A young man proudly posed in his baseball uniform in this tintype, taken in a photographer’s studio about 1880. ID. 93.144.1 |
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Starting in the 1850s, baseball surged in popularity as it changed from an informal game played by children to an organized leisure sport for adults. Rules were written down, modified and adjusted to improve the game, and then circulated across the country in inexpensive publications such as Haney’s Base Ball Book of Reference, first published in 1866. Base ball clubs were formed in many communities and soon began to challenge one another to games. With improvements in railroad travel and the proliferation of newspapers, these challenges attracted clubs, and their supporters, from a wider and wider area.
Communities began to promote themselves by hosting tournaments— as the Detroit Base Ball Club did when it hosted the World’s Tournament of Base Ball in 1867—and through the success of their clubs on the field of play. Supporters took to wearing the colors of their team, as the Detroit Post newspaper described the city during the 1867 tournament: “every second person one met on the street had on either a red cap, blue pants or carried over his shoulder a murderous looking club.”
Today, as cities jockey for the right to host high profile sporting events and we see supporters decked out in team colors—their happiness dependent on the outcome of games—we can recognize the roots of this identification in the early days of baseball.
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