Little Toy Robot

What appears to be the oldest written record of baseball has been found in the Berkshire Athenaeum library in Massachusetts:

Historian John Thorn was doing research on the origins of baseball when he found a reference to the bylaw in an 1869 book on Pittsfield’s history. [. . .]

A librarian found the actual document in a vault at the Berkshire Athenaeum library. Its age was authenticated by researchers at the Williamstown Art Conservation Center.

The bylaw dates from 1791 (incidentally, Julio Franco’s rookie year). Previously, the earliest record of baseball had been found by George Thompson, with whom I worked during my brief stint at NYU during the depressing season of suicides:

In 2001, a librarian at New York University came across two newspaper articles published on April 25, 1823, that show an organized form of a game called “base ball” was being played in Manhattan.

Unfortunately, the fascinating news about the 1791 bylaw has to be dampened by idiotic statements such as this:

“Pittsfield is baseball’s Garden of Eden,” Mayor James Ruberto said.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 11th, 2004 at 3:52 pm and is filed under baseball.