In 1777, General George Washington encouraged his troops to forestall the dangers of war and the boredom of camp by advocating exercise and robust amusements among his troops by improving all leisure time. Likewise, after the Revolutionary War, The United States government supported leisure and exercise, including original games of ball, to help the citizenry recover from the doldrums of the war’s aftermath. This period in time became the evolution of two critical concepts in our popular culture, American history, and baseball.
In 1800, the Market Revolution began precipitating a series of changes. The transformation occurred when most Americans saw more significant opportunities by leaving the countryside of the agrarian society and moving to the cities to work in factories, thus setting the tone for urbanization. The market revolution occurred due to sweeping economic, cultural, and political changes between the American Revolution and the Civil War and affected how we live today.
By 1820, The United States had moved toward the forefront of urbanization. Cities expanded into open fields as commerce proliferated. Sporting fraternities began to evolve from the simple folk games of ball into a more organized form of town ball. The Lower East Side of New York City overgrew as the market revolution increasingly drew more merchants and businesses as it spawned ball games. The earliest documented evidence of the game’s origins in New York was at a staged match to attract patrons to a saloon known as Jones retreat, located around the Lower East Side of New York City.
Robert Fulton’s steamboat, the famous New York City street grid pattern, the Erie Canal, and the B & O Railroad contributed mightily to the city’s growth forcing the games’ playing fields to be taken by developers. By this time, the games became more organized as the New York Gotham Base Ball Club laid down the original rules in 1837. Although there was no definitive nascency in the game, in 1845, an offshoot of the Gothams, the New York Knickerbockers, tweaked a few of the Gotham’s rules and, from then on, became the rules that other teams adopted.
At this time, Elysian Field in Hoboken, NJ, became the cradle of New York City’s base ball teams. Albeit two names are erroneously associated with founding the game, Abner Doubleday in 1839 and Alexander Joy Cartwright around 1845. Although Abner Doubleday had no connection with the game, Alexander Cartwright had been a member of the Knickerbocker Volunteer Fire Department, which gave the New York base ball club its name. Through an active public relations campaign, the Cartwright family claimed nascency to the game, which later became debunked by baseball historians. However, before the truth blossomed, the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY, enshrined Cartwright with a plaque.
The railroad’s growth provided a connection that allowed baseball and American history to establish a formidable relationship. In 1844, Morse introduced long-distance communications via the telegraph. These cultural and technological advances became a significant part of the industrial revolution and furthered the spread of baseball as 1845 became a watershed year! President James K. Polk, advocating “Manifest Destiny,” encouraged the population to seek, explore and settle the territory west of the Mississippi River, which led to the annexation of Texas. In addition, the US, a result of the Potato Famine in Ireland, devastated their country, and economic strife in Germany produced the first significant influx of immigration to the US.
With the Mexican-American War ending in 1849, Mexico agreed to a treaty that established the Rio Grande River as the boundary between Texas and Mexico, adding the territories of New Mexico and California to the United States, costing $15 million. However, there was a high cost to pay. Manifest Destiny, while a boon to the economy, placed a terrible strain on the Native American as they were again displaced from their land, causing many altercations. Beginning with the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Manifest Destiny wiped out cultures, negatively impacting those who called North America their home.This critical period in US History witnessed a boon to the economy with the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill near the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, California, in 1848. Then, the gold rush in 1849 brought a massive country-wide migration to the west coast through the building of trails. History of the trails and pioneers and immigrants who built and traveled them have since become forged into the culture and folklore of the United States. During down-time on the trails, the pioneers used “wagon-tongued” bats cut from the tongues of the wagons while playing ball. Members of the New York Knickerbockers who sought their pot of gold brought the New York Game of Baseball with them, forming the San Francisco Knickerbockers in 1851.