University Place

Wisconsin's Pre-Professional Base Ball Teams

[Katie Schumacher, Wisconsin Historical Museum]

Today we are pleased to introduce Ryan Schwartz as part of the Wisconsin Historical Museum’s History Sandwiched In lecture series. Ryan Schwartz is a man of many hats. Apart from being the coordinator of Old World Wisconsin’s historic baseball team, he has also served the site as a historic interpreter for the past five seasons. There he has had the opportunity to put his dual certification in social studies, teaching, and theater education from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater to good use. Currently, in addition to his responsibilities with the Wisconsin Historical Society, Ryan works in the education department of Children’s Theater of Madison. Here today to discuss how baseball was played in the 1800s and to share how the Wisconsin Historical Society is bringing the club teams of that era back to life, please join me in welcoming Ryan Schwartz.

[Ryan Schwartz, Event Coordinator, Old World Wisconsin, Wisconsin Historical Society]

I have a confession to make right off the bat. This is kind of a weird situation for me cause I’m assuming that most of you are here because you are – have an interest in baseball. I see a Mallards cap out there. Particularly, I live about five minutes away from there, actually. I actually didn’t get – really get into baseball until I started doing historic baseball. So, it’s actually probably fair to say that I know more about how the game was played back in 1870 than I do know how the game works today. So, that’s – so, its kind of an interesting situation to be in here, talking about that and sharing what became my interest in historic baseball.

One thing that I find so fascinating is that historic baseball has been very commonly referred to as the national pastime. You hear that a lot today, and, actually, believe it or not, that particular phrasing goes all the way back to the 1850s. I think it was kind of a little overambitious of the baseball players of the time to call their sport the national pastime considering by – until by about 1857 or so there’s probably only about 20 teams in three states, New Jersey, New York, and Massachusetts. And Massachusetts isn’t playing by the same rules as anybody else.

[laughter]

And so – and so, at that point, baseball is really in its infancy, but they are already trying to call it the national pastime. And, of course, it did end up taking on – I mean if you want evidence of that, you just see how people go in to watch baseball games today, whether it’s the Mallards or the Brewers, or you can note the fact that during game five of last year’s World Series there’s 17 and a half million people that tuned in on television. So, obviously, baseball has become completely interwoven in our society today.

But one thing I’ve noticed by just about everybody who’s come to our games at Old World Wisconsin is they will ask – they will talk about how they miss the way things were back in the good old days of the sport. You know? I’ve actually – Ive talked to a lot of people who – who say that they have lived through the good old days, and they just usually call it the old days because it’s not quite as different as we sometimes think. But people are always nostalgic for those days, you know, before steroids and before, you know, scandal on the news and things like that. And so, this phrase “good old days” is one I want to explore here just to start out with. And that’s actually a story that goes all the way back to the beginning. But the question we have to ask ourselves is, What really was the beginning?

[slide titled – Like it was the Good Old Days – featuring a sepia toned photograph of a baseball game played on an unkempt field circa 1885]

So, truthfully, that’s something historians don’t really agree on. You know, one would think as a historian, when we’re studying these past events, things that have already happened, they’re done and over with so to speak, we could come to some sort of consensus about when things happened and why, but just like anything else that people feel passionately about, baseball is the subject of some debate.

So, let’s start with everybody knows. Everybody knows –

[new slide titled – Abner Doubleday, Founding Father – featuring a military photographic portrait of Abner Doubleday from the Civil War in the center of the slide and illustrated fireworks to the left and right of the portrait]

– that Abner Doubleday was the founding father of baseball.

Abner Doubleday was a soldier in the United States Army. He served during the Mexican War, and he served during the Civil War where he garnered the reputation of having started baseball. But if that was actually true, it was news to Abner Doubleday, considering he was only named the father of baseball about –

[new slide titled – Sorry, Abner – featuring the same photographic military portrait of Abner Doubleday now with a red circle with a line through it over the top of the portrait]

– 15 years after he died. So, he actually only mentioned baseball once in all of his collective and archived papers. And he was a very prolific guy. He wrote numerous books. He saved every paper that he wrote during –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– the Civil War. He only mentioned baseball once in 1871. Alright?

And so – but the Civil War bit, though, that’s true, but we’re going to get a little bit ahead of ourselves if we keep going along that vein.

Another thing we can also agree on, though, is that it’s called the national pastime, so it must be an American invention, right?

Right?

Well, to get technical about things here, kind of, sort of, maybe-ish, if you squint at it in the right light, it’s purely American. And why do – you know, what’s that confusion all about? Well, on the whole, historians will point to a lot of different direction when it comes to figuring out where exactly baseball came from. It’s kind of like the Scarecrow in the “Wizard of Oz.” Well, those historic sources are quite factual over there, but some people find those very convincing in that direction. But, I personally find anything scholarly quite convincing. And so, a lot of historians are kind of going to one direction or the other when they’re trying to find what was the exact root of the sport because when we think back on it, it’s not a – ball and bat and running games are exceedingly common in almost every culture, particularly in Europe. And so, it’s very hard to kind of track down, you know, where this came from because most historians think that it evolved from numerous cultural groups, from many different countries that came to the United States, typically from Europe.

One of the most – there’s a lot of terms that would describe the different games that there – that they would play back then. They called it stool ball, one old cat, feeder, and rounders, and those were just the most common names in the United States. That’s not counting whatever they called it in England or France or whatever angry sounding words that described it in German. Alright? So, when we say it’s the American pastime, that’s true, but it’s also English. And Dutch. And probably French and German because they, the French and Germans can never seem not to put their fingers in wherever the British are meddling around. So, they probably had their – their fingers in it as well.

Now, what we do kind of know for certain, what most historians agree on, is that it was a Yankee invention. When we say Yankees, we’re not talking about the sports team. We’re talking about –

[slide titled – Yankees – featuring two illustrations – one of the logo for the New York Yankees baseball team with a red X over it and another of a Quaker from the 1700s with a green arrow above it pointing down at the illustration]

– these guys. We’re talking about the immigrants who came to the United States, typically from Europe, and they settled mostly in the New England area. So, the Yankees are basically second and third generation Americans. And so, they’re the ones who are gonna kind of lay claim to the sport and kind of start to define the commonly accepted source for its original development.

So, actually, where it’s going to mostly come –

[new slide featuring an illustration of boys playing the game of Rounders in England with the caption – Lithograph of children playing Rounders, 1840]

– from is they’re going to say it came from a game called Rounders. And this is a lithograph of some children playing Rounders in 1840. It’s a ball and bat game. You run the bases just like you do today. There’s a lot of similarities, and it’s easy to kind of trace it back. And believe it or not, the origins of baseball were actually pretty much unquestioned until the late 1800s. Pretty much everybody was like, Well, yeah, obviously –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– it came from this. The sports are so similar, it came in the right place. And so, why, then, are there still – were there still questions in the later 1800s? Well, something that’s a large part of that, something called nativism. Nativism was a big social sweeping effort here in the United States, particularly among the Yankees, that had a lot of anti-foreign sentiment. They were – they typically preferred to look at things as an invention that was coming from the Anglo world, that was coming from England. And so, they tried – they tended to discredit anything that was coming from a country that wasn’t England. And so, the Germans took the big brunt end of this. You saw troubles with the Poles and eastern Europeans. And so, they werent – so, with that movement, it made a lot more sense for Rounders to be their source. But to find out why Doubleday got the credit for creating this sport many, many years after Rounders and other bat and ball games were being played here in the United States, we have to look at a much more personal conflict between a couple of early baseball’s most important figures.

So, what we’re looking at here is, in 1889, a guy by the name of Abraham Mills, the head of the National League, and Albert Spalding, yes –

[slide titled – Henry Chadwick vs. Albert Spalding – featuring a portrait photo of Henry Chadwick on the left and a portrait photo of Albert Spalding on the right and the years 1889-1908 in the middle above the word Fight]

– that Albert Spalding. The guy who has the sports company named after him, who ran the Chicago White Stockings, who eventually became the Cubs. Go him! He claimed that through patriotism and research they had determined that Abner Doubleday had created the sport in Cooperstown, 1839, while Doubleday was at West Point, the military academy there in New York.

This was challenged immediately by the other fellow you see right over here. His name is Henry Chadwick. Henry Chadwick was a British journalist who had immigrated to the United States as a small boy and grown up here. And he was one of early baseball’s greatest proponents. If you were reading a newspaper in New York, you would not have seen any of them without his baseball descriptions in them. So, he was an incredibly important figure, and obviously with his English lineage, he’s going to challenge Spalding right away, and say, No, it was definitely Rounders. And so, they went back and forth and back and forth starting in 1899 all the way until about 1904, ’05, at which point Spalding’s like, “Fine, “we’re going to settle this once and for all. We’re going to put a commission together, and that commission is going to research and research and research –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– until we find that absolute truth.

We all guess – can all guess how that turned out.

So, here’s the deal. They did indeed put together a commission, and originally Chadwick was on board. But can anyone have a guess here who was the one who got to pick all the committee members? Yeah, that would have been Spalding. Uh-huh. And, funnily enough, once they had finished putting the committee together, there was no one who was on Chadwick’s side on the committee. And so, they spent three years researching and trying desperately to find evidence of what they were already saying was true. And so, it wasn’t a true historical commission. It’s certainly not the one that the Wisconsin Historical Society would recognize today. We guarantee that.

And so, in 1908, they basically said this is the final confirmation, it was Doubleday, Cooperstown, 1839. And so that’s where the ball – the Hall of Fame is today. Whoops. Alright.

But we wanna remember that fellow. We wanna remember Henry Chadwick –

[slide titled – Baseball Hall of Fame, Cooperstown, NY – featuring a photo of the Hall of Fame taken from the outside and captioned Oops.]

– because he is still very, very important. So, now we have some idea of where baseball grew out of, you know? It was probably based off of bat and ball games that originated in many different cultures –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– but it undoubtedly started in the New England states among the Yankees, the second and third generation English immigrants, right? And it probably wasn’t invented by poor old Abner over there in Cooperstown. Right? And so – but the one thing he does have going for him is that he was the first guy to fire a –

[slide titled – The Evolving Game – how the rules of the game grew up]

– shot back at the Confederates at Fort Sumter. So, he’s got cool stuff going for him, just not the baseball thing. Okay?

But regardless of how baseball actually started to begin with – and most historians kind of think we have the idea now, but regardless of whatever that way was, they can generally agree that it developed in stages like anything else. It wasn’t a one-off sort of procedure to build baseball as we know it today.

So, let’s look at the first step along the road. Remember how we mentioned in the beginning when I was saying about it’s a –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– national pastime even though it only existed with 20 or so odd teams in three different states? Well, the first ones who claimed to have organized something was Massachusetts –

[slide titled – The Rival – The Massachusetts Game – featuring an illustration of a square with first base on the top left, second base on the lower left, third base on the lower right and fourth or home base in the upper right. The Thrower is in the middle of the square, the Striker is halfway between first and home base, and the Catcher is directly behind the Striker outside thee baselines. To the left of the square is an illustration of The Striker and to the left of the square is an illustration of The Thrower]

– and it was called the Massachusetts game. And you can see that it does bear some similarities to baseball. For example, you have the striker, which is the batter right there. You have a catcher behind. The thrower, which is often called the – the hurler. And the idea was – but in this case, home plate is actually right in between these two bases here. And the idea was that there’s 14 players on a side. And the game is played to 100 points.

Yeah.

And they exchange every time one person gets out. Okay? And, oh, by the way, in this game, you can take the ball and throw it at people. So, that was great too. And so, this was the Massachusetts game. And it was – it’s actually very, very close to town ball, but the – the main thing was, the reason why you played to 100 points, is you could hit the ball absolutely anywhere. There was no foul line. And so, if – once you got really good, one of the most common tactics for the striker was to take the – the bat, which is about this long, and when – when the hit came in, go like this and knock it way the heck behind them. So, that way the catcher’s got to go running that way, and it gives you time to sprint around the bases.

And so, this game was not the most closely regulated. And you’re going to start seeing a little bit more differences as we go along to what we – what most historians consider step two –

[new slide titled – The New York Game – featuring a photo of six baseball players in Panama hats on the right (with Alexander Cartwright singled out with a red arrow as the man in the back row center) and on the left a copy of the front cover of the Rules and Regulations of the Knickerbocker Baseball Club]

– which was the New York game. And this is the true father of baseball as we know it now. The gentleman in the center here is Alexander Cartwright. Now, we know that for a fact, but the rest of this photo we’re not entirely sure about. Some historians believe that this was the original New York Knickerbocker baseball club. That the front – that’s the front side of the manual that they adopted in 1845. And so, they codified –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– what had previously been a bunch of unwritten kind of nebulous rules. And it becomes, then, the basis for baseball as we know it now.

But not only did it set up the rules, it was also setting up the way that players were supposed to behave. It was basically indicating that baseball, again the two words you see right there, baseball was a club sport. So, it was put together from a large number of people, and only a small number of them were going to play. You know, for example, in the Knickerbocker rules, as this was often called, it was just the nine players that we would recognize today. But it was not uncommon to have a second set of nine, a third set of nine, and a fourth set of nine. And they were – they often were playing for money. They were trying to get income to keep the club going because it was a social club as well. It was very common, actually, to do a fundraising event where you had –

[return to the slide titled – the New York Game]

– the first set of nine, the really, really talented players, playing against everybody else.

And so, they would not only play games, but they’d also host dances and dinners and things like that. And everyone was expected on and off the ball field to comport themselves like a gentleman. This is Victorian reserve. You cheer your opponent on a good play. There’s no profanity. No spitting. No muffing. No grumbling. No arguing with the umpire. No shouting at the umpire. Actually, no interacting with the umpire at all. And so, there were a lot of regulations that were put into place along with the Knickerbocker rules, which is why people again are heralding back to the good old days because it all looks really, really nice on paper.

In reality, we all know baseball is really competitive, and it’s often hard to hold your tongue in those kind of circumstances.

So, but that’s the – thats the New York game, and it was played basically –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– on an identical field to the one we have today. It was just the – it was the standard diamond place field. You start at home. You run around – run around all the bases. You can’t throw the ball at the people to get them out. So, there’s some definite changes going forward. But there’s also some definite differences as well. All the pitching, for example, is done underhand. Foul balls are called on where they hit inside the field. If it hits fair and goes foul, it is still fair. And you don’t actually have to swing at the ball, if you don’t want to. The umpire does not call strikes, unless he perceives that you’re abusing the privilege. You can actually be standing at the base, and you can use your bat to indicate to the – to the pitcher where you actually want the ball to go. And you don’t have to swing until you want to. So, you’re going to wait and slam that perfect hit right out of the park. Left for some pretty high scoring games. And so, the idea was, at this point, in order to restrict that high score, they were only going to play to 21 points. The nine innings, that’s not there yet. Just to 21 points on even innings. So, four and four or whatever it took to get there.

From this point onward, though, baseball started to grow very, very quickly. And actually, the New York game quickly came to eclipse the Massachusetts version. And so, what – what we see is we actually have Henry Chadwick getting involved, and he actually writes rule books starting in 1860. And he’s creating almost a new rule book almost every single year.

[slide titled – National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) – featuring a photo of the 1865 Brooklyn Atlantics Champions of America baseball team on the left and an illustration of a base-ball (sic) player on the front cover of Beadles Dime magazine]

So, again, he’s a very important figure. And what you’re seeing there is the Champions of America, or the team called the Brooklyn Atlantics. Thats – they were champions of the National Association of Base Ball Players, and they established themselves in 1857 and started playing by a new codified set of rules that finally saw the nine – the nine innings that we have today.

Now, interestingly enough, of course, they called themselves Champions of America, but at this point the game is still being played exclusively in New England. It’s not in the south, not in the Midwest. There’s about 60 teams spread throughout New England. And the – and the Atlantics, between 1857 and 1865, win five of the – of the yearly championships. So, they’re a pretty good team, but they also don’t have a whole lot of competition either. But baseball is unquestionably growing up, and it needs one final kick to get it going, and that’s where we finally bring –

[new slide titled – The Civil War EXPLOSION! – featuring a colored illustration of Union prisoners of war playing baseball captioned – Playing Base Ball at Salisbury Prison Camp N.C.]

– ourselves back to the Civil War. And that is a pun that is absolutely intended. Right?

This is actually an image drawn – that was drawn during the war and published of – of playing a game of baseball at the Salisbury Prison camp in North Carolina. So, these are all northern prisoners down there. And that’s actually why the base – baseball actually started to take off throughout the entire rest of the country because nothing brings people together like a good war. And so, what happens is is that all the sudden, for the very first time, you have people from all over the place. You’ve got people from Wisconsin, for example, mingling with people from Massachusetts. You have people from Indiana meeting people from New York. And they’re all fighting together. They’re all getting melded all together. And so, baseball starts to take off like wildfire through these American military camps, particularly in the northern Army. And so, as they’re playing this in their immense amount of down time, these guys are growing to have a very great fondness for the game. And then once the war concludes, of course, they’re actually going to start taking that game with them back home, wherever home might be.

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

And this – in the case that we’re talking about here, you guessed it. We’re talking about good old Wisconsin, land of beer, cheese, and excessive manners. Alright?

And so, what we’re seeing then is after the Civil War, 1866-1867, we’re seeing a lot of – a lot of an expansion of the sport, especially into the Midwest. We’re going from a situation where in 1865 there were 91 teams a part of the National Association of Base Ball Players. 91 teams. By 1867, just two years later, after all the soldiers are officially back home, you’re seeing 202 teams as a part of the National Association of Base Ball Players. And we’re starting to see the balance of it shifting away, and now it’s a lot more evenly skilled. And, actually, in 16 – in 1869, you’re seeing the first president of the association coming out of Chicago. The first Midwestern president of the association. And so – and so, it’s definitely moving further west. It is finally becoming that national pastime that everybody is referring to.

And it comes to Wisconsin too. But, interestingly enough, Wisconsin had one of its own forerunners of the sport. That’s this guy.

[slide titled – Rufus King – featuring a Civil War military photographic portrait of Rufus King on the left and this mini-biography on the right – Rufus King was the editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel and is one of the men most responsible for bringing Base Ball to the state. Although pictured here during the Civil War, where he served with the famous Iron Brigade, he actually coordinated the states first game in Milwaukee on November 30, 1859. The game was played at what is now Marquette University. It lasted three innings and saw an impressive 40-35 score]

Rufus King. Rufus King gained his particular bit of fame for service during the American Civil War. He fought with the Iron Brigade of the west, which was that unit of all western units that fought in the Army, the Potomac, at Gettysburg, places like that. And so, he actually fought with that particular brigade. But, before he went off to war, he was the editor of the Milwaukee Sentinel. And he actually organized the very first baseball game that was recorded as being played in Wisconsin, played on November 30, 1859, and actually only went for about three innings. So, it was a very short game, but nevertheless ended up with a 40 to35 score. So, three innings, 40 to 35. Just chew on that for just a second there.

And so, he’s the first guy to try and bring it here. But as soon as Rufus King tries to organize a team, what happens? Well, Fort Sumter is fired upon, everybody enlists –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– including the entire baseball club that was organized in 1860. So, baseball’s put on hold here in Wisconsin until after the conflict.

And so, it’s not really an understatement though when we say that it did actually explode during this time period because by about 1870, there is not a small town in southern Wisconsin, the more populated part of Wisconsin, that doesn’t have some sort of local baseball team or club.

And they came from a wide variety of names. We have groups like the Delafield Stars and the Big Bend Fireflies. Or here were the Two Rivers Sentinels –

[slide titled – Two Rivers Centennials Base Ball Team, 1874-75 Season – featuring a black and white photo of said Base Ball team]

– baseball team. This is them, 1874 to 1875.

[new slide titled – Oshkosh Base Ball Club, 1887 – featuring a sepia toned photograph of that babe ball club]

Or here, we have the Oshkosh Baseball Club in 1887. Look how nattily dressed these guys are. Okay? And so, that’s actually where we’re seeing a bit of a difference going on here. When baseball was actually being developed, it actually – we – we think of it today as a very egalitarian sport, as it’s something that everybody can get interested in. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a white-collar or blue-collar. It’s something that everybody can get enthusiastic about. And that is actually the case. But, in this case, there’s actually a boundary there. You see all of the local communities creating groups called –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– nines cause it’s just the nine players. And they’re playing very casually. Theyre actually – they’re practicing a few times a week, but they’re not doing as much as the big social stuff. That’s in the cities where you have some of the younger, middle-class men getting involved. And so, you have the clubs, and you have the nines, and it’s not very often that the two actually meet each other in a competition game. And so, there is actually still a division between the classes, even in baseball, at this point in time.

And so, this one, I also want to point out, is –

[slide titled – Milwaukee Cream Citys Base Ball Club, circa 1878 – featuring a black and white photo of the team in uniform]

– one of the other teams that was available in Milwaukee, which was the Milwaukee Cream Citys club. That’s what they looked like about 1878. The reason I point out the Cream Citys very briefly is because that was that – the Cream Citys was actually reproduced in 2004 by another group of baseball enthusiasts. And they were the first historic baseball club that was formed here in Wisconsin. So, the Cream Citys are worth noting, if only for that particular reason.

Now, if you look at all of the clothing that these guys are wearing –

[return to the slide of the Oshkosh Base Ball Club photo in which the players are wearing suits instead of uniforms]

[return to the slide of the Two Rivers Centennials Base Ball Team in which the players are wearing uniforms]

– not the guys in the middle but these ones right here –

[return again to the slide with the photo of the Oshkosh Base Ball Club in their suits]

– the Sentinels –

[return to the slide featuring the photo of the Milwaukee Cream Citys Base Ball Club in their uniforms]

– and particularly the Cream Citys, where does the inspiration come from? These two clubs right here, all three of the clubs I just showed you, they could afford to have their pictures taken. They’re more middle-class. More gentrified. Now, compare that, what they’re wearing, actually –

[new slide titled – Volunteer Fire Company, Chicago 1873 – featuring a photo of said fire company in their uniforms]

– to these guys.

This is a volunteer fire company from Chicago in 1873. Notice the caps, the nice jackets, and the leggings. Okay? The poses are even eerily similar because that’s actually where the – the sport of baseball truly took its roots and where a lot of the design even today got its inspiration from. It came from the working-class individuals. And it’s something they actually tried to move away from. If you guys know anything about, for example, especially volunteer fire companies in the cities back in the – back before we had professional fire departments, they’re basically gangs. If there is a fire, they’re going to go there, and if there’s another fire engine in place, they’re going to fight off the other fire engine and then put out the fire. Okay?

So, these guys are not gentlemanly, really. They’re gangs. They’re brawlers. They’re low brow. And so, the fact of the matter is we’re taking inspiration from the uniforms –

[return to the slide featuring the photo of the Milwaukee Cream Citys Base Ball Club team]

– for them, as you can see –

[return to the slide with the photo of the Volunteer Fire Company in Chicago]

– going back and forth, but we’re kind of moving away from that low brow, low class attitude. And you see that written about all the time in the different newspaper clippings. If there’s ever any sort of outcry at a game, if anyone questions the umpire, it’s always attributed to the lower brow loafers of the population.

So, what brought the –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– disparate groups of men, the middle-class, the – and the blue-collar people all together? Well, as Henry Chadwick put it, what they were looking for was an invigorating exercise and a manly pastime. And so, in that – if you really break down that statement, you kind of know that you can break it down into two basic levels. You have exercise and health as one element of it, and the other element is a display of manliness and masculinity. Let’s look at that first part real quick.

[slide titled – Athletics – featuring a meme photo of a boxer with the statement – I Took A Simple Walk this Morning INTO MORDOR – on the left and the following statement on the right – The latter decades of the 1800s played host to a significant movement in physical fitness, both for men and for women. Leading an active lifestyle became a key element of the Victorian ideal. The attitude and sense of machismo is aptly demonstrated by the gentleman in this period photograph. It has become so popular that it has transcended time to become a minor internet phenomenon. The youth refer to it as the Overly Manly Man Meme]

Athletics. Some of you have probably seen this before. This is commonly referred to as the Overly Manly Man Meme. It’s an actual historic photograph of a boxer. It’s very ultra-masculine, and so people on the internet today, as they’re want to do, have taken to commenting all over it. But in the latter part of the 1800s, there was a tremendous movement forward. The people were definitely trying to increase physical fitness. It became part of what we refer to as the Victorian ideal. Remember I mentioned there’s a lot of social factors involved, especially in the clubs, where there are dances and balls and dinners. And so, these guys that are playing, especially the middle-class folks who are in the clubs, they’re trying to make themselves out to be the gentleman the sport is supposed to be. And so, this became a very important part of that. Using the sport as an athletic but also very masculine form of play.

Now, the other reason is my personal favorite. That display of masculinity because, of course, why do guys do anything? We do it to impress the pretty girls.

[new slide titled – Social Function and Courtship – featuring a color illustration from the 1800s of a man about to kiss a woman at the foot of the stairs while a maid looks on in shock on the left and a sepia toned portrait photo of a man and his wife from the 1800s on the left]

And so, social function and courtship actually had a really important part to play in baseball, as did women themselves. And so, when you’re going out on the field, you gotta remember that these guys, they’re young. They’re in their late teens and early 20s. They’re getting ready to go out into the world. They’re trying to make a name for themselves. They’re getting ready to go into their careers, start a family. And so, when they’re going out on that ball field, you better believe they’re strutting their stuff. Alright?

You know, I’ve done quite a bit of research, especially around the Waukesha area –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– and I’ve had the benefit of actually having some of the research done for me by a former co-coworker of mine. And I’ve read in numerous of these accounts, especially the ones written after the fact by some of the ball players themselves looking back from a more mature elder age, they look back and they remember a lot of their fellows. It’s never them, but a lot of their fellows having to be admonished or reminded by the captain to look to your work because they’re too busy getting a little bit too close to the sidelines going “Hey, how you doin?” Okay?

And so, that becomes an important part to it. And, actually, that’s where women are actually starting to make – are starting to put their mark on the sport itself because they serve a very important function. These baseball players not only wanted them to come their balls and social functions cause it reinforced their machismo and their masculinity, but they also wanted them to come actually to the baseball games themselves because they acted as a kind of unofficial regulator. Perhaps more – perhaps even better than an umpire could have.

Remember, we’re supposed to be adhering to this very strict, social credo. This code of gentlemanly conduct and reserve. You know, you don’t let your emotions get the better of you. You applaud someone for a – for a well struck hit. And youre – and what, overall, you want to make sure that the fraternity, the brotherhood of baseball, consumes overall. But, just like any other plan, it doesn’t really survive first contact with the enemy. In this case, the enemy is competition and drive. Just like any sport. Competition was intense in baseball, and when people get their – get their emotions worked up, the adrenaline starts pumping, the profanity slips out. From time to time.

Or, you know, they start calling out the other player. Or they start bad mouthing – bad mouthing the umpire cause that never happens, right?

And so, it became a natural thing. And even though we look back at this time and we look at the codes of the time period saying this is the way things are supposed to be, it doesn’t always work out that way. But it was the ladies that helped keep it that way because if there is a lady, especially one that you are trying to impress up there in –

[return to the Social Function and Courtship slide with the photo and illustration]

– the stands, you are going to act as gentlemanly as you possibly can. And so, their presence helped to gentrify the sport. It helped keep things gentle and in the code of the time period. And so, that was the first role that they would play.

Women, of course, would go on to be able to play baseball on their own. One of the most interesting time periods to read about –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– if you ever have an interest into it, is in the 1940s when you had the womens – women leagues here in the – here in the United States because a lot of the men folk were off at war. And so, that’s a really fascinating one to read about, if you ever catch it. There’s a Ken Burns documentary on American baseball that has a good section on it, if you want to check that out. Alright?

Now, when it came to the games themselves here, they were truly –

[slide titled – A well-established field – featuring an illustration of Elysiam Fields ballpark on the left and the following statement on the right – Although this Currier and Ives illustration depicts the famous Elysiam Fields in Hoboken, N.J., it is a classic depiction of 1870s baseball and its fans. This image is the inspiration for Old World Wisconsins newly constructed base ball field which premiered its first game this month]

– community affairs. This is a Currier and Ives illustration of the Elysiam Fields at Hoboken, New Jersey. And that was one of the more established fields out East. But over time, in the 18 – by the mid-1870s here in Wisconsin, you’re seeing fields that are very much like it. The base paths are already well established, and you’re seeing large numbers of spectators around. And that’s something you’re even going to start to see in the smaller towns. Places like Mukwonago –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– Big Bend, Palmyra. Each one of them had their own small teams, and they would get together every other weekend or so and they would have a competition. And it was always very cordial, very formal the way this was done.

It would be announced in advance in the newspapers that on this particular date, such and such teams made up of such and such worthy gentleman will come together at this location, at this time, and have a good manly game of baseball. And the public is, of course, invited to attend. And so, when the appointed day arrived, that visiting team would arrive amidst all sorts of pomp and circumstance. They were the conquering heroes, even before the game began. And they would meet their opponents on the field itself. Typically, right along the line between first base and home. So, that’s the main part of the audience. Those are the best seats right there. And so, that’s where they would face, and it was very regimented, almost choreographed way of starting the game. They would shake hands. They would thank them – each other for coming, extol the virtues of the other team. There was a lot of talking before baseball got started. Alright?

And – and at this point in time, the whole idea was the crowds are starting to gather round, they’re going to sit down, pull out their picnic lunches. It was a very informal affair. And it was definitely something that the entire community got themselves involved in.

One other thing I always like to point out is that there were always, always, always home rules. No matter where you came from, you played by the rules of the hosting club. And this was often a result of the fact that they’re playing in very unregulated spaces. The Waukesha Diamonds, for example, played right next to a quarry. And so, they were stopping games every other inning because someone was batting the ball into the quarry. And so, obviously if the ball went into the quarry, you’re not going to make it a triple play or something like that, or a grand slam. No one’s going to go all the way around the bases. So, they’re going to regulate the way that would work. And so, that always ended up for a little bit of light hilarity in every game as both people adjusted to the rules that they’re playing with.

One thing I always also like to point out is that these games were actually very high scoring. This is just in a couple of examples –

[slide titled – Exceptional Game Scores – featuring a slide with two columns on labelled Victors and a second labelled Vanquished and then under the names and the scores from each match –
Sussex Baseball Club – 52, Menomonee Falls Wide Awakes – 31; Big Bend Fire Flies – 49, Waukesha White Stockings – 35; Delafield Stars – 47, Oconomowoc Base Ball Club – 41; Waukesha Diamonds – 34, Delafield Stars – 25; Lisbon Base Ball Nine – 64, Menomonee Base Ball And Cricket Club – 46]

– from the Waukesha area. Again, that’s where the Waukesha Diamonds, which our team is based off of and where my specialty is. If you look here, we have the Sussex Baseball Club, 52, against the Wide Awakes, 31. Or down here, Lisbon Base Ball Nine, 64, against Menomonee, 46. So, what we’re seeing here is not what we would consider typical baseball scores. This is more of what we would affiliate with football scores of today. And that’s a result of, again, the underhanded pitching, the ability to wait to swing whenever you wanted to, and the – the interesting ground rules that would occur on the field. So, again, very, very high scores.

And once the game was concluded –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– festivities weren’t over. This is an – this is an image that comes from further out West, but it gives you the right idea.

[slide featuring a black and white photo of two baseball teams taken on the steps of the Arlington Hotel]

Basically, once it was over, the two baseball teams, no matter who won or lost, would both retire together to some appointed location. And they would feast, and they would drink in true Wisconsin fashion. Okay?

And there’s a couple of reasons for that. Well, the first one is, remember the veneer of civility that we want to keep? That gentlemanly conduct? Well, let’s say that we had a really intense game. It was real close going back and forth, or you’re really walloping the other team and they’re not so happy about it. Well, that gentility slips a little bit, and maybe you’re kind of discreetly calling each other names or whatever else. That’s a problem because all the sudden this facade that we put up –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– this image that we want baseball to be like, has got cracks in it. And so, what do you do to a sore – if you’re a sore winner or sore loser? What do you do? You take the other guy out and you buy him a beer. And that’s exactly what they would do. And that would try and kind of just mend the holes and maintain that fraternity of baseball. And so, that was a major part – and so, that was a major part of it too. Not only was it celebrating the sport, but it’s celebrating each other and trying to make it so that we’re gonna kind of iron over any of the old issues that we might have had. And it’s also kind of nice for the guys who lost to have at least something to compensate them for their trip because remember they’re walk – theyre walking many miles or going by wagon or horseback, and that’s not the most comfortable by any stretch.

That’s not to say, though, that despite all of these efforts, there wasn’t their share of ruffled feathers. This first one is from the Waukesha Freeman –

[slide titled – Ruffled Feathers – featuring two newspaper quotes – one from the Waukesha Freeman, July 12, 1877 – The Oconomowoc Local still pretends to believe that there were nothing but loafers to witness the ball play. None are so blind as those who cannot see. The Local is as much mistaken as Don Quixote when he charged on the row of windmills. And a second quote from the Waukesha Plaindealer, August 29, 1871 – Their (the Waukesha White Stockings) conduct was low, mean and contemptable; and the boys in the Reform School, had they been there, would have blushed for shame.]

– in July of 18 – 1877. The Oconomowoc Locals still pretends to believe that there’s nothing but loafers to witness the ball play. Apparently, they had a very unruly audience, and so the loafers are again those low brow citizens. But the Waukesha team is – is banding back to the newspaper saying that None are so blind as those who cannot see. The Oconomowoc Local is as much mistaken as Don Quixote when he charged the row of windmills.

Basically, they’re an idiot and they’re blind and they don’t know what they’re talking about if it’s right under their nose. But, of course, couched in the most civil of terms. Alright? And the same thing down here from the Waukesha Plaindealer. Waukesha was involved in a lot of this banding back and forth. The Waukesha White Stockings conduct was low, mean, and contemptible; and the boys from the reform school, had they been there, would have blushed for shame.

[laughter]

That’s one of my personal favorites. And that came from the Big Bend Fire Flies, who were writing this into the Waukesha Plaindealer as a complaint against the team they had just played. And so, even though they very rarely actually got to actual fisticuffs, they used the newspapers, which were very partisan, they were very partial to their own team, and they’re going to fire back and forth at each other with as –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– much vitriol as they wanted to because it’s in the newspaper and that makes it okay. Alright?

So, but moving apart from this, we try and represent the atmosphere of historic baseball at Old World Wisconsin and at the Wade House Historic Site as much as we can. And so, that’s kind of what we’re trying – what the whole initiative with the vintage baseball and historic baseball teams are today. They’re growing in size and numbers. And Old World Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Historical Society are playing a part in that, especially here in our state.

Martin Perkins is – was the curator of research –

[slide titled – Martin C. Perkins – featuring a photo of Martin taken outside his home on the left and the following bio on the right – Curator of Research at Old World Wisconsin (1974-2012). Founder of the Eagle Diamonds Historic Base Ball Club. Created the team as a part of his personal mission to To go deeper and understand peoples stories, instead of just reciting facts about history]

– at Old World Wisconsin. He started out getting all the buildings there, doing basically an entry level position, and eventually became the Curator of Research at Old World Wisconsin until 2012. And the Eagle Diamonds Base Ball Club, which I’m here representing today, was really his brainchild. He was – he used to play baseball in college and everything else. He was a huge fan. And he was always of the opinion that was really kind of setting the stage for what Old World became to be all about. Was the idea that we want to go deeper and understand people’s stories instead of just reciting facts to them about history. That’s why, you know, as great as it is for me to be up here talking to you about all of this, you guys really ought to come out and actually experience a game because it’s way different. And you’ll even see me again, so that’s going to be cool too.

[laughter]

[slide titled – The Waukesha Diamonds, 1874 – featuring a team photo of this base ball team in uniform]

And so, let me introduce you first to the Waukesha Diamonds of 1874. And this is what our team is based off of. And so, this is what the – this is what the average player in small town Wisconsin would have looked like. And we picked them because there was an abundance of research available, and there was just this really awesome picture, which you can see shows off so much of what their uniform looked like. And even though it’s in black and white, we copied it as closely as we could. Right?

Right down. And it’s really cool because, first of all, there’s a bat. This picture is a little bit longer. You can see the bat.

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera holding up a bat]

This is it. The hat. [bows down so that you can see the white star on the top of the hat] There it is. And so, that – the Waukesha Diamonds became the focus of what would become the Eagle Diamonds. And so, we based almost everything that we did off of them.

[return to the slide featuring the team photo of The Waukesha Diamonds]

We were able to piece together that team’s history through all the research that was available in the newspapers. And one thing that we found out is we were able to trace each and every one of these individuals as to where they ended up. And these guys are straight out of Carroll College, and so they’re young men. 19, 20, 21 years old. They’re only –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– going to play baseball for two seasons. These are amateur sportsmen at their uttermost. And so, these guys are only going to play for a very, very short time before they go off and make a name for themselves, start a family. So, again, they’re out there strutting their stuff. This guy right here?

[return to the slide with The Waukesha Diamonds team photo now with an arrow pointing to the team member in the back row on the far right]

His name is Bill Orvis. He actually became the assistant law librarian right here in Madison. And a lot of what we know about historic baseball in Wisconsin of this time period, and particularly the Eagle Diamonds, comes from his writings and his recollections.

And so, we, today –

[new slide titled – The Eagle Diamonds – featuring a team photo of the Old World Wisconsin Base Ball team, the Eagle Diamonds in uniform]

– wear exact copies of the same uniform, as you can see here. And so, that’s their full team. The one thing I want to point out that you can’t see in the other picture, but you can see here. Right there. See those? Pretty fancy? It’s like a blue version of the Wicked Witch stockings. That’s – thats – thats how they would demarcate their captain of their team was having – and that’s the only difference. Otherwise, the uniforms are absolutely identical with each other.

The other team that we have in the Wisconsin Historical Society is the old Wade House team up near Sheboygan. And they play by an older rule set. We play by 1870. And so, it’s getting much, much closer towards the modern game that we recognize today. They play by 1860, where you can still catch a hit ball on the first bounce, and that’s an out. And that was one of actually the major pushes forward that kind of actually shoved baseball into the professional world that we would view it as today. And that was the first major controversy was that one bounce catch. We don’t do it as this team, but the Wade House team does just to show the difference.

The idea was that by the 1870s catching the ball off the first bounce, that was child’s play. You don’t want your team that people are supposed to be taking you seriously as a man to be considered boyish or childish. And so, there’s a massive push away from that one bounce catch to just catching it on the fly to score an out.

And so, that was just the first step along a very long line –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– that would eventually catapult us towards the professional baseball that we see today that started to emerge in the 1880s. In 1869, in becomes legal to pay your players for the very first time in the National Association. And that would just continue snowballing from thence forward until today when we have the major leagues and we have the minor leagues, like our friends the Mallards, who are probably closer to what these guys were back in the 1800s.

Now, if you’re interested in – in coming to see out – see some of this stuff, if you want to find out what base – what baseball originated from, the first experience we have up here is historic cricket.

[slide titled – Upcoming Experiences – featuring a bulleted list of events – Experience Historic Cricket @ Old World Wisconsin, Saturday, June 25th and Sunday, June 26th; Base Ball – Saturday, July 9th @ Old World Wisconsin vs. The Wade House Red Jackets (1:30); Base Ball – Saturday, August 6th @ Old World Wisconsin vs. The Wade House Red Jackets (1:30)]

Cricket. And cricket is very similar, and we’ll do some Rounders probably as well. But we’re focusing on historic cricket at Old World Wisconsin out in Eagle, so from here it’s about an hour, on June 25th and the 26th. And then we actually have our next two games upcoming that are at Old World on July 9th and August 6th. Those are probably the closest ones for you guys –

[new slide featuring a screenshot of the Old World Wisconsin webpage with the Events Calendar section circled]

– and those are available on our website. And they’re all on Saturdays at 1:30.

And so, you’ll see me, you’ll see all my friends –

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

– and we’ll put on a good show for you, or at least do our best.

And the last thing I just want to point out, I want to end this with a nice – with a neat little quote that came from Mr. Orvis again –

[slide featuring a headshot taken from the Waukesha Diamonds team photo of Bill Orvis on the left and the following quote on the right – When measured by present day standards were a bushy lot of players, but dont know it. All the boys had ambition, but no money. They considered themselves lucky to be able to sparkle in their hometowns. Glory was the only pay.]

– about his teammates. Looking back in life, he said, When measured by present day standards, they were a bushy lot of players, but they didn’t know it. All the boys had ambition, but no money. They considered themselves lucky to be able to sparkle in their hometowns. Glory was their only pay.

[Ryan Schwartz, on-camera]

That’s all I got for you.