Elysian Fields Discussion Topic One

Elysian Fields Discussion Topic One:

Did the Elysian Field Base Ball Era Heavily Influence the Evolution of Base Ball?

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Issue One -- EF and the Early Spread of the Game Beyond Manhattan ( In Preparation)

Prospectus: "The plan is to reexamine how baseball spread throughout New Jersey from 1855 to 1870. The first step is to look at the possible influence of Elysian Fields on how the game became established in the Garden State.  For this purpose Hudson County (Hoboken and Jersey City) will be considered part of the New York metropolitan area and the focus will be on the rest of the state.  A second premise, based on the work of Richard Hershberger and Peter Morris, is that at the beginning of the period, the primary way people learned about baseball was through direct personal contact.  If so, it will be important to look at the extent to which people from other New Jersey communities traveled to and from Hoboken.  This can be analyzed to some degree by examining the contemporary transportation systems between Hoboken and locales that did and didn't have baseball clubs through 1860.  This will be especially important in the case of Newark which seems to be where baseball really took hold in New Jersey.  Other possible explanations of how the game got started in Newark, will also be a way to evaluate Elysian Field's impact." John Zinn, leading researcher on Baseball in New Jersey

Issue Two -- Did EF heavily influence the game on the field -- and/or its management? 

L. McCray, Version 1.0, 11/4/2022

As for effect on base ball's playing rules:

[][]  Inventing 'Fair Territory? Years ago -- in a conversation with Tom Heitz, I think -- I understood that there was speculation that EF's base ball grounds may have contributed to the game's 1845 rule on the familiar 90-degree span of foul territory.  The idea was that some Knickerbockers' long hits ended up lost to the adjacent Hudson River at Hoboken. 

From  text on the foul ground (Rule 10) rule in  Baseball in the Garden of Eden  (2011), page 74:  "This stricture may well have included home runs!  The early Knick grounds at the Elysian Fields faced the North (Hudson) River, and batters who hit the ball into the water were not hailed at heroes -- the club generally had one baseball, and that was handmade, of course. However, the more likely reason for incorporating the concept of foul ground into their rules was the Knickerbockers' chronic inability to muster a full complement of men for their appointed days of play."

{Query: were cricket balls, or other hard balls,  not available or affordable in the US in the 1840s?  Why not?}

[][] Base Advancement on Balls that Bound Out of Play.  Rule 20: "But one base allowed when a ball bounds out of play."  From Eden. page 77:  "For years I had thought the intent of this rule was to keep the ball out of the river, which the Knickerbocker outfield adjoined, owing to the expense and difficulty of ball manufacture. Today [2011] I am inclined to think that this rule reflects the wish that the hallmark of the New York game should be fielding, not running or batting or throwing." 

[][] EF Ground rule on tree interference:  "At the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, balls are frequently knocked into the trees; but they always come down of their own accord, and if caught before touching the ground, are considered "fly catches."  From New York Sunday Mercury 9/4/1859. Hmm.  If the Knicks had only added this rule to the 20 rules , centerfield just might be graced by trees even today!

​[][] Management Practices?  Could landowner behavior and club management practices have been affected by what was learned at EF? Example: EF reportedly experienced crowds of as many as 24,000 spectators for baseball; did that influence crowd control practices, viewing structures, admission screening (roughs, gamblers, etc?)  Did the landowner offer refreshments and sanitary facilities to gathered crowd?  

[][]Player emoluments: Were players' travel or other costs reimbursed, opening the door to professionalism?

[][] Club houses.  Did EF give us the first club houses?  Did that affect the later evolution of base ball?   

L. McCray --Version 1.4, 11/3/2022

As of October 2022, Protoball.org's PrePro Database includes about 200 contributed game accounts for New Jersey's Elysian Fields. A not-very thorough 3-hour/4-hour review of these data points leads to these rough

impressions:

[] From late 1845 to 1853, most games were intramural contests among the Knickerbockers; over 100 such games are entered.  I see only six games involving other clubs before 1853, two of which were intermural games for other clubs (Gothams in 1845, NYBBC in 1845). For this period, I see only 4 interclub games at EF, three in 1845-6 and one in in 1851 (K's v. Gothams). 

Starting in 1853, the majority (roughly 90%) of 80 reported games) are interclub games.

[]  Overall, 30 or 31 different clubs played at EF.

For interclub matches, the Eagle Club played in 34 of the listed games against 10 different opponents, starting in 1854.  The Gotham/Washington/NYBBC club/clubs appeared in 25 interclub matches against 4 clubs from 1845 to 1861. The Knickerbocker Club appears in 22 interclub matches from 1845 to its last in August 1859. The Empire Club appears in 18 matches starting in 1854. The Mutual Club appears in 14 matches from 1858.  Other matches featured the Eckford (9 games), the Excelsior (8), and the Alpine 9 (6) clubs (6). One account reported on two teams from a fire company.

[] Now.  Aren't the Eckford (9 matches) , Excelsiors (8 matches) and Atlantic (two matches) and Enterprise (2 matches) all from Brooklyn? -- I think they only played non-Brooklyn opponents at EF.  Maybe they had been invited by Manhattan club hosts?  Are there any other distant visitors?  Well, The Albany Knickerbockers do appear once (1864).  A Hoboken club is seen twice, playing the Ecks and the Eagles in 1859.

[] A total of23 EF matches appear for 1860, 14 for 1861, and only 8 after that, the last in 1864. EF may have lost its tasted for crowds of fans in the later 1860s?

[] We have no reported matches for 1852, after only 6 in 1851.  Cholera?  Protoball data fumble? Other?  Covid19?

Open issues:

Reminder: 'This is all just bean-counting -- it is not science.  We have no reason to believe that matches entered in PBall are a representative sample of the matches actually played.

[] Would won-loss data be useful for our purposes?  Not sure why it would.

[]  Did other writers' write summaries that better meet our needs on this subject?  (Feel free to suggest --or to perform --such!) 

Larry M