Brown University Baseball: A Legacy of the Game

By Rick Harris

This book will chronicle the history of baseball at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Brown has earned the distinction of being the most influential institution regarding baseball in Rhode Island. Fields, players, coaches are also included. Perhaps the most interesting parts of the book are the stories revolving around students and baseball games. Racial Integration on the ball field at Brown University is also explored, as well as women who played baseball at Pembroke College (Brown's sister college prior to integration of female and male students).

• Language: English
• Publisher: The History Press
• Release date: Mar 11, 2012
• ISBN: 9781614234708

Rick Harris

RickHarris was born and raised in Iowa and currently resides in Cranston, Rhode Island. Rick began his baseball research and writing career in 1992. He has authored "Rhode Island Baseball: the Early Years, " published by The History Press in 2008, and "Brown University Baseball: A Legacy of the Game, " published by the History Press in 2012. He has presented at numerous baseball research conferences, provided countless public talks, written many articles and made several appearances on local TV news shows.

Book preview

Brunonia song, circa 1900. Courtesy Brown University Archives.

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC 29403

www.historypress.net

Copyright © 2012 by Rick Harris

All rights reserved

First published 2012

e-book edition 2012

ISBN 978.1.61423.470.8

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Harris, Rick.

Brown University baseball : a legacy of the game / Rick Harris.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

print ISBN 978-1-60949-501-5

1. Brown University--Baseball--History. 2. Baseball--Rhode Island--Providence--History. I. Title.

GV875.12.B76H37 2012

796.357’63097452--dc23

2012002411

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Brown University Baseball: A Legacy of the Game

is in memory of my mother,

Katie Home Run Hudson (Priolo)

(1929–1999),

a barehanded third base person who handled the hot corner for her Maxwell, Iowa softball team and was known to loft a good many balls over the left field fence. She was also one of the most encouraging and kindest people I have ever known.

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

I. In the Beginning

II. Toward National Prominence: 1870–1900

III. Brown Baseball Continues to Excel: Baseball Modernizes, and the World Gets Smaller and Is Shattered by War (1900–1927)

IV. The Great Depression, Development of the Farm System and War (1928–1943)

V. The End and Other Particulars

Appendix. Player List, 1827–1943

Bibliography

About the Author

Preface

This book is about storytelling. It’s about people, places and events woven into a tapestry of history. The story is largely told through the experiences of thirty-seven Brown University ballplayers who made it to the major leagues. The selection criterion was a matter of convenience not of importance. To tell the story of the hundreds of Brown students who played on the college diamond would be fascinating but not feasible. With more than nine years of research, use of an endless network of researchers, interviews with family members and literally hundreds and hundreds of hours of writing, it all boils down to: Have I told a good, factual and interesting story? This is how the work will and should be judged.

The game cannot be understood simply in the context of a game, for it is a human activity called baseball. All organized human constructs are complex and interactive by nature. To understand the impact baseball has had on American culture, one must place it in the historical context of all other major human endeavors of a given time. Brown University Baseball: A Legacy of the Game should be read in this wider context.

Baseball is a social construct, something that we humans have created. Although the game as we know it today was indeed created in America, every culture has oral and/or written histories describing games played with a stick and a ball. For example, when settlers first came to America, they witnessed Native Americans playing a game with a crooked stick and a deer rawhide ball. Our game is like a good folk song or a well-aged fine wine that started out in one form and increased in complexity over time. The roots of our game certainly can be found in the English games of rounders and cricket, as well as childhood games such as One Cat–Two Cat. I will go into more detail on the history of the development of the game later on.

WHY 1827 FOR THE START OF THIS BOOK?

The fourth written mention of baseball in the world belongs to Brown University and appears in the diary of one Williams Latham, a Brown student who relates a game of base ball being played on the Campus Commons. Being connected with the fourth written account places Brown in a very significant place in baseball history.

BROWN CONTINUES TO BE RELEVANT IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GAME

With the advent of the first professional baseball team in 1869, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, the game developed along three parallel lines: professional, amateur and college. The lines were blurred in the beginning. As you will read in this book, from the 1860s through the early part of the twentieth century, Brown was significantly involved in defining these boundaries and bringing the game to its prominent position as America’s number one pastime.

This story cannot be told in isolation. Like all human endeavors, baseball at Brown exists against the backdrop of world, national, state and college history. Each chapter looks at these factors, which are primarily presented through the experiences of Brown varsity players who were fortunate and skillful enough to play in the Major Leagues. In the write-up of each player, I tried to find something in his story that made him unique, whether or not that something had to do with baseball. Within these stories, an attempt has been made to provide a glimpse of each person’s place at a given point in history so that when viewed in the entirety, the reader may get an impression of the world over a long span of time. The book could just as easily have been written using other varsity players who did not make the Majors; however, to be fully inclusive would have required a publication far beyond the parameters possible.

Although I speak of storytelling, there are numerous pieces of information and statistics included that will help other researchers. As long as I am on this earth and capable, I invite other authors and researchers to inquire about subjects covered in this book. I have much, much more material that could be of some use and will gladly share my findings.

There are so many angles by which this story could be told that I can only hope you appreciate the path I have taken.

Acknowledgements

Len Levin, Retired Chief Copy Editor, News Department at the Providence Journal and SABR

Jim Gallagher, MEd, Baseball Research Assistant

Michael Heffernan, LICSW, Baseball Research Assistant

Ray Nemec, Baseball Research and Statistics

Special thanks to Jennifer Betts, Ray Butti, Gayle Lynch, Peter Mackie and Martha Mitchell (retired), John Hay Library Archives Brown University.

Part I

In the Beginning

BROWN UNIVERSITY’S PLACE IN THE WORLD

Brown University was founded in 1763 by the Reverend James Manning, a Baptist minister who graduated from the College of New Jersey (Princeton University). The original charter granted by King George III authorized Brown University under the name of the Corporation of the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island & Providence Plantations. In its early years, Brown was also known as Rhode Island College or the College of Rhode Island. Its first location was in Warren, Rhode Island.

Unlike many colleges in the colonies, Brown University was established as a nondenominational institution. In fact, its articles of incorporation specified, Into this liberal and catholic institution shall never be admitted any religious test, but on the contrary, all the members hereof shall forever enjoy full, free, absolute, and uninterrupted liberty of conscience. (Please note that catholic does not refer to the organized religion of Catholicism.)

Several members of the prominent Brown family were on the board of trustees, including Nicholas Brown, who was instrumental in the college’s move in 1770 to its present location in Providence on what was then the old Brown Farm and is now College Hill. In 1804, Nicholas Brown Jr., class of 1786, provided a $5,000 donation, and the university took his name. Brown University was the third college founded in New England and the seventh in America, and it was the first of the Ivy League schools to accept students from all religious affiliations. (The term Ivy League refers to an athletic conference composed of eight schools, seven of which were established in colonial times. Many the schools have a tradition of planting ivy to grow on the sides of buildings. The first usage of the term in reference to a group of colleges is from sportswriter Stanley Woodward in the October 14, 1933 edition of the New York Herald Tribune.)

Nicholas Brown. New England Magazine, May 1899. Author’s collection.

The first graduating class, in 1769, had seven graduates. A total of thirty students had graduated by 1777. Because of the Revolutionary War, there were no more graduates until 1782. Of the seven graduating students in 1769, Joseph Belton died young, and little is known about him. Joseph Eaton became a physician. William Rogers became a college professor and a licensed Baptist minister, served in a Continental army rifle regiment during the Revolution and was a leader in the abolition of slavery. Richard Stites became a lawyer and was a captain in the Continental army. He was wounded on August 27, 1776, and died a few days later. Charles Thompson was ordained a Baptist minister and was a captain in the Continental army. James Barnum was a teacher and lawyer and served as a brigadier general in the Continental army. William Williams was a teacher, principal and licensed Baptist preacher.

Brown University has produced many prestigious, famous and important politicians, industrialists, physicians, lawyers, doctors and scientists and countless other professionals. Brown has also produced many world-class athletes, including professional baseball players. A total of forty Brown students have gone on to play major-league baseball.

BROWN UNIVERSITY AND BASEBALL

To understand baseball at Brown University, one must take a look at the history of the grand old game itself. Baseball did not suddenly appear in 1845, when Alexander Cartwright first wrote down the rules of a nine-inning game with nine players called base ball. The first written reference to baseball is a 1791 ordinance passed by the city government of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, forbidding the playing of baseball on the grounds near the town hall. The ordinance was passed because too many windows were being broken. Even before the Pittsfield ordinance, there are references to Native Americans playing a stick-and-ball game, and stick-and-ball references can be traced as far back as ancient Egypt.

The term base ball was used for many years before the 1791 Pittsfield ordinance. A poem entitled Base Ball appears in John Newberry’s children’s book, A Little Pretty Pocket Book, written in 1744. Certainly, the English games of cricket and rounders contributed to our American game. Direct predecessors of present-day rules are those codified by Alexander Cartwright in 1845 for the Knickerbocker Club of New York. The Knickerbocker Club is considered by many to have been the first serious amateur baseball team.

Another early written reference to the game of baseball appeared in the New York Times in 1823. The reference below appeared in the Delhi Gazette in upstate New York in 1825:

A CHALLENGE

The undersigned, all residents of the new town of Hamden, with the exception of Asa C. Holland, who has recently removed into Delhi, challenge an equal number of persons in any town in the County of Delaware, to meet them at any time at the house of Edward B. Chance, in said town, to play the game of BASE-BALL, for the required sum of one dollar per game. If no town can be found that will produce the required number, they will have no objection to play against any selection that can be made from the several towns in the county. Eli Bagley, Edward B. Chance, Harry P. Chance, Ira Peak, Walter C. Peak, H.B. Goodrich, R.F. Thurber, Asa C. Holland, & M.L. Bostwick

The fourth-oldest written reference to baseball in America is in the diary of Williams Latham, a Brown University student, in 1827.

BROWN’S EARLY INVOLVEMENT IN BASEBALL

There’s no doubt in my mind that baseball is truly an American game. However, as with most other institutions created by humans, baseball was not developed in a vacuum. The game emerged from countless sandlot games played throughout human history. Ball-and-stick games—organized games like cricket, rounders, town ball, the Massachusetts game (played with four-foot stakes instead of bases) and many others—led to our present game. Cricket alone contributed several key words, including umpire, out, striker (strike) and fielder. Rounders was played with bases and a diamond-shaped field. Baseball players in the 1840s and ’50s often played cricket as well as baseball. The importance of Alexander Cartwright’s codification of the game’s rules cannot be understated. For the first time in the game’s history, teams played with the same number of players, a measured field and the same number of outs in nine innings. Without this formalization of the rules, it is doubtful baseball would have developed beyond a children’s playground game.

By the 1850s, a standardized form of the game was being played throughout New York and much of New England. The first convention of baseball clubs was held in 1857. It was not long before almost every northeastern and mid-Atlantic community supported its own team and the game had spread to college campuses, including Brown University. The Civil War took the game to almost all parts of the country. In 1849, our old friend Alexander Cartwright traveled across the country to the West Coast, teaching the game along the way, and steamed to Hawaii to establish the game on that island.

BASEBALL AT BROWN PRIOR TO 1870

Brown student Williams Latham wrote in his diary on March 22, 1827, "We had a great