NYU Librarian Finds
Early “Base Ball” Reference
A New York University librarian may have pushed back the date when baseball was first played in the United States with the discovery of two newspaper articles.
George A. Thompson Jr., an English, linguistics, and comparative literature librarian (as well as a baseball fan whose pastime is searching old newspapers for items on early New York City life), first found an article in the April 25, 1823 National Advocate. Written by a person who identified himself as “A Spectator,” the news item revealed that an organized form of a game called “base ball” was being played in Manhattan, in what is today Greenwich Village. The same day, the New York Gazette and General Advertiser carried a one-paragraph item saying it had “received a communication [presumably from the same person] in favor of the manly exercise of base ball.”
Thompson told the July 8 New York Times that the articles, recognized by the Baseball Hall of Fame as representing at least a very early reference to the game, offered no explanation of what “base ball” was. “They took it for granted that people would understand what it was all about,” he said.
The New York Knickerbockers have traditionally been credited with playing the first organized baseball game in America in 1845 or 1846.
Posted July 16, 2001.
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