Baseball (1845-1881) From the Newspaper Accounts, 336. 273 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 7. 274 "Baseball at the Polo Grounds," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, May 23, 1885. 275 Spalding, America's National Game, 241-242.

65 advertises filth as a crusade of die purity league." Dewey has further challenged Spalding's claim by contending that "When all the propaganda smoke cleared, in fact, it turned out that the sober, white-collar NL, not the AA, was the setting for most of the friction and ugliness in the decade."277 What is most important is the fact that the NL and AA did not have entirely opposing strategies when appealing to spectators. The NL, it is clear, learned a great deal from the AA in terms of what spectators required when in the stands. Seymour has said of the NL's 1880 ban on liquor sales that "the League was out of harmony with the trend of the times."278 This is precisely on the mark. The successes and failures of NL and AA marketing appeals taught the leagues' magnates that they needed to cater to the pleasure of the fans.279 In Day's case, he realized that operating from behind a veil would elevate the profitability of his Giants enterprise. Day yielded to the spectators by affording them the amenities they wanted, such as alcohol, and watched as they continued to spend fifty cents on a ticket under the impression that the NL offered a better product than the AA.

The acceptance and patronage of the game of baseball, whether in support of tlie

Giants or the Metropolitans, meant incorporating it into one's already hectic life. Doing so altered patterns of lifestyle because going to the game required some sacrifice. The existence of work responsibility was one example that made this incorporation difficult. However, this incorporation was not impossible and was certainly anticipated by urban workers who, due to monotony created by the strict structuring of work time, searched for meaningful ways to use their leisure hours.280 Steven M. Gelber, a historian of leisure and labor, has said that, although work was very important, men chose to play baseball "rather than to rest, read, or

276 James Cook, The Arts of Deception: Playing With Fraud in the Age ofBarnum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001), 177. 277 Dewey, The 10"' Man, 64-5. 278 Seymour, Baseball, 92. 279 Ibid, 189. 280 Vincent, Mudville's Revenge, 158-159.

66 visit in their leisure time."281 The same was true for those who watched baseball. By the 1880s,

Dewey has said, half-day Saturdays in retail outlets and some plants and rising literacy rates

"might not have made blue-collar workers any richer, but it certainly gave them a little more free time and more points of contact with the game."282 Morse wrote in 1888 that, for those who were primarily occupied with work, or could not afford it on a regular basis, "there could be no greater treat than that of witnessing a baseball match."283 Holidays often proved to be the most advantageous time to attend ball games, for both the middle and working classes. On Decoration Day, 1886, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle observed

fully 50,000 people paid admission to the professional ball grounds of the metropolitan district. Of this number 28,000 attended the Polo Grounds [to see the Giants], 7,000 in the forenoon and 21,000 in the afternoon; 15,000 went to Washington Park [to see Brooklyn's AA club], in this city, and 5,000 journeyed to Staten Island [to see the Metropolitans].284

Aside from the opportunity afforded by half-holidays, working class Americans often needed to skip work or have jobs with abnormal hours in order to attend baseball games."

In his 1888 biography, the famous player Mike Kelly wrote that "I have known men to forsake their business day after day to see their favorite clubs at work."286 The Christian

Recorder, though obviously embellishing, seemed to concur with this sentiment stating that

"When a game is called, stores are closed, the residence is vacated and the city is emptied,

281 Steven M. Gelber, "Working at Playing: The Culture of the Workplace and the Rise of Baseball," Journal of Social History 16, no.4 (Summer 1983): 3-4. 282 Dewey, The 10"' Man, 62. 283 Jacob Morse, Sphere and Ash: History ofBaseball (1888; repr. Columbia, SC: Camden House, Inc., 1984), 4. 284 "Triumphs and Trials of the Base Ball Player," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 6,1886. 285 Riess, City Games, 69. According to an 1887 study, American wage-earners in all trades had an average of sixty one unemployed days per year. These times off were due to seasonal conditions, the whims of supervisors, economic downturns, and work schedule fluctuation. Schlereth, Victorian America, 77'. 286 Mike Kelly, "'Play Ball:' Stories:"Stones Of the Diamond Field," quoted in Dean A. Sullivan, ed. Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1995), 154.

67 and all wend their way to the scene of mirth."287 The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine wrote, in 1889, that

Schoolboys are no longer the only ones who are thought to suffer amusements to come between them and their work; an equal interest in outdoor sports is attributed to judges and lawyers, editors and reporters, merchants and clerks; and it is even said that our Saturday half-holidays are in many cases due less to interest in health of subordinates than to the desire of principals to witness some outdoor athletic _i 4. 288

contest.

In his study of AA baseball in Cincinnati between 1886 and 1888, baseball historian Dean A.

Sullivan proposes that blue-collar working men, having already gone to Sunday's game, might have often risked employment by skipping work on Mondays to return to the ballpark.289 Though not always easy or in their best interests, working class people did manage to incorporate professional baseball into their lives.

It seems safe to infer that work commitments did not always negate one's opportunity to go to the ballpark and that day-to-day life could accommodate baseball. In this sense, going to baseball games supplied a sense of continuity and order for New Yorkers that could supersede other aspects of their lives such as work. Perhaps this is partially explained by Gelber's belief that "baseball was popular because it was similar to, not because it was different from, day to day life. Baseball provided the male business worker with a leisure analog."290 Watching baseball at the Polo Grounds or elsewhere was an extension of the conflicts and encounters, successes and failures dealt with at work. Crucially, Barth has positioned that, by patronizing baseball matches, people began to see a sense of order governing modern city life. The experience of watching baseball "made crowds of people

287 "j\ pew pebbles From the Gospel Sling at Giant Baseball," The Christian Recorder, November 10, 1887. 288 "Outdoor Sports," The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, July 1889. 289 Dean A. Sullivan, "Faces in the Crowd: A Statistical Portrait of Baseball Spectators in Cincinnati, 1886-1888," Journal of Sport History 17, no.3 (Winter 1990): 359. 290 Gelber, "Working at Playing," 7-9.

68 conscious that rules regulated the happenings of their world, too."291 The New York Times wrote in 1886 that the speed of baseball, an appealing quality, was consistent "with the habits of an industrial community."292 Hardy Jr. has agreed with this point, noting that baseball "fit the urban lifestyle perfectly" due to its institutional similarities and actual ties to local politics, the saloon, and the music hall. Going to baseball games could be justified by

New Yorkers because their encounters in the bleachers and grandstands were not wholly different from those experienced elsewhere.

A sense of order in the lives of New Yorkers was dictated to a large extent by city space as increased public transportation facilitated larger crowds. New York City had, by mid-nineteenth century, become dependent upon transportation services such as omnibuses, horse-drawn carriages, and, later, el-trains, and, subsequendy, was no longer the "walking city" it had been in the 1840s.294 The American lifestyle in the Victorian period, Schlereth has claimed, was one of transience, in which "Everyone seemed en route emigrating and immigrating, removing or being removed, unsettling and relocating." For many, not moving implied stagnation,295 a symptom that professional baseball, by way of the action on the field and the behaviour of its spectators in the stands, certainly did not breed.

For many historians, modern city space and the baseball spectator were intimately connected. As Adelman has stressed, the relationship between sport and the urban environment was a process.296 Barth has positioned that "More often than not, the immediacy of a trip to the ball park tied people, city life, and baseball together."297 Baseball

291 Barth, City People, 149. 292 New York Times, May 1, 1886. 293 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 11. 294 Weil, A History of New York, 99-100. 295 Schlereth, Victorian America, 7-13.. 296 Adelman, A Sporting Time, 7. 297 Barth, City People, 188.

69 patrons were privy to this process as they needed to consider ideas of city space when

incorporating baseball matches into their life patterns. Since parks like the Polo Grounds,

located just north of Central Park at Douglas Circle in Harlem," were situated on

transportation lines, they were visited "as a matter of course."299 For many who did not live

near the Polo Grounds, getting to the park was far from simple. This was especially true for

poorer people who tended to live nearer to the central business districts rather than on town

perimeters where the baseball parks were usually located300 due to cheap and available real

estate.30' These blue-collar workers could not afford public transportation trips to the city

fringe while white-collar workers had the time and money to do so.302 Life described this

fan's typical, hectic journey to the Polo Grounds in 1888, stating that, after having

transferred from the el-train to a two-seated coach with five others at 116 street "He will

not know by what route he came when he gets there — provided he is not killed in transit in

collision with other carriages — for he will have traveled in a cloud of dust so thick that one

might drive tacks in it."303 The New York Times estimated that such a trip to the Polo

Grounds, factoring in a seat in the grandstand and transportation, cost "about a dollar.""

Thankfully tickets could also be purchased at various places throughout the city, such as bars

and pool halls, as well as drug stores for lady patrons,305 thus making such a trip, though

clearly exaggerated, less trying.

298 Lowry, Green Cathedrals, 147. 299 Barth, City People, 188. 300 Schlereth, Victorian America, 95. 3d Dewey, The 10"'Man, 97. 302 Riess, City Games, 67-8. 303 L^, June 21,1888. 3o-» "The Baseball Season," New York Times, October 12, 1885. To put this cost in perspective, the average wage-earner in manufacturing by 1890 made $439.00 annually while clerical workers earned an average of $848.00. U.S. Bureau of the Census. The Statistical History of the United States From Colonial Times to the Present (Stamford, CT: Fairfield Publishers, 1965), 92. 305 Dewey, The 10"' Man, 97.

70 The importance of city space in terms of transportation was evidenced by the extent to which traction companies entered the baseball sphere. As Hardy Jr. has observed, a ballpark on one's traction line increased business,306 a reality that led many companies to offer round-trip and package deals to spectators. As the 1858 Fashion Race Course series on Long Island proved, baseball enthusiasts were willing to travel a good distance to watch baseball games.308 In the 1880s in New York City, extra cars often had to be run along the elevated railroads to accommodate rushes of spectators.309 Erastus Wiman, a traction man himself, was specific in his intentions. As the New York Times reported, Wiman's securing of a trunk line entrance to the New York Harbor and New York City went hand-in-hand with his desire to purchase the Metropolitans because he wished to give his Staten Island project a

"large increase in traffic." Positioning the Metropolitans as just one of many attractions,

Wiman hoped to annually draw upwards of 350,000 people to baseball games on summer afternoons and even more on summer evenings for other attractions. However, things did not go according to Wiman's plan. In 1886 the New York Times reported that the high cost and inconvenience of ferry transportation was hurting attendance at the St. George

Grounds311 while others complained that the trip was "too long to make just on the chance the weather would be decent."312

The convenience of baseball parks was intimately tied to notions of city space and heavily influenced spectatorship. The evolution of ballparks from hastily constructed, wooden structures prone to fire in the 1860s to concrete facilities beginning in the late

306 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 98. 307 Seymour, Baseball, 203. 308 Dewey, The 10"'Man, 16-17. 309 "Winning the First Game," New York Times, April 30, 1886. 310 "Business Aspect of Baseball," New York Times, January 1, 1886. 311 Larry Lupo, When the Mets Played Ball, on Staten Island (New York City: Vantage Press, 2000), 30. 312 Nemec, The Beer and Whiskey Teague, 113.

71 1880s, signaled the extent to which the baseball business had developed a lasting patronage. The single-use ballpark that supplanted multi-purpose fields such as the St.

George Grounds and, before that, the Elysian Fields, were symbolic of baseball's permanent presence in town. Prior to this period of intense stadium construction, the idea of the ballpark, that physical space where enthusiasts congregated, was already an issue that influenced the level of New Yorkers' engagement with the sport as spectators. After the

1876 expulsion of the Mutuals the chance that a professional club would return to New

York City was often discussed. The New York Clipper weighed in on the subject in 1878, stating that

The question as to whether the metropolis will be represented by a strong professional team is yet in abeyance, owing to the uncertainty of our having a professional ground to play on. New York has no such ground — a discreditable fact, by the way.314

The Polo Grounds was, since the Mutuals had played at the Union Grounds in Brooklyn,

"the first professional ball field within the limits of what was then New York City."315 When the Metropolitans secured the Polo Grounds for use in 1882 the New York Clipper noted that the "acquisition of a site for a ball-ground easily accessible by the elevated railroad to the patrons of the game measurably contributed to that success in this city."316 That same year, the New York Clipper made mention of the same attributes in regards to the clubs' field for

1883, a renovated Polo Grounds, which was to be "located very conveniently to the elevated railroad stations."31 When the Metropolitans were bought by Erastus Wiman and moved to

Staten Island before the 1886 season, the New York press initially praised the St. George

Grounds, Harper's Weekly claiming that "As far as the accessibility of the new grounds to the

313 Spalding, America's National Game, 496. 314 "Opening of the Season," New York Clipper, March 9, 1878. ™ John J. O'Malley, "The Mets Open in New York," Baseball Research Journal (1980): 141. 316 "American Association Campaign of 1882," New York Clipper, October 11, 1882. 317 "The Coming Conventions," New York Clipper, December 2, 1882.

72 business centre of New York is concerned, they have an advantage over the Polo

Grounds."318 Elements of city space needed to be taken into consideration by New York

City baseball promoters as often, in the case of transportation and park location, they were factors that dictated the extent to which baseball enthusiasts were able to patronize the sport.

It is also crucial to discuss partisanship as a factor that was responsible for the cultivation of a large baseball patronage in New York City. Watching baseball has always evoked civic feeling.319 In the 1840s and 1850s "Traditions of local pride, urban rivalries, and city boosterism spurred hometown clubs and newspapers to seek glory for their nines and communities."320 In the 1860s, spectator partisanship was driven by town and neighborhood affiliation321 though the creation of the NABBP in the late 1850s, and interstate tours by such clubs as the Nationals of Washington in 1867, altered this localized feeling, ~ making partisanship more national. With the rise of open professionalism in the late 1860s,

Kimmel's observation that America's geographic frontier "was replaced by the outfield fences and by the mental frontiers between rival cities" 323 was becoming readily apparent.

More than ever before, affiliation with the home team was a way for spectators to voice their values.

Because New York City had two professional baseball clubs from 1883 until 1887, the level of spectator partisanship was often, and understandably, tense. Individual and collective attachments to either the Giants or Metropolitans were formed, in part, by the pride fans felt for New York City. Spectators wanted to support the club that would best

318 "Baseball on Staten Island," Harper's Weekly: A journal of Civilisation, May 15, 1886. 319 Riess, City Games, 68. 320 Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports, 204. 321 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 79. 322 Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports, 204. 323 Kimmel, "Baseball and the Reconstruction of American Masculinity, 1880-1920," 58.

73 represent their city. As will be seen, proper and sufficient civic representation was not wholly determined by success in the standings but also by the fancied belief that their club played on the biggest and best stage in the world. The Metropolitans, though once thought of as the saviors of professional baseball in New York City, could not accomplish this status with the presence of the Giants whose league, the NL, was seen as the preeminent professional baseball league.

In the 1850s and 1860s clubs like the Brooklyn Adantics and Excelsiors had enjoyed localized followings. In contrast, the Metropolitans and Giants attracted much larger, and less distinct, sections of the entire city. In this sense, the Giants and Metropolitans shared the public sympathy that wished for New York City to be on top of the baseball world.

Although some writers felt that New York was already "big and wide-awake and rich" enough that it scarcely needed baseball,324 the general sentiment was that professional baseball was needed in New York City. The New York Times wrote in 1888 that "it does not quite suffice for all New-Yorkers that New-York is big," adding further that

anything whatsoever that can excite the local pride of New-York is so far a good thing. For local pride is much the same thing as public spirit, which at least cannot exist without it, and there is no city in the world that is more deficient in public spirit than New-York.325

In 1886 The Sporting News, in regards to Chicago and Detroit's baseball fortunes, claimed that

"New -York is first in other things; it should be first in base ball."326 Clearly the ballpark represented a ground, similar in utility to the political and economic spheres, on which New

York spectators could cultivate a sense of pride and loyal preference for their city over all others.

324 "Sleep Versus Baseball," New York Times, January 5, 1888. 325 "Local Pride," New York Times, September 23, 1888. 326 "The New York's 111 Luck," The Sporting News, September 27, 1886.

74 However, such civic spirit did not dictate that the Giants and Metropolitans could equally represent New York City. From 1883 to 1887 a natural rivalry existed between the two clubs. The New York Sun wrote, at the outset of the clubs' inaugural season, that the two professional clubs would "divide popular sympathies" and lead to the "flowing of large amounts of money into the tills at the Polo ground."327 Illustrating the distinct constitutions of the NL and AA discussed earlier, the New York Times reported that the Giants would cater

"for the wealthy class of the patrons of the game and for lady visitors," while the

Metropolitan club would "provide sport for the masses."328 Both clubs played at the Polo

Grounds in 1883, the field having been divided into opposing diamonds separated by a canvas fence. Initially, it was surmised that

When both clubs play in the same vicinity at the same time, it will tend to hurt the high-priced exponents of the national game. Base-ball men aver that this is an unwise plan on the part of the League nine to have the Association Club in so close proximity, and say that the former will feel the effects of their higher scale of • 329

prices.

The New York Clipper reported in August of 1883 that, when the Giants and Metropolitans played at the Polo Grounds on the same day, the Metropolitans' presence lessened "the receipts at the gate of the League ground materially."330 Though NL promoters were, on occasion, hesitant to play exhibition matches at the Polo Grounds when the Metropolitans were also playing there,331 the New York baseball public often proved willing to patronize both teams equally, as on August 26, 1885 when 3,000 fans took in a Metropolitans-Giants doubleheader at the Polo Grounds.332

327 New York Sun, reprinted in "Popularity of Base Ball," Sporting Life, April 22, 1883. 328 "Base Ball," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 28, 1883. . 329 "Base-Ball For Next Season," New York Times, January 8, 1883. 330 "Boston vs. New York," New York Clipper, "Scrap Book of Base Ball, 1879-1903, 1879- 1895." 331 "Preparations for the Coming Outdoor Season," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 24, 1884. 332 "Two Games Yesterday On the Polo Grounds," New York Times, August 27,1885.

75 It is not surprising, though, that the Giants and Metropolitans soon became opponents as they were both fighting for a share of the same population. As early as June of

1883, the Metropolitans seemed to be losing the battle as the rationale of the MEC running two clubs was questioned by the Brooklyn Daily Eagle who called the operation "a case of too much enterprise.333 President Day, vowing to keep the two-team setup for "as long as it pays,"334 realized quite early that dividing management and talent only lessened the strengths of both teams as contenders.33 When the Metropolitans captured the AA championship in

1884, while the Giants finished a mere fourth in the NL, Day was "puzzled and irritated" that fans would hesitate to support a winner. According to Hardy Jr., Day rationalized that

"If NY would not support American Association baseball, Day wanted to get his best men over to the Giants, who were making money."336 Day, Nemec says, was convinced that a winning team at twenty-five cents would never be as profitable as a winning team at fifty cents and so he began to treat the Mets "as a kind of afterthought," or farm team, transferring manager Mutrie, star pitcher Tim Keefe, and fan favourite Dude Esterbrook from the Metropolitans to the Giants.337 Such activity led the Brooklyn Daily Eagle to accuse the MEC of desiring "to monopolize the professional business in the metropolitan district."338

What New York baseball fans wanted was a team that was successful in the standings but also stylish and trendy enough to compliment the city's lavish image. The power of the NL in convincing spectators that its product was superior, it seems, was

333 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 10, 1883. 33-< Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 13, 1884. 335 "Base Ball," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 30, 1883. 336 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 62. 337 Nemec The Beer and Whiskey League, 68-69, 91-92. 338 "Representative Local Base Ball Teams for 1885 — Yesterday's Match," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 7, 1884.

76 palpable and overshadowed the AA's efforts. The National Police Gazette said at the outset of the 1883 season that the Giants were "the first representation that New York has ever had in the [NL] and the public is extremely anxious to see them stand up well in the race."339 The

Brooklyn Daily Eagle admitted in 1883 that "People desert the American teams to watch the

League games. It costs twenty-five cents more to see the League games, but they are so much more interesting and exciting that it is well worth the money.340 As discussed earlier, the NL's decision to cultivate a sober, pious image also contributed to the perceived respectability of its product. In 1884 Sporting Life quantified the Giants' ability to draw larger crowds despite the fact that their games cost twice as much as Metropolitans games, stating that "It is a characteristic of New Yorkers that they must have the best even if it comes high."341 This did not mean that New Yorkers were not willing to back the Metropolitans.

After all, prior to the creation of the Giants the Metropolitans had regularly tested the Polo

Grounds' capacity.342 But when New York City was suddenly represented in the NL, fans exhibited a preference for its product, convinced that a higher ticket price meant better ball and that better ball was worth paying more for. Hardy Jr. has said that "Almost overnight the Giants became an accepted and important part of the local scene."343 Conversely, the

Metropolitans were looked upon as unfashionable by the most ardent, and hip, baseball

344 supporters.

The appeal of baseball in terms of fashion and style was intensified by NL owners' realization that promoting a few skilled players over others gave their product an elevated

339 "Base Ball," National Police Gazette, April 21, 1883. 340 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 10, 1883. 341 Sporting Life, late May 1884, Nemec, The Beer and Whiskey League, 62. 342 "The Metropolitan Nine," Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilisation, August 5, 1882. 343 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 46. 344 Nemec, The Beer and Whiskey League, 65.

77 and elite stature.34 Seymour has called the baseball star that emerged in the 1880s a new type

of American folk hero.346 The Giants certainly capitalized on this. Many of the club's players

such as Buck Ewing, John Montgomery Ward, and "Smiling" Mickey Welch regularly

mingled with fans at Nick Engel's Home Plate Saloon. Giants players "had become

fashionable" with prominent men on the Stock Exchange, as well as with theatre stars.347 In

1886 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted of Giant followers that "The various members of the

nine are as well known to the men interested in base ball as half a dozen of the favorite

actors are to the theater going public."348 Mike Kelly said that children especially followed

the exploits of their favourite players, making them into "veritable gods." These children

would go home and tell their fathers who would, in turn, want to see them himself. The

Giants were "part of the new style in urban entertainment"350 that, by reflecting the NL's

image as the very best, and most attractive, brand of baseball, captured New Yorkers'

interest and, thus, made it difficult for the Metropolitans to secure a sizable portion of the

market.

The Metropolitans were finally sold by the MEC to Erastus Wiman for $25,000 in

December of 1885, thus ending the AA's argument that the club had existed only to serve

the purposes of the Giants.351 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle noted, after the sale, that "New

Yorkers take litde or no interest in the Metropolitan team, their whole attention being

centered in the representative of the [NL] race." " Aside from the main factor that New

345 Vincent, Mudville's Revenge, 155-156. 346 Seymour, Baseball, 325. 347 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 46, 64. 348 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 23, 1886. 349 Mike Kelly, "Play Ball:" Stories From the Diamond Field and Other Historical Writings About the 19lh Century Hall of FamerQedetson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2006), 73. 350 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 59. 351 "A Base Ball Tempest in a Teapot,'" Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 20, 1885. 352 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 23, 1886.

78 Yorkers wanted to pay fifty cents to see Giants games, the Metropolitans' constant moving from park to park, in part due to Day's unbalanced management, contributed to the club's demise. Attendance figures for the five year span in which the two clubs both occupied New

York City show that the Metropolitans paled in popularity to the Giants. The Metropolitans never ranked higher than sixth in AA attendance (drawing 68,000 in 1884 when they won the AA pennant) and they never outdrew the Giants. The Giants drew 75,000 to the

Metropolitans 50,000 in 1883 when they shared the Polo Grounds, 105,000 to 68,000 in

1884 when the Metropolitans played two thirds of their games at Metropolitan Park, and more than doubled the Metropolitans every year from 1885 to 1887, culminating in 1887 when the Giants drew 270,945 to the Metropolitans 105,000 which came out to watch the club at the St. George Grounds on Staten Island.353

Though two professional baseball teams could not, ultimately, both compete in New

York City in the 1880s, their joint presence was the most intense period fhat New York baseball fans had ever experienced. The effect was the outing of the spectator and the emergence of baseball as a visibly viable form of commercial entertainment. This chapter has considered the acceptance of spectatorship as a physical act, the marketing strategies of NL and AA promoters, as well as baseball's place in the larger entertainment industry. Crucially, this chapter has discussed the life and work patterns of New Yorkers, as well as city space, transportation, and city pride, to analyze how the public made baseball a part of their lives. It can be seen that, in the 1880s, New York's baseball-enthusing public, by negotiating their own personal agency against social and economic factors, had become a distinct class of

353 As with professional baseball's rules, the schedule was also subject to constant revision. In 1883 98 games was the average for both the NL and AA. By 1887, the Metropolitans' final season, NL clubs were playing upwards of 127 games per season while AA clubs played a minimum of 133, the Louisville Colonels leading the way with 139. Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major League Baseball, 254-429.

79 consumers. The final chapter of this thesis will attempt to supply an intimate portrait of what exactly this baseball spectator looked like and how it behaved.

80 CHAPTER THREE - GRANDSTANDS AND KNOTHOLES: A PORTRAIT OF THE EMERGENT

SPECTATOR

The cohabitation of the professional Metropolitans and Giants in New York City between 1883 and 1887, combined with amateur and semi-professional baseball at Prospect

Park and elsewhere, not to mention Brooklyn's AA club, presented an abundance of baseball for patrons to choose from. Harper's Weekly discussed the pleasant dilemma in 1886, stating that the spectator was "daily torn by conflicting desires, one drawing him to the League game in Harlem [at the Polo Grounds] and another to the Association game twelve miles away [at the St. George Grounds on Staten Island]."354 This wealth of entertainment created a new and exciting commercial environment that ran in direct contrast to the years before the rise of the Metropolitans in the autumn of 1880. More than ever before, New York's baseball fans were at liberty to choose what aspects of baseball they would consume and which they would not. Pivotally, because they had shown such devoted interest in the sport, spectators could be increasingly assured that professional baseball's promoters would supply these attractions for them.

If more numerous than ever before, the baseball spectator in the 1880s, from today's standpoint, is still a slippery and elusive social group. However, the increase in patronage during the decade did reveal a sharper picture of the baseball spectator's identity than was possible in the 1860s and 1870s. By expanding and describing the often confounding notion of the spectator's realm, this chapter attempts to illustrate the motivations, desires, and characteristics that marked New York's baseball-going public as a social group. A consideration of professional baseball's attractions, both primary and peripheral, will be discussed, as will fans' different degrees of engagement with the game. Crucially, crowd

354 "Baseball on Staten Island," Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilisation, May 15, 1886.

81 composition will be explored as will that faction of the baseball public that consumed the game "second-hand" away from the ballpark.

Belonging is an overarching theme of New York spectators' relationship with baseball. As mentioned earlier, it was precisely because baseball was made distinct from

English and European sporting traditions that the game gained widespread popularity as a uniquely American pastime. The 1880s saw a great influx of second-generation immigrant players. As a result, many immigrants attended baseball games for the purpose of assimilation. Irish and German-Americans especially flocked to the ballpark to watch their ethnic counterparts who "simultaneously represented] memories of the old country and adaptation to the new."3 Hardy Jr. has said, in regards to assimilation, that all new immigrants "made the same psychological journey, willingly or reluctantly."356 This search for American identity could be seen at the Polo Grounds where Irish fans' strong interest in baseball resulted in a frequented section of seats commonly known as "Burkeville."

However, this idea of assimilation can be extended. In a sense, all facets of the ballpark experience communicated a desire on behalf of New York baseball fans to reali2e themselves as members of a unique group, namely as baseball enthusiasts. Rader has said that baseball (though admittedly not always successful) was, aside from being an assimilative outlet for new immigrants, "a vehicle for promoting social integration, for building social solidarity through support of local teams."358 The themes discussed in this chapter stress both new and longtime New Yorkers' interests in shared experience. Professional baseball's promoters, who recognized New Yorkers' wishes to frequent the sport and were eager to

355 Guttmann, Sports Spectators, 112. 356 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 25. 357 John Brush,"The Evolution of the Baseball Grandstand: A New Era in the Development of the National Game," Baseball Magazine, April 1912. 358 Rader, American Sports, 154.

82 maintain their patronage, increasingly accommodated spectators by offering a wide array of attractions. Once at the ballpark New Yorkers proved willing to engage collectively with each other and the game on the field. In this way, New Yorkers of different backgrounds asserted a need for belonging. They dedicated themselves to the baseball experience because they wished to benefit from the unique thrills and amenities afforded to the baseball spectator.

Generally speaking, it seems obvious what it was baseball enthusiasts wanted from the sport. As it had been since the 1860s and earlier, baseball's chief attraction was the unpredictable and exciting action on the field. Sound defense, clutch hitting, and nifty base- running were the most prized on-field displays. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper likened the excitement at the Polo Grounds to that "aroused by the unfolding of a stage drama of masterly construction."359 Mike Kelly ranked excitement garnered from the action on the field as the main sense of baseball's appeal but spectators and the press argued over what constituted the best kind of action. Spurning offense, the Brooklyn Daily Eagle complained in

1886 that "It is astonishing how the 'groundlings' [presumably the more boisterous group of fans, quantified by the press as the betting men and the working class] in an audience are tickled with home runs, no matter how made." If some preferred heavy hitting and others fine defense, all spectators needed the professional game to be played expertly. As Kelly observed first hand in Chicago and Boston, baseball fans were extremely fickle. The

National Police Gazette declared that "The public, as a rule, will not support a losing club."

The New York Clipper agreed, noting of Metropolitan home games in 1883 that attendance

359 "Baseball at the New York Polo Grounds," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, June 23, 1889. 360 Kelly, '"Play Ball,'" quoted in Sullivan, Extra Innings, 154. 361 "Triumphs and Trials of the Base Ball Player," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 6, 1886. 3(52 Kelly, "Play Ball,"22. 363 "Ready For Business," National Police Gazette, April 14, 1888.

83 increased "almost in exact ratio to the success of the team in winning matches." Obviously the press understood fans' decisions to stay away from a losing club.

As discussed in Chapter One, the competitive nature of baseball was a reason baseball cultivated and managed to maintain so much favor with the American public. 5

However, such spirit did not preordain flawless play. Spectators in the 1880s, Hardy Jr. has proclaimed, continuously sought perfection in on-field displays of action. The inability to comprehend mistakes and losing was a sign of spectators' inexperience in the "realm of krankdom" and, to explain it, they searched for "reasons within a mystery."366 If fans could not always realize satisfaction through the on-field efforts of the players, they could take comfort in the fact that satisfaction was certainly attainable in other, more peripheral ways.

Hardy Jr. has bemoaned that "simple answers are impossibly reductionist" in explaining spectators' attraction to the ballpark.367 It was, more than anything, the sheer breadth of attractions baseball offered spectators that provided for its staying power. Levine, in discussion of mid-nineteenth century Americans' appropriation of opera, has said that the form was not viewed as inalterable. The same might be said of professional baseball which offered various types of attractions and, subsequently, personal freedom and the potential for patrons to fulfill desires and realize a certain quality of life peculiar to Americans.369

Spectators' sense of freedom was realized through a variety of attractions and was, in part, created by the market. Baseball in the 1880s, both professional and non-professional, was more a public spectacle than ever before. This spectacle, as with theatre and other

364 "Metropolitan vs. Baltimore," National Police Gazette, Aug 11 1883, 31, 21, 333. 365 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 155. 366 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 68-69. ^ Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 177. ,368 Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow, 95. 365 Barth, City People, 179.

84 entertainments, was, Seymour contends, what most were mainly interested in.3 ° AA entrepreneurs such as St. Louis' Chris Von der Ahe attempted to appeal to spectators, especially the working class, in a manner that treated them not unlike "strollers down a carnival fairway." Von der Ahe, who slotted carousels, carnival rides, and boxing before and after games, and Metropolitans' owner Erastus Wiman's "Wild West Show-style" attractions, catered to the variety of tastes.3 ' Promoters of professional baseball, as in boxing beginning with the sensationalist reign of Jim Sullivan in the late-nineteenth century, borrowed heavily from the world of show business spectacle to attract the widest possible audience.3 2

Wiman's understanding that not all his patrons would be equally vested in the action prompted him to install a dining room that overlooked the St. George Grounds so that people could eat comfortably while the game was played.373 Such options, for patrons who wished it, effectively subordinated, at least to an extent, the primary attraction of the game itself in favor of other amenities. An 1886 promotional picture of the St. George Grounds illustrates Wiman's intentions. The print, which shows a game of baseball in progress, draws almost equal attention to such spectacles as fairlyland concerts, fireworks, and the restaurant, the full experience being described as "A Breath of Fresh Air For 10 Cents" (see Appendix, figure A).

Often the diversity of spectator interest drifted into the absurd as the baseball public proved willing to watch just about anything. Recalling the "muffin" games of the 1850s and

1860s, comic displays such as fat men's matches, which purposefully contrasted with

3™ Seymour, Baseball, 189. 371 Dewey, The 10»> Man, 62-6. 372 Gorn, The Manly Art, 221. 373 "Hard By the Ferry," New York Times, March 14, 1886. 374 Muffin games were matches played between the less skilled members of amateur clubs such as the Knickerbockers and Stars. Those who came to watch expected to witness an excessive amount of errors and general poor play. For more information, see William J. Ryczek, When johnny

85 skillful play, carried on the tradition for fans. For instance, one 1886 charity match between two New York amateur nines captured much spectator amusement due to the penchant of the men, when on base, "to walk off to the corner where the beer was placed, carrying the base with them."3 6 Fans also turned out to the Polo Grounds to watch an amusing game between comedians and dramatic performers377 and berated and laughed through all girl

"burlesque" matches.3 8 Baseball even drew healthy audiences for games on ice,379 which often featured the Metropolitans and Charlie Byrne's AA Brooklyn club. Unfortunately,

1,500 New Yorkers also proved willing to watch the Metropolitans play the Orions, an

African-American club. The New York Times, echoing the derisive attitude of those in attendance, wrote that "The colored men were a failure as ball-players, and presented a mirth-provoking spectacle, which was heartily enjoyed by the spectators."380 By patronizing such spectacles, New Yorkers exhibited a will to derive pleasure from baseball that subverted the need to witness skillful play.

Though the on-field action was the central attraction, it was not the only form of amusement spectators experienced once inside the ballpark. For some, going to baseball games was "an opportunity to swill beer and act silly."381 According to the Brooklyn Daily

Eagle the "annoyances and evils" born from beer-drinking were often on display at the Polo

Grounds.382 Concessions, a presence at ballparks since the 1860s, took off in the 1880s

Came Sliding Home: The Post-Civil War Baseball Boom, 1865-1870 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1998). 375 "Fat Men's Match," Spirit of the Times, September 6, 1873. 376 "Caught on the Fly," The Sporting News, June 14, 1886. 377 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 23, 1886. 378 "A Base-Ball Burlesque," New York Times, September 23, 1883. 379 "Base-Ball Playing on Skates," New York Times, January 26, 1883. 380 "An Amusing Base-Ball Game," New York Times, July 21, 1882. 381 Vincent, Mudville's Revenge, 162. 382 "Base Ball: The Professional Associations," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, February 28, 1882.

86 under the entrepreneurial spirit of Harry M. Stevens in St. Louis.38 Selling baseball as a product that delivered more than merely baseball was an important consideration of the promoters of both the AA and the NL. Wiman took this to extremes as visitors to his St.

George Grounds, as mentioned, could also access a casino, tennis courts, an ice cream saloon, and a picnic area.

Despite claims that the respectable NL avoided spectacle, the league did feature accoutrements that spectators could enjoy once drawn to the ballpark. The first game of the

Giants' 1886 season at the Polo Grounds featured Cappra's Seventh Regiment Band which, for two hours, played popular songs for those who arrived early.385 The same band had entertained the Giants crowd three years earlier, their music being "decidedly an attractive accessory to the afternoon's entertainment." Evidendy, such amusement gready affected the composure of the spectator. At one Giants game in early 1885, lively music from inside the Polo Grounds made those waiting in outside ticket lines anxious and impatient. The New

York Times observed that, in a few cases, people were "so desperate that they actually purchased admission tickets from speculators [that is, scalpers], preferring to pay a premium rather than sacrifice a chance of getting a good seat."

For many baseball patrons, gambling was a crucial and relished adjunct to the baseball experience. Despite overly optimistic claims as John Montgomery Ward's that baseball was "sufficiendy interesting in itself not to require the stimulus of betting," gambling was prevalent at both professional and amateur ballparks. The press downplayed

383 Stein, A History of the Baseball Fan, 155. 384 Schaefer, "The Wiman Trophy and the Man For Whom It Was Named," 51. 385 New York World, "Baseball 1886," BL 170.59, Baseball Hall of Fame Archive. 386 "New York vs. Boston: A Gala Day at the Polo Grounds," New York Clipper, May 5, 1883. 3<" "Winning the First Game," New York Times, April 30, 1886. 388 Ward, "Our National Game."

87 gambling by continually preaching that it was Americans' "proclivity to speculate on almost anything," and not the nature of baseball itself, that accounted for its presence at parks.389

This proclivity was certainly alive at the Polo Grounds. Reflecting the large desire of baseball spectators to chance their luck, money was not the only thing that was gambled. Frank

Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper observed "the fair and eager partisans who freely wagered gloves and bonbons upon their respective favorites."390 The game itself, though a great attraction, was, for a great many, enhanced by the element of betting.

' Interest in gambling saw the formation of betting communities within the ballpark.

In New York as well as Boston, gamblers congregated behind third base with absolute impunity.391 These "growlers,"392 who sat in the grandstand, often behaved in such a way that, in 1883, the New York Clipper complained that if this "class of offenders" was not dealt with the Polo Grounds and other fields "would soon be at the mercy of the roughest class of the community, who revel in just such scenes as this, and rush to every place where there is a chance of such excitement and disturbance occurring."393 Ironically, these betting men, or

"class of offenders," who could afford the grandstand, were the patrons appealed to by the

NL. As will be discussed later, the commotion caused by these fans, which included middle class men and women as well as city politicians and celebrities, was typically attributed to lower class patrons by the press, thus seriously confounding the determination of crowd composition.

389 Adelman, A Sporting Time, 162. 390"Baseball at the Polo Grounds," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, May 23, 1885. 391 Stein, A History of the Baseball Fan, 146. 392 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, June 1, 1884. 393 "A Disorderly Scene," New York Clipper, August 11, 1883.

88 Aside from the betting class, there were gamblers present, customarily, Fabian has noted, on the edge of crowds,394 solely to make a profit from the spectators. Their motives were not tied to the action on the field, but to lessening "the bank accounts of the gullible public." The New York Times described the types of gamblers:

The young man with the 'sweat' board was there; the young man who tells you to put your money 'below, above, or on seven' was on hand; the young man with three innocent-looking shells was in attendance, and, in fact, the ground appeared to be a Mecca for the unemployed 'fakirs' of New-York and vicinity. Then there were the light-fingered gendemen who rushed up against a person and made him keep his hands in his pocket, not that the weather warranted that act, but because if he didn't he probably would not be able to tell the time of day or pay his fare across the ferry.395

Beyond gambling, Voigt has contended that, in the 1880s, "promoters found the elusive formula that solidified the grip of the game on the nation." This formula, he claims, hinged on "ritualized hostility" towards the umpire396 known as "kicking" which operated as an outlet for spectator ill-feeling. The owners allowed such behaviour to persist because they realized that the persistent possibility of a brawl would dually draw spectators to the park and enhance their loyalty to the home team.397 Mike Kelly supported this claim of kicking, writing in his 1888 biography that

You won't find the ordinary man going out to a baseball field when it's 80 degrees in the shade to see two clubs play ball for a couple of hours, without a word being said on either side. The people who go to ball games want good playing with just enough kicking to make things interesting thrown in.

Not surprisingly, kicking was a favourite activity of the betting men, as well as of the

"political dead heads who throng the Polo Grounds on match days and do most of the

394 Fabian, Card Sharps, Dream Books, and Bucket Shops, 41. 395 "A Lively Game of Ball," New York Times, September 5, 1887. 396 David Q. Voigt, American Baseball Vol.II: From the Commissioners to Continental Expansion (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), ix-xi. 397 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 42. 398 Kelly, '"Play Ball,'" quoted in Sullivan, Extra Innings, 154.

89 offensive heeler work," or cheering. Implying that these men came only for the chance to voice their spirits, or perhaps even to direct play in the interest of their bets, the Brooklyn

Daily Eagle estimated that nine out of ten cases of "hissing" came from the betting men in the grandstand.400 A similar estimate was given by NL umpire Joe J. Ellick who said that nine out of ten fans were "eagerly anxious that the home team should win," many of whom made the point of wishing him "an unpleasant time in the next world."

Audience members' twin urges to gamble and kick were inherendy related to their desire to witness and contribute to general rowdiness. In 1884 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle observed that the metropolis' rising interest in "brutal sports," such as boxing and cock- fighting, presented itself at the ball park where a "fight between two drunken loafers will draw off the attention of a whole grand stand full of people from the most exciting incident of a game in progress, and that just to see a couple of brutes pound each other." The publication repeated the sentiment in 1886, observing that:

No matter how deeply interesting the situation of an existing contest on the diamond may be during a match, only let 'a fight' be gotten up among any of the roughs present, and how the free stand gang [those not in the grandstand] will be roused into sympathetic activity at the sight of a chance to see blood flow in the fight. How tame the most exciting incident of the contest becomes beside the attraction of a row between a couple of roughs.

The atmosphere created by the enclosed field, aroused onlookers, and intense on-field competition perhaps served to make such violence more acceptable than it would have been in other circles of society. Gorn has noted that boxing and other sports "shaped violence

399 "Base Ball — The Providence Team Win the United States Championship — Another Defeat for the Metropolitans," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 25, 1884. 400 "What is the Matter With the Brooklyn Team?" Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 17, 1885. 401 Joe J. Ellick, "Experience of a Baseball Umpire," Uppincott's Monthly Magazine, October 1886. «2 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, August 31, 1884. 403 "A Review of the Later Season of Outdoor Sports," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, September 19, 1886.

90 into an art, pared away its maddening arbitrariness, and thereby gave it order and meaning."404 That violence and unruly behaviour existed not only on the field but in the stands as well can be seen as an application of the audience's active presence. By engaging in violence or watching a fight spectators increased the extent to which they were a part of the action.

Baseball was also, for many, of medicinal value. The National Police Gazette claimed that the "very sight of a hotly contested, skillfully played game of baseball is a tonic for the nervous system."405 Morse, in his early history of the game, 1888's Sphere and Ash: History of

Base Ball, repeated this belief, stating that, for the business or professional man, baseball was a "medicine to him and a tonic."406 The New York Times described how fans at the Polo

Grounds would "surrender to the spell of baseball" and simply enjoy "America's favorite game" as it unfolded before them.407 Clearly not all of baseball's peripheral attractions were questionable in nature but what they all had in common, perhaps, was the function of relieving frustration and satisfying desires.

Convinced that the array of attractions could satisfy their individual and collective urges, New Yorkers saw fit to return to the Polo Grounds and elsewhere. Their desire to do so spoke to the ritualistic aspect that baseball offered and, perhaps, even depended on. The ballpark, Barth has posited, "preserved the appearance of freedom."408 Groups of strangers, pulled by the ballpark's magnetism, "succumbed to a startlingly intense sensation of community created by the shared experience of watching a baseball game."409 As we've seen, this feeling of shared community could form over aspects beyond the game itself such as

*•* Gorn, The Manly Art, 144. 405 "The Season for Outdoor Sports," National Police Gazette, May 22, 1886. 406 Morse, Sphere and Ash, 4. 407 New York Times, May 30, 1888. 408 Barth, City People, 171. 409 Ibid, 191.

91 gambling and rowdiness. More fittingly then, Kimmel has said that ritualized spectating bound the fan "to a place of both comfort and cruelty"410 which offered a shared experience for those who chose to make baseball a necessary part of their lives.

Crucial to the ritual of the ballpark was this active role that the spectator played in the proceedings. NL magnate and Chicago club owner Albert Spalding saw that as the public became more familiar with baseball they became "participators in the game itself'411 through scoring, cheering, and even kicking. Though promoters attempted to control spectators, ultimately they allowed fans to react to baseball in ways that were empowering. Dewey has surmised that the most pivotal thing baseball accomplished as a form of commercial entertainment was the encouragement of "purely imaginative and emotional participation."412

That baseball spectators comprised an active audience is crucial considering that, as Levine has alluded, other entertainments in the late-nineteenth century, such as the orchestra, had, due to promoters' elite treatment of the form, began to create tame, passive audiences.413

Truly a ballpark society had formed that seemed to operate on its own will and often forced promoters to compromise their pretenses of legitimacy.

So what did this ballpark society look like and how did it act? Ballpark and crowd images of the period suggest that watching baseball was an idyllic experience. This may be most obviously seen in an 1886 painting of the St. George Grounds discussed earlier.

Wiman's advertisement depicts a beautiful sunny day and stresses the setting's tranquility. A small group of spectators, comprised mostly of men but at least one woman and child, watch the game as others stroll leisurely along the promenade bordering the outfield (see

Appendix, figure A). An 1887 drawing of a scene from the Polo Grounds evokes a different

410 Kimmel, "Baseball and the Reconstruction of American Masculinity, 1880-1920," 61. 411 Spalding, America's National Game, 13. 4,2 Dewey, The 10th Man, ix-x. 413 Levine, Highbrow/Lowbrow, 179-195.

92 kind of idyllic experience, showing an immense swell of spectators. The image shows young men and women, wealthy men and women upon carriages, as well as two young girls accompanied by their parents. Though it is not overly clear, differences in dress suggest the presence of patrons from both the higher and lower classes (see Appendix, figure B).

As mentioned earlier, crowd composition for nineteenth century baseball matches has been both gready contested and inexplicably generalized by historians. Such images as those mentioned above, though in part fanciful reconstructions, contrast with and compliment newspaper and sporting journal accounts of ballpark scenes. Considered together, print and written accounts can offer a clearer, more realistic idea of what the baseball experience was like for spectators and just who these spectators were. Riess, though noting the press' inclination to embellish "the extent to which bootblacks rubbed shoulders with judges and bakers with merchants," admits that baseball attracted a broader audience than other spectator sports. Rader, though attributing the majority presence to the larger sporting fraternity, show people, and others uninfluenced by Victorian attitudes of decency, also meets the argument halfway, stating that baseball attracted "motley crowds."41

Indeed, proving the presence of lower class patrons is a difficult one. However,

Guttmann has stated convincingly that "It was, of course, precisely because the urban elite was not found in the grandstands, much less in the bleachers, that Spalding and his fellow promoters struggled through the 1880s and 1890s to improve the public image of their investment."416 The NL, Guttmann seems to suggest, would not have needed to undertake its mission to secure "respectable" patronage if the working class it rallied against were not present in the first place.

414 Riess, City Games, 223. 415 Rader, American Sports, 61. 416 Guttmann, Sports Spectators, 112.

93 Out of all the confusing and often contradictory sketches of baseball crowd

compositions in the 1880s, perhaps not surprisingly famous fans have been able to stand out

as the "chief exception to the anonymity of early baseball fans."41 New York was overcome

with celebrity spectators in the 1880s. For instance, the press made much of the frequent

visits by famous New York City stage men like DeWolf Hopper, Francis Wilson, and

Marshall P. Wilder to the Polo Grounds, and the humorous commentary they supplied for

the others in attendance.418

Perhaps speaking to the baseball spectator's often confounding identity and nature,

Harper's Weekly wrote in 1888 that "no appropriate term of designation has yet been

invented" that adequately describes the fan. This observation might speak to the fact that

the spectator, as a permanent fixture of American commercial society, was still a relatively

new social group. However, by the 1880s, due to a discernable increase in patronage, the

identities of spectators mere more discernable than ever before. As mentioned earlier, Lawson wrote in 1888 that the spectator, who "came into existence along back in the early seventies"

and "came to stay," had reached a "high state of cultivation,"420 a comment that distinguishes

against the version of the fan that came before. Thorn, noting Morse's 1888 use of the word

"primitive" to describe the game in the 1860s, contends that it attested to how quickly

baseball had evolved and how, by 1888, a sense of nostalgia for the game's antiquity had

already arisen.421 Certainly the spectators that patronized New York baseball in the 1880s were, due to their acceptance of the sport as legitimate, manly entertainment, decidedly more

self-assured of their position as the consumers of the product.

417 Dewey, The 10"' Man, 83. 4,8 "Base-Ball Cranks," Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, August 24, 1893. 419 "The Base-Ball Season," Harper's Weekly: A journal of Civilisation, October 20, 1888. 420 Lawson, The Krank, 3. 421 Thorn, "Introduction," in Sphere and Ash, v.

94 Contemporary accounts of crowd composition support both arguments given by historians, simultaneously applauding the "democracy," of diversity, of crowds as well as attempting to refute it. In 1886 Harper's Weekly declared that "The fascination of the game has seized upon the American people, irrespective of age, sex, or other conditions." " In

1888 Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper wrote that, at the Polo Grounds, "All creeds, castes and professions are telescoped together on the grand-stand, and representatives of the exclusive four hundred are separated from those of the unselect millions only by a fragile rail."423 An 1888 sketch from the same publication depicts an interesting group of spectators in the farthest reaches of the outfield, including men and ladies on top of carriages, young men galloping on horseback, a woman on horseback, and gentlemen simply mulling about in circles irrespective of the action on the field (see Appendix, figure C). The 1887 print of the

Polo Grounds mentioned earlier depicts a similar scene (see Appendix, figure B). John

Montgomery Ward repeated that baseball

pervades all classes of the community. It is just as popular in Wall Street as it is in Washington Park. Bankers and brokers, merchants and ministers, lawyers and literateurs, Bohemians of every class, clerks, merchants and day-laborers, you can see them any day at the Polo Ground, mixed up together in the most democratic fashion and cheering, as only Americans can, their favourites on to victory.

Such attestations speak to the romantic allure of baseball as a game that exuded American values of democratic access to leisure, cultural egalitarianism and spirit but, by being general rather than specific, accomplish litde in determining a decisive idea of what crowds actually looked like.

Many accounts from the 1880s eschewed the democracy of crowd composition, focusing instead on certain factions of people. In 1886 Outing wrote that the Giants drew to

422 "The Base-Ball Season," Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilisation, May 1886. . 423 "The Baseball Furor," Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, September 1, 1888. 424 Ward, "Our National Game."

95 the Polo Grounds "the best class of the public,"425 as did the Brooklyn Daily Eagle426 Claims that baseball drew the very best members of society, which themselves were undoubtedly meant to attract middle class families to the games, tend to skew class representation by merely communicating that such wealthier people were in the crowd. They do not communicate the absence of less affluent members of society which, of course, was most certainly not the case.

The composition of baseball crowds has been troubled by assumptions regarding the grandstand, where middle class patrons supposedly sat, and the bleachers, where lower class patrons were said to reside. Nasaw has said that the relative unattractiveness of bleacher seating, which offered an uncomfortable and poor vantage point, combined with afternoon game times, "guaranteed that the bulk of the spectators would be professionals, white-collar workers, and self-employed businessmen." But this opinion does not account for the existence of the bleachers in the first place which were built to accommodate patrons who could not, or did not choose to, pay a minimum of fifty cents for a seat at an NL ballpark or a minimum of twenty-five cents at an AA ballpark. In his study of AA crowds in

Cincinnati from 1886 to 1888, Sullivan concluded that crowds were not demographically- balanced but "largely homogenous white-collar crowds." " But what Sullivan's important study does not consider is that, on days they could make it, such as Sunday, lower class people may have been tempted to spend more for a seat in the grandstand, even if they shouldn't have. The Century Magazine noted in 1885 that "Even the poorest people, those who obtain

«s Outing, June 1886. 426 "Remarkable Popularity of the National Game," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 12, 1886. 427 Nasaw, Going Out, 99. 428 An 1888 photograph of "the bleaching boards" in the pages of The Cosmopolitan (October 1888) seems to show mainly men and young boys although, in the case of those adorning umbrellas, women may be present as well. See Appendix, figure D. 429 Sullivan, "Faces in the Crowd," 365.

96 but a meager subsistence by their labor, and who often appeal to their neighbors for charity, spend a good part of their scanty earnings for amusements."430 Guttmann has also admitted that life's necessities sometimes took a back seat to the purchase of baseball tickets.

Overall, it is completely accurate to infer that, though they did not do so with the same frequency, people from all walks of life attended baseball matches. Fans were not absolutely relegated to certain seating sections of the ballpark. Consider Lawson's definition of the "bleaching boards" as "The resting place for the Kranks who are not acquainted with the doorkeeper of the grand-stand." The inference here is that some spectators either bribed the doorkeeper to gain admittance to the grandstand or were simply allowed to enter without paying. Conversely, there were certainly times when men who could afford the grandstand had no choice but to sit in the bleachers. Life commented that unless the Polo

Grounds patron

has arrived an hour or so before the game is called he will find all the seats in the grand-stand taken, and he will go and sit out in the hot sun upon a rough board and watch from ten to fifteen thousand Americans in their shirt sleeves howl and shriek and bellow and yell as the game proceeds.433

An 1886 account, probably from the New York World, of a game at the Polo Grounds mentioned how "The grandstand seats were all sold soon after the doors were opened, and the spectators were forced to take to the field [in the vast standing room area that bordered the outfield] and stand in the sun."434 The point here is that spectators were not necessarily relegated, based on their class, to either the grandstand or the bleachers. To associate ballpark seating stricdy by such an assumption is to create an overly simplified image that

430 "Christianity and Popular Amusements," The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine, January 1885. 431 Guttmann, Sports Spectators, 129. 432 Lawson, The Krank, 51. 433 Life, June 21, 1888. 434 "Winning Even Honors," "Baseball 1886."

97 does not allow for the reality that different classes of people, as will be further seen, often sat amongst each other by choice or circumstance.

Extending from the issue of crowd composition is that of crowd behavior. For a good many spectators, Spalding observed firsthand, the antics of fellow patrons proved as interesting and entertaining as the game itself.435 Riess has contended that baseball did not attract the same kind of rowdy spectators that boxing and horseracing did.436 This claim seems problematic as the bleachers were characterized by "'cuss' words, cheers and hisses,"437 although, as discussed earlier, due to the presence of the betting men, it doesn't appear that the grandstand was any different. Perhaps Guttmann is right in his conviction that, though nineteenth century crowds knew how they were supposed to behave, it doesn't mean that they did.438

The existence of rowdy behaviour existed, in part, because the baseball park acted as a substitute for saloons by offering an "alternative to the 'mixed' entertainments that were proliferating on the streets of the city."439 Kimmel has suggested that, because issues of class, race, and gender had eroded American society's sense of personal and individual power, masculinity was "reconstituted," both in the crowd and on the field.440 In a ritualistic sense influenced by late-nineteenth century devotions to manliness, "Proper fan conduct included vigorous rooting and occasional outbreaks of limited violence in loyal support of the

'boys'"441 that is, the home team.442 Sitting in the grandstand or bleachers meant engaging in

435 Spalding, America's National Game, 13. 436 Riess, City Games, 225. 437 "Reporting Baseball Games," New York Times, July 3, 1887. 438 Guttmann, Sports Spectators, 89, 439 Nasaw, Going Out, 101. 440 Kimmel, "Baseball and the Reconstruction of American Masculinity, 1880-1920," 60. 441 Hardy Jr., The New York Giants Base Ball Club, 42. 442 As Gorn has observed, manliness meant different things to different classes as well as at different times during the nineteenth century. For working men, manliness was defined by valor,

98 an accepted form of behaviour that all fans, whether male or female, middle or lower class, helped contribute to.

The presence of women at baseball games was credited in newspapers for leveling out "what was otherwise a manly domain."443 The Brooklyn Daily Eagle contrasted crowd behaviour in 1884, writing that, when women were absent from the grandstand, "profanity, ill-feeling, partisan prejudice and other characteristics of 'stag' gatherings are conspicuous features" while, when ladies were present, men's "evil passions" were temporarily cured.444

But this doesn't seem to have always been the case as often women were harassed by male spectators.445 Though the pleas of women were said to have the effect of "inspiring the home-team to extra exertions,"446 often women at the Polo Grounds participated openly in raucous shouting, cheered along with everyone else, arid voiced their displeasure just as equally.447 Women sometimes came in groups without the presence of male companions448 and were said to take as vested an interest in the proceedings as male spectators which suggests they came ready to contribute to the crowd dynamic. And often they triggered, rather than soothed, ill-feeling, such as when their oversize hats blocked the view of male fans.450 A sketch of the St. George Grounds clearly shows the presence of women as well as the different ways in which they interacted with the game. Though one female fan is shown

strength, and prowess while, for the upper class, manliness meant self-possession, maturity, and forthrightness. Gorn, The Manly Art, 252. 443 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 38-39. 444 "The Presence of Ladies at Base Ball Matches," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, July 6 1884. 445 Dewey, The 10th Man, 98. Kirsch has said that, despite promoters' insistence that women were a sign of the sport's respectability, "it is doubtful that the women really inspired the players or restrained the hecklers, gamblers, and rowdies." Kirsch, The Creation of American Team Sports, 191. 446 "New York vs Cleveland," New York Clipper, June 23, 1883. 447 "Winning the First Game," New York Times, April 30, 1886. At a near-riot at Brooklyn's Washington Park in 1886 "even the ladies wanted to transform [the umpire] into a bald-headed man at once." "The Giants at Home," The Sporting News, May 31, 1886. 448 "McGlynn and Baseball," New York Times, August 21, 1887; Dewey, The 10"' Man, 89-90. +» "Winning the First Game," New York Times, April 30, 1886. 450 E.H. Simmons, Sporting Life, May 28, 1909.

99 talking with a man, the rest of the women are invested in the game either sitting on the edge of their seat, standing to gain a better view, or showing visible reaction to the action on the

field (see Appendix, figure E).

Of course, not all spectators enjoyed loud and boisterous behaviour. One fan, experiencing his first game at the Polo Grounds, found the yelling and cheering of those around him so off-putting that "with a sigh, he drew a paper from his pocket, and sought to regain his mental equilibrium by perusing the news of the day." The fan enjoyed the game but did "riot propose to be surrounded by cranks" during his next visit.

This fan's attestation illustrates how spectators consumed baseball with varying levels of engagement. Though social anthropologist Anthony S. Cohen has suggested that "Much of what makes someone a. fan is what is located within her or his personal identity, memories, thoughts and social interactions,"452 Goldstein has observed that baseball could often engage different parts of the same person, as well as distinct segments of a large population.

Goldstein contends that, though "roughs" might have enjoyed disorder and violence and

"respectables" skill and nerve, "Those differential appeals also spoke to conflicting tendencies within every member of the baseball fraternity, no matter how 'respectable,' no matter how 'low.'"453 Cullen has echoed Goldstein's claim, believing that "the most resonant popular culture becomes emblematic of the society as a whole, connecting disparate and even hostile constituencies."454 Thus, though people might have approached baseball with a certain degree of intensity and interest, their initial level of engagement could be reshaped

451 "Will Go It Alone Next Time," New York Times, August 2, 1888. 452 Anthony S. Cohen, The Symbolic Construction of Community (Chichester: Ellis Horwood, 1985), 98. 453 Goldstein, Playing For Keeps, 79-80. 454 Cullen, The Art of Democracy, 15.

100 and expanded, or conversely contracted, as the attractions offered by baseball were more universally experienced by spectators than limited to a select few.

It was easiest to spot the most dedicated type of spectator. In his pointed, almost absurd 1888 work The Krank: His Language and What It Means, Lawson described the most ardent follower of the game. The krank's peculiarities, Lawson says, are numerous and unique enough that he "cannot be mistaken for any other animal." The spectator always bets on the home club, yammers to others on the car about all aspects of the game, and causes quite a loud scene at the ticket window because, he is convinced, those in line who "are not as anxious to see the game" as he get a kick out of his boisterous, comical actions.

The most dedicated baseball fan was, due to the press' desire to cultivate an audience that would in turn read the sporting pages, subject to rampant caricature and stereotype. The

Brooklyn Daily Eagle exhibited the level of absurdity such efforts could reach, writing that:

There must be something attractive about base ball to fat men. The number of men who top 200 pounds and who are constant attendants at the Polo Grounds is certainly very large. Perhaps it is the activity of the game which amuses the fat men...He loves to sit comfortably in his seat and see lithe and sinewy men dash rapidly over the ground, and he appreciates any athletic achievement with a degree of delight in proportion to his own bulk...The fat man's contingent at the Polo Grounds forms the most critical element on the grand stand.456

Jim Mutrie, transferred as manager of the Metropolitans to the Giants in 1885, communicated the level of frenzy that existed in the baseball fraternity:

Every mail brings me letters asking information about my club and its prospects. Total strangers accost me in the street and ask the same question, and I am waylaid in hotels and buttonholed for an hour at a time by enthusiasts on the national game. The interest is not confined to the sporting fraternity. Staid business men and persons who would not touch any other sport seem to be deeply interested in the i 457 struggle.

455 Lawson, The Krank, 3-5. 456 Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 31,1885. 457 New York Times, September 2, 1885.

101 Some fans were so convinced of their devotions to baseball that they followed their club to matches outside New York City. Morse acknowledged this high level of spectator interest, explaining that, especially for important games, "it is no exaggeration to say that people come from great distances to witness contests."458 Indeed, in May of 1886 a large group of brokers, merchants, and "sports" accompanied the Giants to Philadelphia. The New Yorkers

"had telegraphed on to have a portion of the grand stand reserved for them, and a part of the left wing of the structure was set aside for them. They filed into their places, all carrying brooms on their shoulders and casting defiance in every direction."4 9 That some New

Yorkers were willing to devote such time and effort to their status as baseball "kranks" is illustrative of the degree to which the most enthusiastic fan embraced the sport.

Lawson's description of the most enthusiastic type of spectator functions also as an analog for understanding the less devoted types of baseball spectators who, though lacking personal stake in the action, nonetheless saw fit to pay admission. This included the casual fan who could not be bothered during the regular season but became suddenly interested if his or her team had a chance late in the pennant run. The 1887 image of the Polo Grounds discussed earlier, as well as the 1888 sketch from "Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, illustrate that not everybody in attendance was interested in watching the game. Both images depict paying spectators more inclined towards conversation than fervent involvement in the on- field action (see Appendix, figures B and C).

Of course, there were a good many New Yorkers who simply did not care for baseball. Some were of the belief that the game encouraged dissipative evils such as drinking and gambling while others, though the press generally preached that all of America loved

458 Morse, Sphere and Ash, 4. 459 "Giants Waste Brooms," May 3, 1886, "Scrap Book of Base Ball, 1879-1903, 1879-1895." 460 Stein, A History of the baseball Fan, 30.

102 baseball rather than mention them, just did not find any appeal in the game. The fan who devoted himself completely to baseball, Dewey has posited, had litde room for the person who did not share the same passion. In 1888 the New York Times depicted a typical rabid fan who visited "his accustomed haunts" and elsewhere to ramble on about the Giants. The crank could scarcely believe it when he met a man on an elevated train who would rather read the news from Washington and abroad. The author of the article, siding with the sentiments of the latter citizen, concluded that the number of New Yorkers who actually lose sleep over the Giants is "unrecognizable except under a strong magnifying glass." "

Such debunking accounts of baseball's wide popularity are important for they underscore the fact that not everyone saw fit to associate themselves with the American pride inherent in the claim that baseball was the national pastime. Additionally, they emphasize how baseball's promoters and the press embellished baseball's importance to increase popularity and, subsequendy, profit.

Though people of many class backgrounds found their way into New York City baseball parks, admittedly with varying degrees of frequency and success, for many the chances of attending were significantly less. However, this did not mean that these less fortunate New Yorkers did not find ways to participate in the game's ritual. Since before the days of the Mutuals, baseball spectators congregated outside as well as inside the baseball park, occupying a variety of vantage points ranging from the grandstand to holes along the fence.463 Staying outside did not necessarily cut one's self off from the action or delimit the degree to which one was a part of the proceedings. An 1874 match between the Mutuals and

Atlantics, while drawing 6,000 inside the Union Grounds, also attracted two or three

46' Dewey, The 10"' Man, xii. 462 "Sleep Versus Baseball," New York Times, June 5, 1888. 463 Rader, American Sports, 61.

103 thousand fans gathered outside the enclosure.464 Outside congregation was often due to a refusal, or inability, to pay for tickets but was sometimes strategic, as when Mutual patrons waited to pay admission until the fourth inning when ticket prices were subsequently lowered.466

Outside patrons often made their presence felt and acted upon their displeasure. At an 1886 game between the Metropolitans and Giants at Ridgewood Park on Long Island, spectators who had refused to pay a last minute admission price increase "broke open the door at the lower end and passed in free, and after the third inning all were admitted for twenty five cents each."467 On Decoration Day, 1886 the Brooklyn Daily Eagle estimated

20,600 paying spectators for the afternoon game at the Polo Grounds while "hundreds found their way in over the fence." Frank Leslie's Illustrated 'Newspaper referred to those seeking alternative entry to the park as "juvenile representatives of the deadhead brigade, who must see the game, but who never dream of disbursing the fabulous sum of twenty-five cents, which is the ordinary entrance-fee, much less the half-dollar charged by the

League."469 Incredibly, given the press' tendency to roast those spectators involved in gambling and other rowdy types of activity, such devious tactics as skirting the ticket window were afforded little scorn.

Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper gave an account of the "gamin," neglected children or street urchins, who tried to see the Giants play at the Polo Grounds:

To keep track of these stupendous baseball events, and occasionally to be an eye­ witness of one of them, is the absorbing ambition of the city gamin's life. He hangs

464 "Atlantic vs. Mutual: Another Splendid Fielding Game," New York Clipper, "Base Ball Scraps 1874." 465 "Baltimore vs. Mutual," New York Clipper, "Base Ball Scraps 1874." 466 "Mutual vs. Athletic," New York Clipper, "Base Ball Scraps 1874." •»<" "Base Ball," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, October 18, 1886. 468 "Remarkable Popularity of the National Game," Brooklyn Daily Eagle, December 12, 1886. 469 "Baseball at the Polo Grounds," Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper, May 23, 1885.

104 out wistfully, almost fiercely, about the gates of the charmed enclosure, repeating his 'Mister, take a feller in?' to every promising-looking comer. This hope failing, he locates an eligible knot-hole in the board fence, or 'shins' up a tall telegraph-pole from which coigne of vantage he triumphandy yells down bulletins of the game to his less enterprising comrades on the ground.470

Mike Kelly described how, because children could not always afford admission, they would

"go 'junky'" and spend the morning collecting old waste paper and other junk "for the purpose of getting pennies enough to go on a shed to see a ball game." Kelly sympathi2ed that "perhaps they do make life a burden to grownup men, asking for pennies to take them in" but admired how they "pick out the favorite knot-holes in the fence, and fight for their possession against the bigger and stronger boys."471 An account of a May 31, 1886 game at the Polo Grounds observed the presence of a large number of young boys, some who had scaled the fence, and others who peered through the hundreds of knotholes because their

"owners' pockets could not stand the strain that would necessarily have been imposed upon them had they passed through the gates."472 Though it was often a challenge attending professional baseball games, for children the level of interest was sufficient that it often merited resourceful effort. Such consideration of professional baseball's audience is important for it illustrates just how far the sport's appeal reached (see Appendix, figure F for an illustration of the "knothole" fan).

The domain of the baseball spectator was hardly confined to the dimensions of the ballpark. Indeed, the very idea that one had to pass through the gate to be a member of the baseball crowd is a seriously limiting assumption. As stated in discussion of baseball's peripheral attractions, by the 1880s the sport had become "just the centerpiece of a business meant to draw in the fan outside the ballpark as much as inside it, grandstand seats or

470 "The Baseball Furor," Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, September 1, 1888. 47' Kelly, "PlayBall,"73. 472 "Winning Even Honors," "Baseball 1886."

105 not."473 The meaning of "consumption," Garry Crawford, a professor of sport's social and cultural aspects, has suggested, is a pivotal notion when defining fandom because it considers the myriad of ways that people can be fans without actually being present at the

474 event.

That faction of the New York City baseball spectatorship that acted outside the physical confines of the Polo Grounds and other parks effectively formed a secondary crowd of large proportion. Due to financial and work-pattern restraints, the working class kept up with baseball through newspapers and weekly publications475 such as the New York

Clipper and Sporting News. In 1888 the extent of baseball's wide consumption via alternative avenues was communicated in Harpers Weekly which wrote that "the telegraph, the bulletin, and the 'base-ball extra' have become established as adjuncts of the game, and the exploits of the various clubs have become the daily food of the local historian."476 Leslie's Illustrated

Weekly Newspaper wrote in 1888 that detailed accounts of baseball games were read "at half the breakfast-tables in the land."477 As well, saloons paid for the delivery of large cards that displayed scores and standings so that their patrons could keep up with the game. During the tight NL pennant race of 1885 between New York and Chicago, Giant fans, after watching the game at the Polo Grounds, went to "watch the 'tickers' in the neighborhood for the returns by innings of the Chicago games."479 Some years later, in 1914, Baseball

Magazine wrote that such fans that gathered around the scoreboards located in city squares

473 Dewey, The 10"' Man, 61. 474 Garry Crawford, Consuming Sport: Fans, Sport and Culture (New York City: Routledge, 2004), 6. 475 Riess, City Games, 71-72. 476 "The Base-Ball Season," Harper's Weekly: A journal of Civilisation, October 20, 1888. 477 "The Base Ball Furor," Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, September 1, 1888. 478 Stein, A History of the Baseball'Fan, 30. 479 "The Close Race Between the Chicagos and New-Yorks," New York Times, July 20, 1885.

106 took their baseball "second-hand, so to speak."480 It is evident that, in the 1880s, this second­ hand audience had already come of age. For NL and AA owners who initially feared that they were losing business by having people get information from the telegraph in saloons and hotels,481 the benefits of a wide dissemination of their product were soon recognized.

For New York baseball fans, going to the ballpark was no longer the only way to invest one's self in the action. The spectator had decided, once and for all, that they wanted professional baseball and, in return, they found that those who produced the product were willing to cater to them.

480 P.F. Statton, "The Baseball Scoreboard," Baseball Magazine, April 14, 1914. 481' Seymour,B«iv?W/, 200.

107 CONCLUSION

The 1880s had been something of a "golden age" for professional baseball, a time when the "standard equipment for the grandstand, spectator came to include a beer, a sausage, and a scorecard." However, professional baseball, though financially successful, suffered from a number of persistent problems. In 1890 the Brotherhood of Professional

Base Ball Players (formed in 1885), led by New York Giant John Montgomery Ward, stood up against the NL's mistreatment of players best quantified by ever-decreasing wages and arbitrary fines. The result of the revolt, the Player's League (PL), though a fair success at the gate, was undone after only a single season by weak financial backing, business management problems and, to a considerable degree, NL arbitrator Albert G. Spalding's determined effort to persuade PL owners that surrender to the NL was in their best long-term fiscal interests.483

The Player's League war, as the competition between the two leagues became known that year, though debilitating, emphasized the value of the spectator in the baseball business.

Both NL and PL leaders used attendance figures, often embellished for greater effect, to illustrate the popularity and superiority of their operation over that of their rival league.

Such relendess squabbling between leagues caused spectators to grow increasingly weary of professional baseball. To make matters worse, the PL, by creating more teams, lessened the quality of on-field skill which caused many fans to view the product they were presented with at ballparks as "a hobbled version of their beloved sport." Suddenly, professional baseball's promoters, which had realized great financial success in the 1880s, stood to

482 Vincent, Mudville's Revenge, 157. 483 Bryan Di Salvatore, A Clever Base-Ballist: The Ufe and Times of John Montgomery Ward (New York City: Pantheon Books, 1999), 311-312. 484 Ibid, 303-304. 485 Ibid, 304-305.

108 alienate their audience by undermining the competitive element of the sport that spectators

were attracted to.

Spectator apprehension continued through the 1890s, a decade characterized by

player and fan violence, owner greed, and syndicate ownership, although attendance

continued to increase incrementally.486 The rise of the economically competitive American

League (AL) in 1901 remedied the NL's inability to run a monopoly on major league

professional baseball.487 Just as the Metropolitans and the NL had supposedly reclaimed

.baseball from dishonesty in 1880, the AL provided a new perceived stamp of integrity that

effectively eroded public and player dissatisfaction with the increasing corruption of the NL.

Immediately, major league professional baseball began to attract willing spectators like never

before.

This thesis has discussed what attracted people to professional baseball in the 1880s

and why. Specifically, it has been my intention to illustrate the maturation process that the

baseball spectator underwent in the years 1876 to 1890 in New York City. Over this span,

spectators became a distinct class of consumer. New Yorkers approached professional

baseball by rejecting the aspects that they did not find appealing, such as dishonesty among

players and owners that took the spectator's credulity for granted, and reveled in those they

most enjoyed such as the chance to act freely, gamble, and exert civic pride and American

spirit. It was, ultimately, this sheer breadth of attractions, and multiple ways of engaging with

baseball, that brought people back to the ballpark again and again. Crucially, spectatorship

was never a passive activity but rather an empowering form of engagement that enabled

New Yorkers to satisfy both personal and collective desires.

486 James, The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, 52-57. 487 The NL had achieved a monopoly on professional baseball with its absorption of the AA after the 1891 season. Throughout the 1890s the NL-AA combination was commonly known as the League Association. Nemec, The Great Encyclopedia of Nineteenth Century Major "League Baseball, 608.

109 My analysis of the New York City baseball spectator was necessarily divided into three main chapters. Chapter One, '"An Era of Quietness' — The Spectator in Transition,

1876-1882," looked at the state of baseball in New York City after the 1876 expulsion of the professional Mutuals from the NL. The chapter focused on the public's frustration with the sport due to rampant dishonesty and, subsequendy, the analogous presence of amateur baseball. Completing this idea, I discussed the rising image of the NL and the creation of the

Metropolitans that, together, were able to persuade spectators that integrity had been restored to professional baseball.

Chapter Two, "Professional Baseball Comes to New York City: The Cultivation of the Permanent Spectator," chiefly concerned how New Yorkers negotiated personal agency and social and economic factors to incorporate professional baseball into their lives. I discussed the acceptance of spectatorship as an activity, New Yorkers' life and work patterns, city space and transportation, as well as the notion of civic pride that greatiy dictated the public's patronage of the Metropolitans and Giants.

Finally, Chapter Three, "Grandstands and Knotholes: A Portrait of the Emergent

Spectator," provided an illustration of the characteristics, motivations, and needs which the spectator exuded in the presence of professional baseball from 1883 to 1887. Pivotally, I considered both the primary and peripheral attractions of professional baseball to discern the multiple ways in which New Yorkers engaged with the sport at the Polo Grounds and St.

George Grounds. To complete my analysis of the spectator's characteristics I discussed the considerable part of the population that consumed baseball "second-hand" away from the ballpark in order to illustrate that defining the parameters of the spectator's realm is a complex exercise.

110 My conclusions regarding the spectator's relationship with baseball in New York City are part of a growing historiography dedicated to the baseball spectator's role in baseball history. It is apparent from my research why the nineteenth century spectator has tended to be overlooked and treated as a by-product of the game itself488 by historians for spectators have left litde definitive record, in the form of diaries and journals, of their own experiences.

Most of what can be learned about baseball's fans must be inferred from various press accounts. Though challenging, newspapers and other publications are capable of offering much based on what they report, what they do not, who is writing, and why.

Not surprisingly, there remains a good amount of research yet to be done in regards to baseball spectatorship. As Guttmann has said, "We know a good deal today about spectator sports and remarkably little about sports spectators." Chief among the areas demanding inquiry is that of crowd composition. My own conclusion on the matter tends to agree with both arguments put forward by historians, namely that nineteenth century crowds were comprised of a "very good cross-section of the American population" and, conversely, that middle class people accounted for the majority of those in attendance. I indeed believe that New Yorkers from all different backgrounds, politicians, middle class women, day-labourers, and even children, made it to the ballpark, just not with the same frequency. But such a conclusion can, and should, be taken much further. Given the immense amount of interest devoted to baseball's past from both professional and non­ professional historians, and, subsequently, the current desire of historians to delve deeper into nineteenth century baseball, it is but a matter of time until spectators inhabit a more befitting place in baseball's past that acknowledges the considerable extent to which they

488 Crawford, Consuming Sport, 3. 489 Guttmann, "On the Alleged Dehumani2ation of the Sports Spectator," Journal of Popular Culture 14 (1980): 281. 490 Seymour, Baseball, 326.

Ill helped facilitate the rise of the sport as a powerful and pervasive form of distincdy American commercial entertainment.

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Zinng, Paul J. "Diamond in the Rough: Baseball and the Study of American Sports History." The History Teacher 19, no.3 (May 1986): 385-403.

119 APPENDIX

fist •*r^£:-?t'*r<^ OF T^^-rper* ^^^^^^^^^^,.^^lrr,^,^~~. (J J&O t^CSrJET ZDMinUteSf^THEBATTERY

S C T""'TH !^S6iM£NT SASO

OP^ Figure A — The St. George Grounds in 1886. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

120 Figure B — The Polo Grounds in 1887. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress.

121 U ' r )H IM tf-xtt, "I(j( 111

> • - I *•-"--* "• * . f

VIEW UP THE .NEW V01CK T0I.0 GROUNDS IN I8SS, WHEN LEAGUES UASEBAl.L WAS IN ITS INFANCY. Uaproduced fro-tu Lvdio'z IVnoklu of 1866, and cnpyrishied.

Figure C - The Polo Grounds in 1888. From "The Polo Grounds - Now and Then," Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, April 1, 1909.

122 mmWm'mm^wmmm

Figure D - The "Bleaching Boards," or Bleachers, at the Polo Grounds in 1888. From John Montgomery Ward, "Our National Game," The Cosmopolitan, October 1888.

123 •^MiMmmmmMm Figure E - The St. George Grounds in 1886 or 1887. From Robert H. Schaefer, "The Wiman Trophy, and the Man for Whom It Was Named," Base Ball, 1, no. 2 (Fall 2007): 53.

124 Figure F — Men and young boys peer through knotholes and climb telegraph poles to watch the action at the Polo Grounds, a boy records inning-by-inning action via telegraph, and a collection of fans voice their spirits from the bleachers. Leslie's Illustrated Weekly Newspaper, 1888.

125