The Booth Obsession

[bob_summers]

(10-25-2019 06:32 PM)L Verge Wrote:  A bit of baseball trivia thrown in: When Mr. Lincoln arrived in D.C. in 1861, the town already had two baseball teams. Guess what the name was of one of those teams -- yep, the Nationals!

Most of you know that Mr. Lincoln had ties to early forms of the sport. Here's one history: "According to many accounts, Lincoln was an avid townball/barn ball player -- games often referred to as precursors to baseball. He apparently skipped cabinet meetings to play on the White House lawn and impressed with his athletic abilities:

"We boys hailed [Lincoln's] coming with delight because he would always join us on the lawn [for townball]," a friend's son once recalled. "I remember vividly how he ran, how long were his strides, how his coattails stuck out behind."

And from law friend J.H. Littlefield:

"As a relaxation from professional cares he would go out and play ball. The game was what was called barn ball, and it consisted of knocking the ball against the side of a building and then hitting it again on the rebound. I have seen Mr. Lincoln go into this sport with a great deal of zest."

Honest Abe also routinely attended semi-pro games in D.C. and saw his fandom shine through in political cartoons.

"Along with doing his personal best to promote the sport, Lincoln's presidency (1861-'65) coincided with baseball's national boom. Civil War exhibitions helped to expand the game all along the East Coast and the National Association of Base Ball Players (the first organization to govern American baseball) increased from just under 20 members to well over 100 by the time of Lincoln's assassination."

Here's a lengthier, but interesting, history on Lincoln and baseball from a 2003 article in the Chicago Tribune: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-x...story.html

Seeing the "definition" of barn ball, I wonder if that is where the old expression of "Can't hit the side of a barn with a watermelon" came from?

Union soldiers played baseball on the large parade ground at Fort Jefferson while Arnold, O'Laughlen, Spangler, and Dr. Mudd were there. I wonder if prisoners were allowed to play. The game was called base ball there. See https://www.muddresearch.com/too-hot-for-baseball.html