JAMIE RICE INCHED his chair closer to the fire that struggled to warm the Old Stone House. A surefooted skater, he had spent the morning zipping up and down the temporary ponds that last autumn’s rains had created in the frozen fields bordering the Gowanus Canal. Yet here, in the clubhouse of the Brooklyn Atlantics Base Ball Club, all he could think of was spring. At sixteen, he hoped to break into the Atlantics lineup. It wouldn’t be easy. The Atlantics would enter the 1861 season as one of the most successful teams in the country.
The door burst open and Jamie’s Uncle Charlie, the Atlantics star second baseman, charged in, a wooden cigar box tucked under one arm. “Wait until you see this, Jamie,” he said, lifting the lid. Inside there was an object that looked like a baseball, only it was bright red. Jamie picked it up and squeezed it. “Same size as a baseball, but softer,” he remarked. “What’s it for?”
Grinning, Uncle Charlie handed Jamie a folded paper from the box. At its top was a pen and ink drawing of an oak leaf.
To Charles Smith:The members of the Charter Oak base ballnine issue this challenge to the formerin Brooklyn, the Atlantics.
