More of Benning's Baseball

Part Two

Nearly all the information, and text,
on this and the following pages
is courtesy of Mr.Baseball! Alexander Cartwright IV
©1998 Mr. Baseball - All Rights Reserved.

Boston Red Stockings vs. Philadelphia Athletics at Lord's Cricket Grounds, London, England. 1874 A young Alexander Cartwright (top row center) and several of the New York Knickerbockers pose for a photograph in the late 1840's. Cartwright's rules and regulations changed baseball from a simple children's game to a game that adults could play. in 1845 he, along with members of his New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, devised the first rules and regulations for the modern game of baseball. The New York Knickerbockers (left) and the Brooklyn Excelsiors (right) pose for a portrait in 1858. The gentleman in the middle with the top-hat was the umpire. Cartwright gave us the baseball diamond and specified the distance between the bases (a measurement that we still use now) ... he did away with the practice of hitting the runner with the ball to achieve an out and replaced this with either tagging the runner with the ball or getting it to the base ahead of him.. he specified the number of players on the field and invented the position of shortstop... he decided there would be three outs per side and the ball would be considered foul if knocked out of the ninety degree quadrant of the field... And these were just some of the things that Cartwright included when he wrote out baseball's first standardized set of rules. Abner Doubleday Abner Doubleday was not interested at that time, either. Or so it is said. Anyway, he still was not a part of Baseball.