If You Print It, They Will Come

Baseball, an untimed game played on expansive grass fields, provided a pastoral retreat from the industrialized, scheduled, congested urban environment that was beginning to dominate American life. More than 80% of Americans lived in rural areas prior to 1860, but the ensuing decades saw millions of people flock to the cities. The era of baseball’s emergence coincided with a U.S. population explosion from 17 million people in 1840 to over 76 million by the turn of the century, and many of these people crowded into American cities. When these urban workers had leisure time, many of them sought outdoor recreation in the fresh air.

In this same era, the Common School Movement prompted the growth of public education, creating an increasingly literate population eager for accessible reading material. Mass-produced books and newspapers served the demands of a reading public at the same time as baseball’s rise in popularity, so the game’s evolution was documented and promoted in print. In previous eras, localized rules for “town ball” and other games were taught from one generation to the next, but the game of baseball was codified, printed, and shared in mass-media nationwide. A standardized version of baseball spread in part because its rules were published in cheap, pocket-sized baseball guidebooks sold across the country by enthusiasts such as the sporting goods magnate Albert Spalding. Further promoting the game’s popularity, journalistic accounts of exciting games filled the columns of weekly entertainment newspapers such as the New York Clipper, written by journalists such as Henry Chadwick. The game spread in print as much as it did in the fields.

Within the Library’s collections, we have a few 19th century baseball books that offer tips to players and publish official changes to the game’s rules. The first set of rules were compiled in 1845 by the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, led by Alexander Cartwright, and were first printed for the public in 1848; the Library’s earliest book containing the Knickerbocker Rules is from 1858. Most of these rules resemble those followed today: three swinging strikes makes an out, three outs end an inning, the field is divided into fair and foul territory, and pegging runners with the ball is not allowed.