“Remember: The name is ‘Base Ball’ – Rita Christopher/The Day
“Where can you be a crank that people want to see? Observe a dewdrop that isn’t wet? Call for rover and not get a nuzzle from a golden retriever? At the tri-town vintage baseball game sponsored by the historical societies of Essex, Chester and Deep River on Sunday at Devitt Field in Deep River…”
The new schedule for the Eras Committees means that Doc Adams won’t come up for a vote again until 2020.
COOPERSTOWN, N.Y. — After two years of no electees by separate Veterans Committees, the National Baseball Hall of Fame board of directors moved on Saturday to change the process…
Read more: HOF board adjusts Veterans Committee rules – Barry M. Bloom/MLB (23 Jul 2016)
The new Davis gravestone. The epitaph was written by James Whyte Davis more than a century ago. Davis had a reputation for showing up at games after the action had already started; hence his nickname, “Too Late to the Home Plate.” Davis denied habitual lateness.
The Society for American Baseball Research (SABR) recently created its 19th Century Baseball Grave Marker Project. Its first task: marking James Whyte Davis’s grave.
So, this past Saturday, on a lovely spring morning, a crowd gathered at James Whyte Davis’s grave. John Thorn, major league baseball’s official historian, and Peter Nash, spoke about Davis. Two great granddaughters of Doc Adams, a member of the Knickerbockers who had played with Davis on the Knickerbockers and had written out the early rules of baseball–a document that sold just days earlier for $3.26 million, read a letter that Adams wrote…
Read more: Grave of Baseball Pioneer Finally Marked – Jeff Richman/Greenwood Historian Blog (17 May 2016)
Los Angeles — Daniel Lucius “Doc” Adams may never be a household name like baseball’s imagined inventor Abner Doubleday or basketball’s actual inventor James Naismith. But a newly verified set of documents, titled “Laws of Base Ball,” being sold at an auction that ends Saturday, go a long way toward lifting him to legendary status…
Read more: You ARE the father: Who is Doc Adams, baseball’s dad” – Andrew Dalton/AP (23 Apr 2016)
“Modern baseball may have new founder” – Andrew Dalton/AP
“Los Angeles — Modern baseball may have found its birth certificate. And with it a new birth date, and new founding father.
Coinciding with the start of the major league season, a set of game-changing documents went up for sale this week. Their authenticity and significance are verified by experts including John Thorn, Major League Baseball’s official historian.
The 1857 documents titled “Laws of Base Ball” establish the essentials of the modern game: The distance of the base paths is 90 feet, the length of the game is nine innings and nine players are in the field…”