1836c.11

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Recollections of a Jersey City Boy -- And A Different Rule for Plugging

Salience	Noteworthy
Tags	Pre-modern Rules, PluggingPre-modern Rules, Plugging
Location	Jersey City, NJJersey City, NJ
City/State/Country:	Jersey City, NJ, United States
Modern Address
Game	Base BallBase Ball
Immediacy of Report	Retrospective
Age of Players	YouthYouth
Holiday
Notables
Text	From John Thorne, July 28, 2015: "This just in from Ben Zimmer, a Facebook friend who writes for the Wall  Street Journal. Important, I think. 'You might be interested in another early baseball example -- it's from the Jersey Journal from Jersey City (where I live!), written in 1871 but recalling a protoball club of the 1830s:' "While here let me say to the Champion Base Ball Club, for their information, that in eighteen hundred and thirty-six and seven we had a base ball club that could not be beaten. It was composed of such men as Jerry O'Meara, Peter Bentley, J.C. Morgan, Jos. G. Edge, &c.  I acted as the spare pitcher to the first nine.  In those days the game was played by throwing the ball at the man running the bases, and whoever was hit was out. if he could not jump to the base from where he was hit. I would rather get hit by any member of the club than by Bentley, for he was a south-paw or left-hander, and he used to strike and throw an unmerciful ball."
Sources	"Recollections of a Jersey City Boy, No. 3.," Jersey City Evening Journal, Dec. 13, 1871, p. 1, col. 3
Warning	John Zinn: It feels to me that the author is conflating a number of different things (his role, for example) into a club that played in the late 1830's.  However even if he is off by 10 years, a club of some kind in the late 1840's would be something new and, as John Thorn suggests, important.
Comment	Peter Bentley later became the town's mayor. John Zinn: The article in question is the third in a series that appeared in the Evening Journal late in 1871.  I've been able to find the first two (it's not clear if there were any more) and this is the only reference to base ball.   John Zinn: Found two more articles by our anonymous author, but with a lot of biographical information suggesting very strongly that he is John W. Pangborn who happened to be the brother of the editor and founder of the Evening Journal. John Zinn, "Base Ball Before the Knickerbockers", October 1, 2015: "[I]nformation provided in the articles about the author's life and activities was so specific as to positively identify him as Stephen Quaife, an English immigrant, whose family moved to Jersey City in 1827 when he was only one.  Identifying Quaife, however, immediately ruled out his claim of having "acted as the spare pitcher on the first nine," since he was only about 10 at the time.  Quaife's name did, however, ring a vague bell and a look at Jersey City's first base ball clubs finds him listed as a pitcher in a box score of a July 11, 1855 inter squad game of the Pioneer Club, founded that June.  Clearly Quaife was conflating his own brief base ball career with whatever he knew or thought he knew about another club 20 years earlier.  "This 1871 account of a club some 35 years earlier has the same problem as other descriptions of pre-New York games in New Jersey, they are all retrospective, none come from contemporary sources. . . .  "There is, however, some further evidence of pre-New York base ball in Jersey City.  The July 12, 1855 Jersey City Daily Telegraph article describing the game Quaife did play in, clearly states there were 11 on a side and that five games were played in one day . . ." "Quaife's account further supports the idea that young men in New Jersey were in the field with bats and balls well before the state's first clubs were formed in 1855." See https://amanlypastime.blogspot.com/2015/10/base-ball-before-knickerbockers.html.   Edit with form to add a comment
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Source Image	[[Image:|left|thumb]]
External Number
Submitted by	Bruce Allardice, John Zinn
Submission Note	Zinn's Blog, "A Manly Pastime," October 1, 2015
Has Supplemental Text

1836c.11 Recollections of a Jersey City Boy -- And A Different Rule for Plugging"

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