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  • Mark Twain's Mysterious Scoresheet
  • Darryl Brock (bio)

Errata

Samuel Langhorne Clemens, widely known as Mark Twain, died at seventy-five in 1910. Several decades later, Twain's secretary from the author's final years produced a folded page of penciled notations, to which she attached this statement: "Along in 1905 Mr. Clemens handed this baseball scoring to me saying, 'Someday we'll talk about that Hartford game for the Autobiography.'"1

If such a conversation occurred, seemingly it went no further, for baseball is not mentioned in Mark Twain's autobiography. Over the years, the scoresheet has been almost completely ignored, and which game Twain had in mind or why the contest was noteworthy remains unknown. Beyond such basics, Twain's enigmatic notations give rise to a number of secondary puzzlers, the whole of it constituting a mystery which defies easy resolution.

The Baseball Context

Though bearing no date, the paper itself offers clues: entwined red letters, "SLC," together with the Hartford address, identify it as stationery used by Twain in the 1870s.2 Not coincidentally, it was during that decade, from 1874 through 1876, that Hartford enjoyed the presence of the only big-league professional baseball club in its history.3 Twain's penciled scrawl atop the logoed sheet, "Red Stockings vs Blue," clearly references the Hartford Dark Blues, along with a formidable rival, Boston's red-legged perennial champions. During the Dark Blues' three seasons in Hartford, they hosted Boston a total of sixteen times.4 Twain, who enjoyed a number of recreational pursuits in these years, typically attended games with the Reverend Joseph Twichell, who had married into the Clemens family and would be the author's lifelong friend. As Twain once remarked, "Preachers are always pleasant company when they are off duty." Twichell, who played center field on a local amateur nine, made the perfect ballpark companion.5 [End Page 101]


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Fig. 1.

Mark Twain's Scoresheet. Courtesy of the Mark Twain Project, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.

A close inspection of David H. Fears's monumental Mark Twain Day by Day serves to eliminate those dates when the pair likely could not have attended a Hartford-Boston match.6 Subtracting those dates when Twain was in retreat at his in-laws' Elmira farm, visiting New York City, traveling abroad, or otherwise absent from Hartford, we are left with seven candidates:

1874: October 6, October 23

1875: May 18, September 25, October 19

1876: May 1, May 19

Given the small number, it would seem a simple process to identify the contest in question, especially since Twain cites specific players and game events:

  • • Gone up on a fly to H

  • • Scored an earned run on a safe hit & hits wh put out the other batsman after he had stolen second.

  • • 2-base hits & singles [End Page 102]

  • • W giving A a life by an error

  • • G. muffing a fly from C which gave 2 runs

  • • home being made agst W who pitched in the 9th inning.

  • • Out to Pike on the fly.

  • • Gone up on a fly to H

  • • "Carey got a baser"

Assuming that capital letters stand for players' surnames, we find our search further aided by a fortuitous division on the Hartford and Boston rosters: all Ws happen to be Red Stockings; all As and Cs and Hs are Dark Blues.

DARK BLUES RED STOCKINGS

1874 Addy, Bob White, Deacon
Hastings, Scott Wright, George
Pike, Lipman Wright, Harry
1875 Allison, Art White, Deacon
Allison, Doug Wright, George
Carey, Tom Wright, Harry
Cummings, Candy
Harbidge, Bill
1876 Allison, Doug Whitney, Frank
Carey, Tom Wright, George
Cummings, Candy Wright, Harry
Harbidge, Bill
Higham, Dick

Accordingly, the fly ball at the top of the bulleted list necessarily was captured by Hastings, Harbidge, or Higham. In the fourth item, Addy or Allison got on base by means of an error committed by one of the Boston Ws; and in the next G mishandled a fly from Carey or Cummings, resulting in two runs scored against W pitching in the ninth inning. The letter G is not found on the rosters, but Twain might have used it to differentiate...

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