Abstract: Another Father of Baseball Review by Jim Kaplan Father of Baseball: Biography of Henry Chadwick. Andrew J. Schiff. McFarland & Company, Inc., 2008, 268 pp., $29.95 (paper).Begun as five-page paper at Brooklyn College that was praised by his Pulitzer Prize-winning professor Edwin Burrows, then expanded into an 85-page Masters thesis at SUNY Albany, Andrew Schiff 's work now emerges as full-blown, authoritative biography of the man who sparked cultural revolution in America that changed the face of his adopted country and revolutionized sports throughout the world.Alas, baseball was not an easy sell in an agrarian society that considered farming to be exercise enough. Enter Chadwick, who had immigrated with his parents shortly before his 13th birthday on September 21, 1837. The son of radical journalist who endorsed the French Revolution, young Henry was talented musician as well as scientist (he was published in Scientific American). Among his numerous skills and interests, however, it was sportswriting that he settled on as profession.One afternoon in the fall of 1856, Chadwick was leaving cricket match he was covering when he came upon baseball game at Elysian Fields, New Jersey. He immediately sensed that the game's greater speed made it perfect for Americans. Chadwick wrote: Americans do not care to dawdle over sleep-inspiring game all through the heat of June or July day. What they do, they want to do in hurry. In baseball, all is lightning; every action is swift as seabird's flight.He came to realize that baseball could become much more than national game; it also had the potential to serve as a powerful lever ... by which [the American] people could be lifted into position to pursue physical exercise and helpful out-door recreation than they had hitherto, as people, been noted for.Though sportswriter William Cauldwell had been publishing game accounts and primitive box scores in the New York Sunday Mercury since 1853, Chadwick proved more influential by inventing statistics, improving the box score, creating serious sports section in several New York papers, and, finally, writing for national entertainment and sports journal, the New York Clipper. In class-based society, Chadwick scored points by describing baseball as sport that white-collar workers could enjoy in their leisure time. But he served all readers by developing box score using numbers and letters to identify players, including K for strikeout, B for walk, O for out, R for run, AB for at bat, PO for putout and A for assist. At the time, the pitcher's job was basically to put the ball in play; Chadwick, therefore, had no pitching statistics but plenty of hitting and fielding ones. Creating sports culture by introducing statistics, he invented runs batted in and graciously credited H. A. Dobson with inventing batting average. Chadwick also established uniform official scoring, wrote the game's first guide (Beadle's Dime Base Ball Player) in 1860, and was the game's first historian.As journalist and observer rather than player or administrator, Chadwick earned his reputation as father of the game. He was held in such awe, according to some reports, that the umpires and team captains asked him to rule on 5-5 tie after nine innings between the Cincinnati Red Stockings and Brooklyn Atlantics on June 14, 1870. The standard practice was to declare tie, and the Atlantics yearned for one. Chadwick, however, ordered the game resumed, and the Red Stockings' famous winning streak came to an end when they lost, 8-7, in 11 innings.Believing in centralized organization that would supervise player behavior on and off the field, Chadwick claimed to have helped found the National Association of Base Ball Players and was at later point chairman of its rules committee. Favoring low-scoring games and tight fielding, he had his heart in the right place. …
Publication Year: 2009
Publication Date: 2009-04-01
Language: en
Type: article
Access and Citation
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot