Baseball in Gold Rush California

Drawing of the New York Knickerbockers baseball team during a practice session by Homer Davenport [Public domain]

An author asks himself, “What if a transplanted Easterner taught loggers in 1850s California how to play baseball? Would that be an anachronism?” As it turns out, no. Thanks to Alexander Cartwright, the game of base-ball, a refined form of the older game town ball, spread across the American prairie to California and beyond during the great California Gold Rush. Continue Reading →