Baseball Fever: Early Baseball in Michigan (review)

Baseball Fever: Early Baseball in Michigan chronicles the development of baseball in Michigan from the 1850s to the formation of the National League in 1876. Beginning with descriptions of early communal contests, the book traces the ups and downs of the sport as it passed from a gentleman's game to a real competitive sport. Morris draws on a vast amount of material, including over 200 local Michigan newspapers and the reminiscences of early players. Through his discussion of small-town teams, college nines, and local and state championships, Morris shows how a game played for amusement grew into professional ball while retaining its local identity. But this is secondary, as the real value of the book lies in its depiction of early teams in the early period. I cannot think of any other book like it, and it shows nineteenth-century baseball in a different light from other works on the same period.

Morris begins with the recollections of Judge Melville McGee, who remembered playing ball after barn raisings in the late 1830s or early 1840s. Even in 1892 these stories recall a simpler past, and the theme of nostalgia recurs throughout the book. Rapid population growth and the adoption of standardized rules in the late 1850s set the stage for Michigan's first "regulation" club. The Franklin Club adopted the Knickerbocker rules in 1857 (a year after they were published in late 1856 by theNew York Clipper) and began play in August of that year, only to disband sometime in 1858. The Detroit Base Ball Club was first formed by young businessmen that fall and began play in 1859. The author stresses three elements that created a sense of belonging in the clubs: the rural, even pastoral, ball field, the wearing of uniforms, and the naming of the team for its town, showing a sense of local identity. Other clubs soon followed, including the Early Risers Club, which met at 4:00 each morning for practice (today's 6:00 A.M. jogger seems a sluggard by comparison). Early baseball matches were by invitation, with the host team providing the supper afterward. Squads often divided for games into "married" and "unmarried" sides, recalling symbolic contests of the past.

The game spread quickly, and in 1860 the Detroit club was admitted to the National Association of baseball players. The advent of the Civil War played no great role in the further spread of the game, the author claims, and he argues at length against accepting some exaggerated reports of games played during the war. Morris deals with other big questions in his book, notably how women and African Americans were treated in their early efforts to form clubs. It wasn't long before competitiveness began to eclipse the gentlemanly spirit of the game, and clubs squabbled over the right to be called "state champion." The practice of creating fields with closed grounds (for keeping nonpaying spectators out) soon took hold, and professionalism was on its way as businesspeople saw a way of drawing profit from games. By the end of the war top players were being compensated, and teams began touring and playing for championships. Morris notes the change in pitching strategies at this time, and the advent of the windup (in this era there were no balls and strikes). There was a postwar boom in baseball, and many clubs were formed in the southern part of the state (though some as far north as the Upper Peninsula). Often teams had a strong local association, as with the Custers in Ionia, named for the state's Civil War hero. The team's popularity was such that the team had forty honorary members, including the general himself.

After this initial wave of excitement, the game had many setbacks, and newspaper accounts often questioned the morality of players and whether strenuous outdoor sports were healthy. The trend toward professionalism is evident in the later chapters, as Morris discusses the barnstorming tours of...