ABSTRACT
Baseball did not begin during the Civil War. Determining the exact origins of the game has been a topic of much scholarly debate. In recent years David Block in Baseball Before We Knew It (2005) and John Thorn in Baseball in the Garden of Eden (2011) both made compelling cases that pinning down exactly where and when baseball began might be an impossible task. We do know, though, that the game began to take on its modern form, or at least a form that would be recognizable to the twenty-first-century baseball fan, during the 1840s and 1850s. The establishment of the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball club in 1845 marked a watershed moment for the sport. The Knickerbockers came up with by-laws, elected officers, designed uniforms, and played a regular schedule of games. The club also began the process of formalizing baseball’s rules. Due to the efforts of the “Knicks” and other New York City-based clubs, baseball’s popularity spread quickly. In October 1845, the New York Morning News reported that interclub competition had begun. On a cold fall day, a New York City ballclub defeated a rival from Brooklyn in a four inning, eight-against-eight contest.
