"Balancing your books"

Early in Charles Dickens' holiday classic, A Christmas Carol, Ebeneezer Scrooge gives a scathing denunciation of the impending holiday including a proclamation that Christmas is little more than "a time for balancing your books and having every item in 'em through a dozen of months presented dead against you."  Scrooge (before the ghosts) is, of course, hardly a good role model for almost anything unless it's being a great, bad example.  But there is, however, something in the idea that Christmas coming so close to the end of the calendar year is a time for looking back for at least some degree of self-evaluation.  Or so it is again with this blog, begun, it is more than a little hard to believe, almost eight years ago in February of 2012.  A year ago at this time, my state of mind was somewhere between satisfaction, not to mention relief, that Charles Ebbets: The Man Behind the Dodgers and Brooklyn's Beloved Ballpark had been published in late November and the stress of trying to finish another project, a history of early New Jersey base ball.

Scrooge's complaints about Christmas in the original manuscript

That book - A Cradle of the National Pastime: New Jersey Baseball 1855 to 1880, was finished in early April, but the stress didn't end there as the next two months were spent finishing my role as a guest curator at Morven Museum and Garden on an exhibit which took the story from 1855 through 1915.  In the end, I was very pleased with both the book and the exhibit and the latter must have had some appeal as over 9000 people visited the museum during the exhibit's six month life.   From my perspective anyway it feels like 2019 saw some real progress in telling and preserving the story of the important part New Jersey played in early baseball.  The year also saw some very welcome and appreciated recognition for the Ebbets book in the form of the Ron Gabriel award for the best research on the Brooklyn Dodgers.  It's especially gratifying to receive this award for the second time after being honored along with Paul Zinn for Ebbets Field: Essays and Memories of Brooklyn's Historic Ballpark back in 2014.  And just to be sure I didn't have too much time on my hands there were also a number of lectures at different locations ranging from New York City to as far south as Cape May (hard to be any further south in New Jersey than that).

Morven Museum and Garden

On top of all this has been this blog and, if I'm being honest which is a good idea at this time of year, I'll admit it's been difficult to keep all those writing balls in the air at the same time.  I started the blog as way to write about early New Jersey base ball because how to do it effectively in book form wasn't clear to me.  Gradually the blog's focus broadened into other areas of baseball history especially the Deadball Era and the Brooklyn Dodgers.  It was never my intent however to use the blog to write about vintage base ball in general and the Flemington Neshanock in particular, it just evolved, but I'm glad it did.  Over the past ten years, I've watched (and since I don't play, I do watch) well over 300 vintage games which has given me a broader perspective on nineteenth century base ball and the opportunity to go back and forth between watching and researching.  As far as I can tell the bulk of the reading audience for the blog  is the vintage base ball community which means, I hope, that the approach is at least of some interest.

Historical Society of Princeton

Understandably, the future is much harder to predict.  Eight years is a long time to do almost anything and there are times when I think it's time to wind up A Manly Pastime.  I'm committed, however, to continuing to write about the Neshanock, our matches, opponents and the world of vintage base ball so at the very least that will continue.  There also times when I think I've said all I have to say about early New Jersey base ball, but I continue to find stories that are both interesting and deserve to be told which can also be said about the Brooklyn Dodgers and Charles Ebbets.  I do feel at this point that I've written enough books (five) and while that's not a final decision, it feels pretty close.  From opening research to publication is at least a two-three year process and at 73, it doesn't feel like a good investment of time.   Probably the best approach, however, is just to let things evolve which seems to have worked pretty well for baseball.  It's not clear when the first 2020 post will appear, but in the meantime, thanks to all those who have taken the time to read this blog - you have no idea how much it means when someone comments on a post.  "And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God bless Us, Every One!"