But What Game Was It?

As noted, the Newark Daily Advertiser’s all too brief description of the first New Jersey base ball game raises the question of how one inning could last more than one day even if 51 runs were scored.  After all even the Yankees and Red Sox don’t take that long to play an inning!  In the same sentence is a slightly longer description (hard for it to be shorter) of a match between two New York clubs played at Hoboken.  One-third of that brief account of the Empire Club’s 21-19 win over the Eagle Club is devoted to listing two rules – “21 aces, and 3 hands out, all out” or  the first team to score 21 runs (aces or tallies) wins and a team’s turn at bat ends once three players are put out.

In 1855 the rules were still very much in flux, for example, the question of seven innings vs. nine innings wouldn’t be resolved until 1857. So perhaps the Advertiser writer mentioned the rules used by the two New York clubs to suggest that the New Jersey match was, or may have been, played under different rules.  Even though, the New Jersey players were just learning the “new” game, it seems unlikely it would take an afternoon to get three hands or outs.  A more likely explanation is different rules especially with regard to the number of hands or outs per inning.  This could be a carry over from “old-fashioned” base ball as played by the Antiquarian Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of Newark (subject of future posts).  Descriptions of Antiquarian Knickerbocker games indicate that an inning lasted until every batter was retired or “all out – all out.” Since such games frequently also included 11 on a side the stage was set for the “ten-out” rally!  According to baseball historian, David Block, the “all out – all out” rule was probably borrowed from cricket and was a feature of base ball as played in the 1830’s or in other words, before the Knickerbockers (New York version) and their “new game.”

What this further suggests is that when the “New York” game arrived in New Jersey, it didn’t come into a vacuum.  Most likely some form of a game called base ball was played in the Garden State well before 1855.  Just one piece of supporting evidence for this theory is an October 1857 report in the New York Clipper that the newly formed Liberty Base Ball Club of New Brunswick had challenged “a party of old fogies – who were in the habit of playing the old fashioned base ball” which is “entirely different from the base ball as now played.”  As the “new” game took hold in New Jersey, it probably interacted with other forms of “base ball” and at least initially, some of the early clubs may have used the "old fashioned" rules or a hybrid version.

While the Advertiser article makes no mention of the number of players on a side, some early New Jersey clubs including Jersey City’s first two teams, the Pioneer and Excelsior Clubs, used 11 players in their initial matches.  One game account actually refers to the sides in a game that began with nine players per team as being two men short.  As the 1855 season advanced in New Jersey, however, the nine men, three out, highest score wins model gradually became the norm. “Old-fashioned” base ball was not dead, however, the Antiquarian Knickerbockers kept it alive until the mid 1870’s and in 1867 a number of Paterson teams returned to the old game.  The latter group, as David Block has noted, could even be called the first vintage base ball league!