Silver Seasons and a New Frontier: The Story of the Rochester Red Wings, Second Edition

1 A Game Rooted in Rochester

1 A Game Rooted in Rochester The thing that keeps recurring in my research is how significant Rochester's rofe has been in the ellOfution of basebaif. -Priscilla Astifan, baseball historian Rochesterians weren't clamoring for the Baseball Hall of Fame to relocate to their fair city, nor were they demanding that Cooperstown take down its "Birthplace of Baseball" signs. But author Stephen Fox's contention that the game's roots can be traced to Rochester did spark some interesting discussion and underscored again the city's significant role in baseball's evolution. In his 1995 book, Big Leagltes, Fox wrote: A child's game of ancient and obscure origins, baseball was first played by adults on a regular basis around 1825 in the booming lIillage of Rochester, New York. A young printer in Rochester, Thurlow Weed, later remembered those games played in Mumford's meadow, an expanse of eight or ten acres bordering the Genesee River. "A base-ball club, numbering nearly fifty members, met every afternoon during the ball-playing season," Weed recalled. "Though the members of the club embraced persons between eighteen and forty, it attracted the young and the ald." Among the beSt players, Weed listed eight names: a merchant, three doctors, and four lawyers . In those particular players and place, the essential elements of nineteenth-century baseball were already visible. In those days, Rochester was a gigantic village in the midst of giddy expansion. At the intersection of the Genesee River and the Erie Canal, 2 SILVER SEASONS it was perfectly situated to take advantage of the waterway traffic flowing west to Buffalo and Lake Erie, and east to Albany, the Hudson River, and, eventually, New York City. The town's growth was reflected in its census figures, which revealed a population explosion from 331 residents in 1815 to 7,669 by 1827. Many of Rochester's early citizens were transplanted New Englanders looking to rake advantage of economic opportunities in a new frontier. The largest immigrant group, though, was composed of Irish laborers who had remained after completing their work digging the Erie Canal. In its formative years, Rochester baseball was an elitist game usually played by the community's movers and shakers. Weed arrived in Rochester in 1822 and learned the newspaper business from a local editor. In later years, as editor of the Albany Evening journal and mentor to William H. Seward, the man most responsible for the purchase of the Alaskan territory, Weed would become one of the nation's shrewdest and most powerful political bosses. Thomas Kempshall, one of Weed's baseball teammates, came to Rochester as a penniless British immigrant and worked his way up as a carpenter. He eventually purchased the dry-goods store in which he had started as a clerk, and later joined forces with Ebenezer Beach to build the nation's largest flour mill. He went on to become mayor of Rochester and to serve in Congress. Fred Whittlesey, one of several lawyers to participate in the Mumford meadow games, also became a congressman, and Addison Gardiner and his law partner, Samuel Selden, became judges. "All these men," wrote Fox, "worked at self-bossed, sedentary jobs that allowed them the energy and flexible schedules to go play baseball on pleasant summer afternoons." In time, the popularity of the game spread to the masses, supplanting baseball's European ancestors such as cricket, wicket, and rounders as the people's sport of choice. Rochester baseball historian Priscilla Astifan wrOte that "by the onset of the Civil War, teams [in Rochesterl were made up of merchants, grocers, small shopkeepers, clerks, bookkeepers and mechanics. In spite of long hours in an office, at a machine or at heavy labor, the workers gathered at the ball fields after work, or on Saturday afternoons or even mornings so early they had to wait for the sun to come up." In the early years of Rochester baseball, there weren't any official playing fields, so players, to the annoyance of many, would transform public squares and quiet neighborhoods into ball diamonds. Initially, ministers questioned the morality of such recreational endeavors, especially on the Sabbath. But in time, baseball came to be seen as a healthful pastime. A GAME ROOTED IN ROCHESTER TI,e exhilaration ofgreen fields and pure air will supplant the morbid and pernicious cravings for tobacco and rum . .. Baseball playing would be a time for fathers and mothers...