1872.4
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Harry Wright Offers Game, Players, to Harvard
| Salience | Peripheral |
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| Tags | Business of Baseball, Harvard CollegeBusiness of Baseball, Harvard College |
| Location | |
| City/State/Country: | [[]] |
| Modern Address | |
| Game | |
| Immediacy of Report | |
| Age of Players | |
| Holiday | |
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| Text | |
| Sources | From the Spalding Collection at the New York Public Library |
| Warning | |
| Comment | Richard Hershberger, 3/18/2022
"150 years ago today in baseball: Harry Wright is making arrangements with the Harvard ball team. If I am reading it correctly, the secretary of the Harvard club goes by "J. Cheever Goodwin." I hate him already. Wright proposes a date just two and a half weeks out. This is typical of scheduling in this era, done on the fly. It also was a major pain. A lot of Wright's correspondence consists of back and forth to find a date that works for both sides.
I'm not sure what is the story about the offer to let Harvard use the Boston grounds. Harvard had a field, but I don't know if it was enclosed at this period. You can't charge admission if there is no fence. This would explain the discussion here, where we can assume that the "satisfactory arrangements" he mentions is a discreet way to say "financial arrangements," with the Boston club getting a piece of the action.
Then there is the discussion of the Fast Day game. Fast Day is an obsolete New England holiday: a quasi-pagan fertility ritual where people were supposed to go to church and look solemn in order to ensure a good harvest. In practice they went to ball games. It was the traditional opening of the baseball season. This year it will be on April 4. Wright is arranging the "picked nine" the Bostons will trounce. Sometimes a picked nine was an impromptu affair, picking players from the crowd. This one is a bit more organized, with the players chosen ahead of time and publicized. Wright is offering three slots to Harvard. He doesn't specify which positions. This picked nine is not totally random, but neither is it totally organized."
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| Submitted by | Richard Hershberger |
| Submission Note | FB posting, 3/18/2020 |
| Has Supplemental Text |
1872.4 Harry Wright Offers Game, Players, to Harvard"
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