(201) Gold Coast May 2016 | Page 28

History Lesson

AWhole New Ball Game Hoboken ’ s Elysian Fields celebrated as baseball ’ s birthplace WRITTEN BY JOSEPH RITACCO

PLAY BALL ! A Currier & Ives print depicts the 1865 championship game between the Mutual Club of Manhattan and the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn played in front of an estimated 20,000 people at Elysian Fields in Hoboken . Nearly two decades earlier , on June 19 , 1846 , Elysian Fields was the site of the first organized baseball game ever played under the modern rules established by Alexander Joy Cartwright .

Hoboken Nine Vintage Base Ball Club founder Frank Stingone couldn ’ t help but notice a glaring omission from the National Baseball Hall of Fame & Museum in Cooperstown , N . Y ., while touring its hallowed grounds with teammates in 2014 .

“ Nowhere did they mention Hoboken ,” he recalls .“ How can you not mention Hoboken ?”
It was onJune 19 , 1846 , after all , when Elysian Fields in Hoboken hosted the first officially recorded , organized baseball match ever played , a23-1 victory for the New York Nines over volunteer firefighter Alexander Joy Cartwright ’ s Knickerbocker Base Ball Club .
One year earlier , a dearth of available real estate in New York City compelled the municipal workers and firefighters who comprised the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club to ferry across the Hudson River into Hoboken , where they found the expansive parkland of Elysian Fields and agreed to pay $ 75 per year in rental fees to use its space for games .
Though baseball was played in some form on American college campuses and schoolyards dating back to the Revolutionary War , it was on the grounds of Elysian Fields where Cartwright and his teammates formalized many rules of the modern game used to this day . Among them were the concepts of foul territory , a diamond-shaped infield , three-out innings and a distance of 90 feet between bases .
The rules were first implemented during the historic 1846 game , and more pivotal moments in the sport ’ s early history soon followed at the same site . In1856 , New York Times cricket writer Henry Chadwick witnessed a baseball game at Elysian Fields and accurately predicted that it would one day become “ a national sport for Americans .” In 1865 , the grounds hosted a championship match between the Mutual Club of Manhattan and the
COURTESY OF HOBOKEN PUBLIC LIBRARY HISTORIC PHOTOGRAPH COLLECTION
26 MAY 2016 ( 201 ) GOLDCOAST