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Cartwright, Alexander
Born: 1820 Died: 1892
Occupation: popularizer of modern baseball
From: The Encyclopedia of North American Sports History, Second Edition.
Born April 17, 1820, New York, NY; died July 12, 1892; Baseball Hall of Fame
When a commission proclaimed in 1907 that baseball had been invented by Abner
Doubleday in Cooperstown, NY in 1839, Bruce Cartwright produced the diaries of his
grandfather to disprove the theory. Baseball was actually "invented" in 1845 by Alexander
Cartwright. Although the Baseball Hall of Fame was established in Cooperstown in 1939,
the supposed centennial of the sport, Cartwright was duly enshrined and Doubleday was
not. That year Babe Ruth visited Hawaii and placed flower leis on Cartwright's grave in
Honolulu.
Baseball existed in several forms before 1845. It was derived from an English game that
was usually called rounders, although it was also known as "baseball" in England as early
as 1744. In the versions played in North America, fielders attempted to put a runner out
by hitting him with a thrown ball, called "soaking," while he was between bases, and the
distances from base to base varied. In the "Massachusetts game," also known as "town
ball," the batter, or striker, stood about halfway between home and first base, and had to
run only about 30 feet to get to first. The other bases were 60 feet apart. The "New York
game" was similar, except that what we now call the diamond was a pentagon rather than
a square; the batter ran at an angle to first base, 45 feet away. The distance from first
base to second was 60 feet, from second to third it was 72 feet, and from third to home, it
was 72 feet.
This was the game played by Cartwright and his friends in the Murray Hill section of
Manhattan in 1845. Cartwright was apparently not pleased with the asymmetry of the
layout. At his suggestion, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club was formed on September 23,
1845, complete with a constitution and bylaws. The bylaws were actually 20 rules for a
new version of baseball, with 90-foot base paths and the batter stationed at home plate.
Soaking was abolished. Rule 13 stated: "A player running the bases shall be out, if the ball
is in the hands of an adversary on the base, or the runner is touched with it before he
makes his base; it being understood, however that in no instance is a ball to be thrown at
him.'' Another departure was that three outs constituted an inning; in most previous forms
of baseball, every player on a team had to be retired before the side was out.
Johnny Kucks, a former major-league pitcher who grew up near the site of the Elysian
Fields, recalled being told that Abner Doubleday had invented the game in Hoboken. He
told interviewer Harold Peterson, "You know, every guy who ever plays baseball seriously
seems to stop and meditate about the precision of the game. . . . I decided whoever
figured out the measurements so exactly must have been a genius. . . . The distance to
the bases, for example, is just perfect. Or if they ever made the angle between the foul
lines wider than 90 degrees, there would be many, many more home runs."
The Knickerbocker version of baseball was an instant success in New York, and it soon
spread elsewhere. Cartwright didn't stay in the United States long enough to see the sport
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Facts On File: American History Online
flourish. On March 1, 1849, he joined the gold rush and left for San Francisco. During the
trip, Cartwright and his party often played baseball and introduced the sport to several
major cities. Shortly after he arrived in California, he came down with dysentery, and was
told to go to Hawaii for his health. He arrived in Honolulu on August 10, 1849, and lived in
Hawaii for the rest of his life. Cartwright became friendly with King Kamehaha and often
served as the king's personal diplomat. But he didn't leave baseball behind. In 1852, he
stepped off the first baseball field in Hawaii, at Makiki Park, and he taught baseball
throughout the islands, while others were spreading the sport in North America. When
Cartwright died in 1892, baseball had been long established as "the national game."
Peterson, Harold. The Man Who Invented Baseball. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1973.
Text Citation (Chicago Manual of Style format):
Hickok, Ralph. "Cartwright, Alexander." The Encyclopedia of North American Sports History, Second Edition.
New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2002. American History Online. Facts On File,
Inc. http://www.fofweb.com/activelink2.asp?
ItemID=WE52&iPin=NAS0252&SingleRecord=True (accessed October 6, 2014).
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