New York Knickerbockers Baseball

When discussing Baseball history, it is impossible to forget the contributions of the New York Knickerbockers.

The game of Baseball was a national sport with local rules. Many of the urban areas played some form of it, whether it was called Rounders or Town Ball, and each area had its own variation of the game.

When the New York Knickerbockers came into being, they brought a new brand of baseball to New York. This variation was much more organized and would lay the foundation of what we see today.

Jump to:

• Origins
• The First Game

Origins

Alexander Cartwright became involved in playing town ball in Manhattan on a vacant lot. Town ball was a predecessor to Baseball and was a popular game in the mid-19th century.

The vacant lot became unavailable, and Cartwright and his friends were forced to find another location to play. They found the Elysian Fields across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, run by Colonel John Stevens, and it cost them $75 a year to rent.

Cartwright could not afford the rental fees, so he organized a "ball club" that would help pay the fee. The club would become called the "Knickerbockers" after a local fire company.

With the club created, Cartwright also created a set of rules for each member to follow. William R. Wheaton and William H. Tucker formalized a set of twenty rules for the team:

1. Members must strictly observe the time agreed upon for exercise and be punctual in their attendance.
2. When assembled for exercise, the President, or in his absence, the Vice-President, shall appoint an umpire, who shall keep the game in a book provided for that purpose and note all violations of the By-Laws and Rules during the time of exercise.
3. The presiding officer shall designate two members as Captains, who shall retire and make the match to be played, observing at the same time that the players opposite to each other should be as nearly equal as possible, the choice of sides to be then tossed for, and the first in hand to be decided in like manner.
4. The bases shall be from "home" to second base, forty-two paces; from first to third base, forty-two paces, equidistant.
5. No stump match shall be played on a regular day of exercise.
6. If there should not be a sufficient number of members of the Club present at the time agreed upon to commence exercise, gentlemen, not members, may be chosen to make up the match, which shall not be broken up to take in members that may afterward appear; but in all cases, members shall have the preference, when present, at the making of a match.
7. If members appear after the game is commenced, they may be chosen if mutually agreed upon.
8. The game is to consist of twenty-one counts, or aces, but at the conclusion, an equal number of hands must be played.
9. The ball must be pitched, not thrown, for the bat.
10. A ball knocked out of the field or outside the range of first or third base is foul.
11. Three balls being struck at and missed, and the last one caught is a handout; if not caught is considered fair, and the striker is bound to run.
12. If a ball is struck, tipped, and caught, either flying or on the first bound, it is a handout.
13. A player running the bases shall be out if the ball is in the hands of an adversary on the base or the runner is touched with it before he makes his base; it being understood, however, that in no instance is a ball to be thrown at him.
14. A player running who shall prevent an adversary from catching or getting the ball before making his base is a handout.
15. Three hands out, all out.
16. Players must take their strike in a regular turn.
17. All disputes and differences relative to the game are to be decided by the Umpire, from which there is no appeal.
18. No ace or base can be made on a foul strike.
19. A runner cannot be put out in making one base when a balk is made by the pitcher.
20. But one base is allowed when a ball bounds out of the field when struck.

It is likely that Wheaton picked some of his twenty rules based on his previous experience in town ball play in Manhattan.

According to his own account, some fifty years later, his written rules for the Gotham Base Ball Club in 1837 eliminated "plugging" the runner and laid out the infield as a regular diamond.

The twenty rules differed in several respects from other early versions of baseball, and from rounders, the English game commonly considered the closest relative of baseball.

"Two of these rules, the one that abolished soaking [putting a runner out by hitting him with a thrown ball] and the one that designated a foul as a do-over, were revolutionary, while the others gave the game a new degree of uniformity."

The First Game

The new game quickly became very popular around New York, and the number of "ball clubs" increased. 

 The first "officially recorded" baseball game between two different clubs was played on June 19, 1846, at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey.

The first game put the New York Knickerbockers against the New York Nine. They both followed Cartwright's 20 rules.

Cartwright's Knickerbockers were blown out by the New York Nine 23 to 1 in four innings.  

The Game Continues to Spread

While the Knickerbockers did not win the first-ever recorded game, their rules would spread. The Knickerbocker rules would become part of the rules of the National Association of Base Ball Players in 1857.

The Knickerbocker rules laid the foundation for what the game has become today.