Alexander Cartwright: The Life behind the Baseball Legend

13. “On Mountain and Prairie”

THIRTEEN “On Mountain and Prairie” What began as a sixteen-page article in the April 14, 1969, edition of Sports Illustrated magazine—entitled “Baseball’s Johnny Appleseed”—culminated in a 1973 book by the same author, The Man Who Invented Baseball. In the article and the book, the Sports Illustrated writer Harold Peterson attempted to retrace Cartwright’s steps across the country during the California Gold Rush of 1849 and to show how, as he went, Cartwright “seeded” the game of baseball, which he had invented—thus turning what had been a regional game, one confined to the eastern seaboard, into a national game that was played from coast to coast. Peterson tells of a diary kept by Cartwright of his journey. He stated that “scattered old sources can be found in Hawaii that refer to Alexander Cartwright having taught the game to enthusiastic saloon keepers and miners, to Indians and white settlers along the way and at nearly every frontier town and Army 180 THE MYTHOGRAPHY OF A MAN post where his wagon train visited.”1 Unfortunately, Peterson did not cite his sources. Peterson also stated that a secondary source mentioned that New Yorkers were “laughing as they watched the converts to the game attempt to imitate their own grace and skill with the bat and ball, such as catching the ball with the hands cupped and allowing the hands to ‘give’ with the catch.” Yet another source asserted that “one such match was interrupted by Indian attack ,” but again, Peterson provided no source.2 I have attempted to find Peterson’s sources for his article and his book, in Hawaii and elsewhere, mostly without success. As yet, there are no known sources that corroborate what Peterson wrote about what Cartwright did along the gold rush trail. Further , the primary source Peterson used for Cartwright’s journey —his diary—is apparently not original, and the transcribed versions that exist conflict with each other. And they conflict precisely over the entries concerning baseball. Once again, another major piece of Cartwright’s baseball legacy seems to rely mainly on ambiguous original sources and the secondhand remembrances of others. In describing the research for his article, Peterson mentioned a very enlightening incident: he says that one of Cartwright’s sons, Bruce Cartwright Sr., burned Cartwright’s original gold rush diary because it contained information “potentially damaging to prominent people in California and Hawaii.” Knowing what we do now about Cartwright’s involvement in the Hawaii annexation movement, it’s tantalizing to consider that this was the focus of Bruce’s concern after his father’s death. Of course, we’ll never know what happened for sure, but for Bruce Sr. to consider burning some of his father’s papers, the information 181 “ON MOUNTAIN AND PRAIRIE” in them likely involved very serious matters of character or politics concerning people who had perhaps grown to national importance , especially in late nineteenth-century Hawaii. However, Peterson added, Cartwright’s other son, Alexander III, copied parts of the gold rush diary that he considered of historical interest before burning the original notes. “But, more unfortunate still,” Peterson declared, “few of these concerned baseball, despite the fact that Alexander III was a lover of the game.”3 In retracing Peterson’s research, and in establishing the details of Cartwright’s gold rush journey, what gets confusing is that several transcriptions of the original diary exist, and these were created apparently by more than one Cartwright family member. For the Sports Illustrated article and his subsequent book, Peterson interviewed Alexander Cartwright’s great grandson William Cartwright, who was the son of Bruce Cartwright Jr. Since photocopiers did not then exist, Bruce Jr. typed more than one version or transcription of his grandfather’s diary, and William showed one of these to Peterson. Peterson was also fortunate enough to interview Mary Check, a granddaughter of Alexander Cartwright. Mary was in her seventies at the time and living in San Francisco. Alexander Cartwright died when Mary was six months old, but she said that her mother and father told her many stories about her grandfather. Mary’s father told her that his father talked about how he scrawled out the first rules of baseball in a notebook balanced on his knee, and later of how he fiddled around with baseball a little while in San Francisco. She also delighted in the fact that her...