Hearing a Call

One of the reasons that I went to the nineteenth century baseball conference in Cooperstown is that I thought it would be important to meet others working in the field. The whole conference was very worthwhile and I did get to meet a number of other people ,some of whom have done a great deal of impressive work. An unexpected side light to all of that was a clear message about a book that I need to write.

Over lunch a number of us were talking about our research interests and I mentioned that I was working on a number of New Jersey team histories for the pioneer project (1855-1868). Another person mentioned that he was working on the Nationals of Washington D.C., one of the premiere teams of that era. I commented that they had come to New Jersey at one point to play the Irvington club. He responded by saying, "I bet we won," as graciously as possible, I said "As a matter of fact, you didn't." That led into my telling a little bit of the famous story of how the Irvington team conned the noted Brooklyn Atlantics to visit them early in 1866 and handed them their first defeat in three years and 43 matches. A somewhat controversial club, the Irvingtons were a dominant team in 1866 and 1867 before two of their players went on to join the famous Cincinnati Redstockings.

This reminded me again of how little is known of New Jersey history. Besides providing one of the first regular venues for baseball (Elysian Fields in Hoboken), New Jersey teams played a significant part in the games early days. Yet as this example testifies, someone knowledgeable about the field didn't seem to consider the possibility that a New Jersey team could pose a real threat to another prominent team.

As I have written before, the fault lies here in New Jersey, if we don't tell our own history who will. As soon as that exchange took place it was clear to me that this was a call, that I need to write this book about early baseball in New Jersey. Exactly where it falls in the scheme of things remains to be seen, but my work for the pioneer project gives me something of a framework. I am also working on the Protoball project which is an attempt to compile a record of all baseball games played before 1861 - continued work on that can help provide the research material for that period of the book.

Yesterday as I was thinking about this post, John Thorn, a noted baseball historian, proposed on the nineteenth century e-mail list that everyone submit their nominations on the greatest games of the nineteenth century. I wasn't the first to respond, but I was pretty quick in getting out the Irvington's famous victory over the Atlantic plus two important games played by the Eureka club of Newark. I am going to do my best to be a voice for New Jersey in this arena.