The National Game (1867)

By Henry Chadwick

[Editors note: Henry Chadwick wrote a piece for Beadle's Monthly on the "National Game." It appears in its entirety below. His article on the origins of the game can be found here.]

See also: National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, 'Early Baseball' Terminology.

THE NATIONAL GAME.

If any sport or pastime was ever entitled to the name of National, the American game of Base-ball is. North, south, east and west has it sprung into a popularity as widespread as it bids fair to be permanent. There is something beyond the mere fact that baseball is a popular recreation and the only truly American sport in vogue, which makes the subject worthy of serious consideration, and that something is, that the game has been the great lever by means of which physical education has been lifted into popularity, and through which the public at large have
been made to realize that attention to the cultivation of the physical powers is as important to the sanitary advancement of the American people as is our common-school system to that of improving their mental and moral condition.

Before base-ball was known, or rather before it became general as a pastime, we had no national sport for Young America. In the South, young men of leisure found horse-racing, the excitements of political advancement, or that of the gaming-table, the chief sources of recreative employment at their command. In the West it was nearly the same. In the North and East, those who were not content with the pleasures of money-making looked to the turf meetings chiefly for recreation, and in northern cities the sport attendant upon "running wid de masheen" sufficed for our city wants. In fact, an intense devotion to business, at the sacrifice of health, was, some ten or fifteen years ago, the characteristic of the northern people. To such an extent was this the ease, that it was a regular target at which foreigners could aim their shafts of sarcasm. Within even the past ten years, however, a vast change has taken place, and from being too neglectful of that attention to physical culture and recreation so necessary to the healthful advancement of a civilized people, we are very likely to rush into the other extreme, and become the most sport-loving people of the earth.

This important reformation commenced gradually; but when it had started it soon gained an astonishing, headway. The civil war was a great incentive to the advancement of physical education, for it not only practically demonstrated the truth of statements which had previously only been published theories of physiologists, but so forcibly proved the fallacy of many established opinions in regard to the enervating effects of climate on white people, and the impossibility of city youth standing the fatigue incident to army life, and other things of the kind, as to make it plainly apparent to the most casual observer that out-door exercise was not only of vital importance as a sanitary measure, but the best policy to increase the wealth of the people individually and collectively; for experience has shown that more and better work can be obtained from those whose sanitary condition is best attended to, and who offset work with play, than is yielded at the hands of employees who do not know what out-door recreation is. Moreover, the war proved conclusively that out-door exercise was the most bitter foe to dyspepsia and consumption—the two great ills that American flesh is particularly heir to—known to the materia medica; and that when combined with exciting recreative enjoyment to which no moral objections could be urged, such as base ball, for instance, afforded, nothing tended so much to decrease the rapidly-extending bills of mortality, or to remove so effectually the stigma so long attached to Americans, of physical degeneration resulting from the great sacrifices made at the shrine of the almighty dollar.

Base-ball is just suited to the character of the American people. In the first place it occupies but a few hours of time, three hours being more than the average of time occupied in a first-class match. Again, it requires courage, nerve, endurance, presence of mind, to excel in it, to say nothing of the physical qualifications requisite. But what commends it greatly to popular favor is, that it is a game which the fair sex can patronize without the risk of encountering any of the objectionable features appertaining to the outdoor sports previously in vogue. As a happy combination of a manly and vigorous exercise with an exciting and enjoyable game devoid of every thing obnoxious to the moral portion of the community, base-ball presents the most attractions for a national pastime of any game now known; and it is a matter of congratulation that so fine an exercise and so manly a sport has been selected and adopted as the national recreation of the American people. Let us make it national by popularizing it throughout the land.                H.C.

NOTES:
This article by Chadwick also appeared on the title The Ancient History of Base Ball.
Blaine's Rural Sports, published in 1852, London.

National Association of Base Ball Players sources/bibliography:
Baseball: The Early Years by Harold Seymour.
Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search For The Roots Of The Game by David Block.
Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War by George B. Kirsch.
Baseball (1845-1881): From the newspaper accounts by Preston D. Prem
But Didn't We Have Fun?: An Informal History of Baseball's Pioneer Era, 1843-1870 by Peter Morris
Early Innings: A Documentary History by Dean A. Sullivan
The National Association of Base Ball Players, 1857-1870 by Marshall D. Wright.
Playing for Keeps: A History of Early Baseball by Warren Goldstein.
When Johnny Came Sliding Home: The Post-Civil War Baseball Boom, 1865-1870 by William J. Ryczek

General Baseball History sources/bibliography:
Baseball: A History of America's Game by Benjamin G. Rader.
Baseball: A Film By Ken Burns (PBS DVD)
The Formation, Sometimes Absorption and Mostly Inevitable Demise of 18 Professional Baseball Organizations, 1871 to Present by David Pietrusza.
The Great 19th Century Encyclopedia of Major League Baseball, 2nd Edition by David Nemec.
Early Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1825-1908 by Dean A. Sullivan.
Middle Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball, 1900-1948 by Dean A. Sullivan.
Late Innings: A Documentary History of Baseball 1945-1972 by Dean A. Sullivan
Past Time: Baseball as History by Jules Tygiel
America's National Game: Historic Facts Concerning the Beginning, Evolution, Development and Popularity of Baseball by Albert Spalding
Total Baseball: The Ultimate Baseball Encyclopedia by John Thorn, et al.