A discovery (yes, I should find better use for my time): this game of April 29, 1875, previously attributed as a home game for the Washington Nationals, was played at The Fair Grounds of Richmond, Virginia. (Boston won, 22-5.) The game of May 1 was probably played there, too.

Just back from the framer. George Wright by Graig Kreindler.

2/2 ... in all," numbered 1-49 plus "the celebrated champions of England, Ireland, and America" (Tom Cribb, Dan Donnelly, Tom Hyer). A further delight: it was engraved by James Fuller Queen. The appended ad is from the New York Times of December 13, 1856.

1/2 Recently acquired: the fabulously rare Pictorial Clipper, issued in December 1856, straddling the New Year of 1857. This was a semiannual premium, priced at six cents rather than four-- the regular price of The New York Clipper, founded in 1853. It features "fifty-two capital likenesses ...

BTW, this is one of my two favorite Baseball Magazine covers (see below), both by the monogrammed HAVB: Henry A. Van Buren.

Two days late.

This hangs on my wall at home: Opening Day.

Here's how I mark America's 250th birthday: with a magnificent feature in the NY Times, free to you. The Statue of Liberty greeted me in New York Harbor when I was 2-1/2, on the General Ballou, a reconditioned Army transport ship for immigrant Jews and other aliens. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

4/4 Now we have a certified (as far as he and I are concerned) an identifiable Tri-Mountain player! The presentation bat also was auctioned with the ambrotype.

3/4 He remarked to me that an ambrotype of an unidentified Tri-Mount player had sold at Hunt Auctions bore a resemblance to his 1880s cabinet of Guild. I agreed!

2/4 2/4 Benjamin F. Guild, mentioned in the letter, an original Tri-Mountain player and the President who told the Massachusetts clubs they were going to play the New York game instead. I had written about Guild here, many moons ago: ourgame.mlblogs.com/the-game-tha...

1/4 My friend Bruce and I were both underbidders on an item that came up at RMY Auctions: Lot # 51: 1859 "The History of Baseball in Boston", Incredible Early (17) Page Manuscript. (The item sold for $2,535.65.) But he obtained, at exceedingly modest cost, a cabinet photo of

Thirty-six years ago! I had just created, with Pete Palmer and a legion of others, Total Baseball. For this set, produced by Little Sun (thus the "LS"), I appeared--wearing a Black Yankees cap, I think--on card No. 23 in the “Major League Writers” set.

An evening contest between the Sioux Indians and the Kingston Colonials (NY) was played under the visitors’ lights at the local Driving Park in 1902. Here, from the Olean (NY) Herald, 12 June 1903.

Olympia Field by Electric Light, Murray Hills vs Sioux Indians. New York Evening Journal, August 22, 1903.

Pitcher Art DeGroff of Kingston (Hudson River League) earned the nickname "Rube" when--ca. Sept 21, 1903--he lost a game to Rube Foster by a score of 3-2. The Cuban X-Giants had Home Run Johnson at SS, Pete Hill at 3B, and Charley Grant (“Chief Tokahoma”) at 2B, whom John McGraw tried to smuggle in.

If Waddell was pitching against a Black team in Camden, NJ, his opponent may have been the Philadelphia Giants, with Rube Foster, Pete Hill, Sol White, and Charlie Grant.

While looking for something else, I spotted this just now, regarding Rube Waddell, from the Washington Times of August 29, 1903. He had pitched his last game for the Athletics on August 21; Connie Mack suspended Rube after he failed to show for a start in Cleveland on August 25.

Maybe 30 years ago I spotted this penmanship sampler ("Emancipation") in a box lot at an auction. It has been on our wall, framed, ever since. #JUNETEENTH2026

Which of you knows Arthur Markham, left fielder for the Brooklyn Excelsiors of 1859, whose stage name was Frank Mordaunt?

Today in 1944: Joe Nuxhall‚ only 15 years‚ 10 months old‚ pitches two-thirds of an inning in the Cincinnati Reds’ 18-0 loss to St. Louis. Now we have a younger MLBer: Roy Campanella, with the Washington (DC) Elite Giants on June 22, 1937, against the Pittsburgh Crawfords.

Atwater was the pitcher for the Niagaras (holding the ball in the 1867photo below) through 1869. In 1870 he was the scorer (and paid substitute) for the Cincinnati Red Stockings. He scored the remarkable game of June 14, in which the Atlantics broke the long undefeated streak of the Reds.

Despite ample assertions on the web and in books, Nate Berkenstock, hero of the final game of the 1871 season--pulled from the stands to play right field after not having been active since 1867--was not Jewish.

Seventy-five years ago. On October 3 we will mark the anniversary of the Shot Heard 'Round the World (no, not Lexington and Concord).

Guilty as charged. Invoking the words of The Most Interesting Man in the World: “Stay nerdy, my friends.”

On this day, 10 years ago: MLB and SABR placed a marker on the gravesite of James Whyte Davis, whose remains were wrapped in the flag of the old Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, draped over the dresser in his abode from 1882 until he died in 1899. Text, punctuation, capitalization are Davis's own.

The sequence:

It's National Cartoonist Day, evidently. Well, here's baseball's first cartoon litho, by William T. Crane, from 1859: A Comprehensive View of Base Ball. One example survives at the Library of Congress.

On this day in 1871, in the first pro league game, Fort Wayne defeated Cleveland. While some call it the first major league game, @MLB ruled that the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (1871-75) would not be included. www.retrosheet.org/1stGame.htm

On this day in 1876 Chicago’s Ross Barnes hits the first MLB homer, off Cherokee Fisher at Cincinnati. (Yes, the Chicago club wore fezzes, with differing stripes marking the different positions.)