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{{Chronology Entry
{{Chronology Entry
|Year=1872
|Year=1872
|Year Suffix=
|Year Number=1
|Year Number=1
|Headline=Prince Bismarck Takes in a Ball Game in Berlin
|Headline=Forest City Club Lists Player Duties, Role of Team Captain, Etc.
|Salience=3
|Salience=3
|Tags=Famous,  
|Tags=Base Ball Stratagems,  
|Country=Germany
|Location=
|Coordinates=52.52000659999999, 13.404953999999975
|Country=United States
|City=Berlin
|Coordinates=41.49932, -81.6943605
|Game=Baseball
|State=OH
|City=Cleveland
|Modern Address=
|Game=Base Ball
|Immediacy of Report=Contemporary
|Immediacy of Report=Contemporary
|Age of Players=Adult
|Age of Players=Adult
|Text=<p>From John Thorn's&nbsp;<strong><em>Our</em></strong><em> Game</em>, forwarded 11/17/20:</p>
|Holiday=
<div class="uiScale uiScale-ui--regular uiScale-caption--regular postMetaHeader u-paddingBottom10 row">&nbsp;</div>
|Notables=
<div class="postArticle-content js-postField js-notesSource js-trackedPost" data-tracking-context="postPage" data-collection-id="64f12bc68fa3" data-source="post_page" data-post-id="9a3640e83f53" data-scroll="native">
|Text=<p>"1.&nbsp; THE CAPTAIN.&nbsp; The captain of the club shall be elected by the board of directors and shall serve at their pleasure. . . .</p>
<div class="section-divider"><hr class="section-divider" /></div>
<p>3. No member of the club will be excused from practice or play unless upon a written certificate from Dr. N. B. Prentice . . .&nbsp;</p>
<div class="section-content">
<p>6. No member of the club shall accept any gift of money to lose or assist in losing a game and violation of this rule and will subject the member to be expelled in disgrace. . . .&nbsp;</p>
<div class="section-inner sectionLayout--insetColumn">
<p>8.&nbsp; . . . No member will be allowed to use the uniform of another player without the permission of the owner.</p>
<h1 id="2c6c" class="graf graf--h3 graf--leading graf--title">When Bismarck Went to the Ball&nbsp;Game</h1>
<p>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder is-locked">
|Sources=<p><em>Cleveland Plain Dealer,&nbsp;</em>3/9/1872.</p>
<div class="aspectRatioPlaceholder-fill"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">This story comes to me via Paul H.D. Kaplan, Professor of Art History, State University of New York, Purchase, and author of a great new article on the subject of baseball sculpture, which fascinates me; I encourage you to read it (</em><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="http://journalpanorama.org/marmorean-ballplayer-sheriff-john-mcnamee-of-brooklyn-and-his-sculptural-career-in-florence/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-href="http://journalpanorama.org/marmorean-ballplayer-sheriff-john-mcnamee-of-brooklyn-and-his-sculptural-career-in-florence/"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">http://journalpanorama.org/marmorean-ballplayer-sheriff-john-mcnamee-of-brooklyn-and-his-sculptural-career-in-florence/</em></a><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="https://mlbmail.mlb.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=Jhsv_T2MuvzDrrXdhCyzB_tQzq_eHqxeLlVHCAga7MAO6H1TVizVCA..&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fjournalpanorama.org%2fmarmorean-ballplayer-sheriff-john-mcnamee-of-brooklyn-and-his-sculptural-career-in-florence%2f" rel="noopener" target="_blank" data-href="https://mlbmail.mlb.com/owa/redir.aspx?C=Jhsv_T2MuvzDrrXdhCyzB_tQzq_eHqxeLlVHCAga7MAO6H1TVizVCA..&amp;URL=http%3a%2f%2fjournalpanorama.org%2fmarmorean-ballplayer-sheriff-john-mcnamee-of-brooklyn-and-his-sculptural-career-in-florence%2f"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">).</em></a></div>
|Warning=
</div>
|Comment=<p><span><span>&nbsp;</span></span></p>
<p id="314e" class="graf graf--p graf--hasDropCapModel graf--hasDropCap graf-after--p"><span class="graf-dropCap">W</span>hile poking around in a now forgotten (and not yet digitized) American weekly newspaper published in Paris and London, <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">The American Register</em>, beginning in the 1860s, Kaplan found &ldquo;another interesting piece about early transatlantic baseball, that as far as I can tell hasn&rsquo;t appeared in modern scholarship.&rdquo;</p>
<p><span><span>Richard Hershberger posted the following, 3/10/2022:</span></span></p>
<p id="62aa" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p"><strong class="markup--strong markup--p-strong"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">The American Register, April 13, 1872, p. 3:</em></strong></p>
<p><span><span><em>150 years ago in baseball</em>: the Rules and Regulations adopted by the Forest City Club of Cleveland for its players. It rather jumps out that they felt it necessary to specify that players weren't allowed to throw games for money, with the penalty of being "expelled in disgrace."</span><br /><br /><span>But the topic for today's sermon is the <strong>role of the captain</strong>. This touches on a persistent modern misunderstanding of the early professional era. Look at the list of the captain's responsibilities and this looks similar to the modern field manager. Look up the 1872 Forest City club and you will find two "managers" listed: Scott Hastings, going 6-14 and Deacon White going 0-2. (The team was, it turns out, not good, and won't last the season.) They actually were the captains. The "manager" in this era was a different role. The details varied, but the manager typically was in charge of the business side of things: supervised the gate on game day, made travel arrangements on the road, and so on. Sometimes the manager was in charge of hiring and firing players, making him more like the modern general manager.</span><br /><br /><span>The captain always was a player. The manager usually was not, but there were a few exceptions such as Harry Wright. Here in 1872 not all teams had a full time manager, the officers running things directly. Later this summer when the Forest City team goes on a trip, a report identifies the "manager" for that trip, meaning the guy who will corral the players get them from city to city. Within a few years the job will have grown to a full time position, nearly always held by someone hired specifically for that job.</span><br /><br /><span>The problem is that the modern listings of managers are a mess for the 19th century. We have this modern concept of what is a "manager"--Earl Weaver or Billy Martin and so on--and we try to impose this model on the past. So some researcher reads a report with the captain doing stuff we expect of a modern manager, and lists that guy as the manager. Or a researcher sees some other guy called the "manager" and lists him. This eventually got distilled down to a standard list, with the two roles jumbled together in an incoherent mess. The moral is that if we want to understand what was going on, we have to set aside modern understandings of how these things work.</span></span></p>
<p id="9b54" class="graf graf--p graf--startsWithDoubleQuote graf-after--p">&ldquo;Base Ball in Berlin&rdquo; from our own correspondent. Berlin April 7. &ldquo;With the return of spring and sunshine has come a revival of the interest so universally manifested by Americans, whether at home or abroad, in their great national game &mdash; base ball. An occasional game at the Hippodrome &mdash; a large field, situated between Berlin and Charlottenburg, which his Imperial Highness, the Crown Prince of Prussia, has kindly accorded as a ball ground &mdash; finally resulted in a match, which was played on Tuesday afternoon last, in the presence of a large throng of spectators. Prince Bismarck and son, Gen. Vogel von Falkenstein, and many officers of the staff attended.&rdquo;</p>
|Query=<p>Do we know if there are interesting variants in other clubs' rules?&nbsp;</p>
<p id="5a58" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p">The piece then goes on to describe one ball hit so well it went 300&ndash;400 meters [!] and hit the horse of an officer; the horse is said to have thought it was a French bullet and reared. There is also a lot about organizing other games in Germany. (Josh Chetwynd, in his <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Baseball in Europe</em>, dates the earliest game in Germany to 1909.) I just love the idea of Bismarck showing up at this game. <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">[Note: Bruce Allardice cites, at Protoball.org, a game played in Dresden on July 14, 1869, between two clubs composed of Americans, mostly students. &mdash; jt]</em></p>
|Source Image=Forest City Club Rules 1872.jpg
<p class="graf graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">---</em></p>
|External Number=
<p id="02ee" class="graf graf--p graf-after--p"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Schlagball, a primordial form of long ball, may date to the middle ages, yet a national schlagball championship was played as recently as 1954. For more, see: </em><a class="markup--anchor markup--p-anchor" href="Schlagball" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank" data-href="http://protoball.org/Schlagball"><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">http://protoball.org/Schlagball</em></a><em class="markup--em markup--p-em">. But the game that Otto von Bismarck viewed was neither schlagball nor das Englische Base-ball; it was good old (really, not so old) American baseball.</em></p>
|Submitted by=Richard Hershberger
</div>
|Submission Note=FB posting, 3/9/2022
</div>
</div>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
|Sources=<p><strong><em>Our Game</em></strong>, John Thorn, November 2017.</p>
|Comment=<p>For more on Bruce Allardice's find on the 1869 game, see&nbsp;[[Union_v_American_in_Dresden_on_14_July_1869]]&nbsp;</p>
<p>For more on the earliest base ball in Germany, see [[Germany]].&nbsp;&nbsp;</p>
<p>For more on the German game of schlagball, including Bill Hicklin's note on its final national presence, see [[schlagball]].&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
|Reviewed=Yes
|Reviewed=Yes
|Has Supplemental Text=No
|Has Supplemental Text=No
}}
}}

Latest revision as of 13:39, 10 March 2022

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Forest City Club Lists Player Duties, Role of Team Captain, Etc.

Salience Peripheral
Tags Base Ball Stratagems
City/State/Country: Cleveland, OH, United States
Game Base Ball
Immediacy of Report Contemporary
Age of Players Adult
Text

"1.  THE CAPTAIN.  The captain of the club shall be elected by the board of directors and shall serve at their pleasure. . . .

3. No member of the club will be excused from practice or play unless upon a written certificate from Dr. N. B. Prentice . . . 

6. No member of the club shall accept any gift of money to lose or assist in losing a game and violation of this rule and will subject the member to be expelled in disgrace. . . . 

8.  . . . No member will be allowed to use the uniform of another player without the permission of the owner.

  

Sources

Cleveland Plain Dealer, 3/9/1872.

Comment

 

Richard Hershberger posted the following, 3/10/2022:

150 years ago in baseball: the Rules and Regulations adopted by the Forest City Club of Cleveland for its players. It rather jumps out that they felt it necessary to specify that players weren't allowed to throw games for money, with the penalty of being "expelled in disgrace."

But the topic for today's sermon is the role of the captain. This touches on a persistent modern misunderstanding of the early professional era. Look at the list of the captain's responsibilities and this looks similar to the modern field manager. Look up the 1872 Forest City club and you will find two "managers" listed: Scott Hastings, going 6-14 and Deacon White going 0-2. (The team was, it turns out, not good, and won't last the season.) They actually were the captains. The "manager" in this era was a different role. The details varied, but the manager typically was in charge of the business side of things: supervised the gate on game day, made travel arrangements on the road, and so on. Sometimes the manager was in charge of hiring and firing players, making him more like the modern general manager.

The captain always was a player. The manager usually was not, but there were a few exceptions such as Harry Wright. Here in 1872 not all teams had a full time manager, the officers running things directly. Later this summer when the Forest City team goes on a trip, a report identifies the "manager" for that trip, meaning the guy who will corral the players get them from city to city. Within a few years the job will have grown to a full time position, nearly always held by someone hired specifically for that job.

The problem is that the modern listings of managers are a mess for the 19th century. We have this modern concept of what is a "manager"--Earl Weaver or Billy Martin and so on--and we try to impose this model on the past. So some researcher reads a report with the captain doing stuff we expect of a modern manager, and lists that guy as the manager. Or a researcher sees some other guy called the "manager" and lists him. This eventually got distilled down to a standard list, with the two roles jumbled together in an incoherent mess. The moral is that if we want to understand what was going on, we have to set aside modern understandings of how these things work.

Edit with form to add a comment
Query

Do we know if there are interesting variants in other clubs' rules? 

Edit with form to add a query
Source Image
Forest City Club Rules 1872.jpg
Submitted by Richard Hershberger
Submission Note FB posting, 3/9/2022


Comments

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