Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York
One of the earliest organized baseball clubs, codifying the game's rules.
The Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York, founded in 1845, was one of the first organized baseball teams to play under rules resembling the modern game. The team wore the first recorded baseball uniforms in 1851 and remained active until the early 1870s.
Quick Facts
- Location
- New York City
- Stadium
- Elysian Fields
- Founded
- September 23, 1845; by Alexander Cartwright
- Folded
- early 1870s
Facts from the source article.
Origins and rules
Alexander Joy Cartwright, a member of the volunteer Knickerbocker Engine Company No. 12, played town ball with the Gotham Club of New York at Murray Hill in Manhattan. In 1845, several Gothams who felt the club had grown too large for their fastidious tastes broke away to form an invitation-only ball club. They secured the Elysian Fields, a parkland across the Hudson River in Hoboken, New Jersey, rented from Colonel John Stevens for $75 per year. To cover the rental fees, Cartwright organized a ball club. Named the Knickerbockers after Cartwright's fire company, the club was organized on September 23, 1845. Its first officers were Duncan F. Curry as president, William R. Wheaton as vice-president, and William H. Tucker as secretary-treasurer. The club required a formal set of rules, foremost that members have the reputation of a gentleman. Wheaton and Tucker formalized the Knickerbocker Rules, a set of twenty rules. These rules mandated punctual attendance, the appointment of an umpire to record the game and note violations, and the designation of two captains to make matches with sides as equal as possible. Bases were set at forty-two paces from home to second base and from first to third base, equidistant. No stump match was to be played on a regular exercise day. If insufficient members were present, gentlemen not members could be chosen to complete a match, but members had preference when present. Members arriving after the game started could be chosen in if mutually agreed.
First "officially recorded" game and subsequent history
The formation of the Knickerbockers across the Hudson River divided the Manhattan players. According to Wheaton, the new game became very popular, and the club swelled beyond the fastidious notions of some, leading them to withdraw and found the Knickerbocker. Membership was by invitation with dues; excluded Gothams or New Yorks continued playing among themselves. What was long considered the first officially recorded baseball game took place on June 19, 1846 at the Elysian Fields. The Knickerbockers and the New York Nine (likely the Gothams) played under Cartwright's twenty rules. The Knickerbockers lost 23 to 1 in four innings, possibly because their best players avoided the trip across the river. Cartwright umpired and fined a player six cents for cursing. Earlier recorded games include a Knickerbocker intra-squad three-inning game on October 6, 1845, and a match on October 22, 1845, where the New York Club beat the Brooklyn Club 24 to 4, with a box score in the next day's newspaper. Charles Schuyler De Bost, a catcher for over ten years, became club director in the mid-1850s. The Knickerbocker rules became part of the National Association of Base Ball Players rules in 1857. When that association was founded in 1858, the Knickerbockers lost influence and the club died out in the early 1870s after baseball became professionalized. A century later, the name was adopted by the New York Knickerbockers NBA team, commonly called the Knicks.
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