The First Baseball Boom

 

A Comprehensive View of Baseball, 1859
Lithograph by William T. Crane.

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

 

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Currier & Ives Print Featuring the Four Leading Contenders for the 1860 Presidential Election as Baseball Players.

Source: Malmö University

 
 

National Association of Base Ball Player Rules, 1860
(with commentary by Henry Chadwick)

  

Key Rules Changes
(David Voigt, The League That Failed)
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First Nine Nassau Base-Ball Club (The First Base-Ball Nine at Princeton), 1860.

Source:  Doc Lawson's 19th Century Base Ball Prints

 

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A Base-Ball Match at the Elysian Fields, Hoboken, New Jersey. Harper's Weekly, October 15, 1859.

Source: Doc Lawson's 19th Century Base Ball Prints

 

J.H. Kalbfleisch, "The Live Oak Polka," 1860.

Source: American Memory

 

Sheet Music, "Home Run Quick Step" 1861

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

 

AD COPY extract: Beadle's Dime Base Ball Players. A compendium of the Game, embracing elementary instructions in the American Game of Ball ; together with the Revised Rules and Regulations for 1860; Rules for the Formation of Clubs; Names of the Officers and Delegates to the General Convention &c. By Henrick Chadwick Cricket and Base Ball Reporter of the principal New York sporting papers.

Advertisement for Beadle's Dime Baseball Player, the first book devoted to baseball

Wilkes Spirit of the Times, May 12, 1860

Source: Vintage Baseball Association.

 

Fig. 137. Beadle's Dime Base-Ball Player

Beadle's Dime Base-Ball Player
 Second annual, 1861

Source: Northern Illinois University Libraries

James Creighton: Baseball's First Superstar
Source: The Deadball Era

Monument for James Creighton
Source: The Deadball Era
 

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Knickerbocker Nine, 1864

Source: American Studies at the University of Virginia

 

 

 

 

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Base-Ball Match Between the "Athletics," of Philadelphia, PA., and the "Atlantics," of Brooklyn, N.Y., Played at Philadelphia, October 30, 1865. Harper's Weekly, November 18, 1865.

Source: Doc Lawson's 19th Century Base Ball Prints

 
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An early contract, decorated with hand drawn graphics of period gentlemen playing baseball. Official document is partially handwritten: "This is to Certify that Mr. D.D. Domer was duly elected a member of the Keystone Base Ball Club of Harrisburg on the 7th day of May, 1866. Attest - [signed] Robt. Snodgrass (President) and W.J. Torrington (secretary). 

Source: Lelands.com

 

"Star Club" Tobacco Label. Wood Engraving, 1867.

Source: American Memory

 

 

 

 

 

 

Baseball Fever, 1867

Sheet Music, The Baseball Quadrille
1867

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

Playing Parlor Baseball
Francis Sebring, 1868
Source: U.S. Patent Office