Baseball
Cartwright was a bookseller and volunteer firefighter in Manhattan. He led the establishment of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club (after the Knickerbocker Fire Engine Company) in 1842. The Knickerbockers played a brand of stick-and-ball game called town ball on a field at 4th Avenue and 27th Streets.
In 1845 Cartwright and a committee from his club drew up rules converting this playground game into a more elaborate and interesting sport to be played by adults. The original 14 rules were somewhat similar to but not identical to the English sport of rounders. Three exceptions devised by Cartwright included the stipulations that the playing field had to be laid out in a diamond-shape rather than a square used in rounders, foul territories were to be introduced for the first time, and the practice of retiring a runner by hitting him with a thrown ball was forbidden. Cartwright is also credited for introducing flat bases at uniform distances, three strikes per batter, and nine players in the outfield.
The first clearly documented match between two baseball clubs under these rules took place on June 19, 1846, at Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey. In this match, the Knickerbockers lost to the "New York Nine" by a score of 23 to 1.
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Famous quotes containing the word baseball:
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—Thomas Boswell, U.S. sports journalist. “The Church of Baseball,” Baseball: An Illustrated History, ed. Geoffrey C. Ward, Knopf (1994)
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