A Stepping Stone to the Majors

 

Paterson native and Hall of Famer, Mike "King" Kelly made history both on and off the field.  One of his off the field accomplishments was "writing" the first autobiography of a baseball player.  Published in 1888, Play Ball: Stories from the Ball Field, and almost certainly not written by Kelly, purports to describe the great player's career from its beginnings in Paterson, New Jersey.  Understandably little attention has been paid to the accuracy of the few pages devoted to the New Jersey part of the story.  Kelly's significance as a ball player rests with his major league career and until relatively recently there was limited access to the contemporary Paterson newspapers.  As a result Kelly's version of his baseball playing days in Paterson has been repeated religiously ever since.

A close reading of the local newspapers however, reveals that little, if anything, of Kelly's account is accurate including the name of the Paterson team.  Mythmaking is, of course, standard practice for the lives of great men and women.  The problem in this case is that the myth obscures another story - how the Olympic Club of Paterson, a run-of-the-mill 1870s team, helped prepare four players including Kelly for the major leagues.  How this happened is an interesting and important story.  With time on my hands during the pandemic, I had the opportunity to research this story in depth.  I'm very grateful that the end result was just published in the Society for American Baseball Research's spring 2023 issue of the "Baseball Research Journal."  The journal is one of the many benefits of a SABR membership and stories like mine are also available online.  It's a long article, but a story worth reading and remembering.