The Spirit of the Times: A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature and the Stage, published in New York City by William T. Porter. Volume 3, #s 1-26, September 5, 1857 through February 27, 1858. 15x11", 412pp, several illustrations. There's a lot of very early baseball coverage in the newspaper (see below), as well as the first image of adults playing a game of baseball printed in the U.S.
Crisp copy. Ex-library, though the only signs of this are the call numbers stamped at the bottom of the spine and a few rubber stamps on the rear endpaper and pastedowns. This is really a very nice copy, bound in a very stout and workable black cloth. Not common. SOLD
The Spirit of the Times was an "American weekly newspaper published in New York City....aimed for an upper-class readership made up largely of sportsmen. The Spirit also included humorous material, much of it based on experience of settlers near the southwestern frontier. Theatre news was a third important component" --Wiki It was evidently "the only major sporting paper in the U.S." as William J. Ryczek writes in his book, Baseball’s First Inning: A History of the National Pastime Through the Civil War, pg 163
Of great interest here is the wood engraving on the cover of the September 12, 1857 which is the first image of a specific baseball game in progress, and is captioned: "Drawn And Engraved Expressly For "Porter's Spirit of the Times." - Base Ball In America - The Eagles and Gothams Playing Their Great Match At The Elysian Fields, On Tuesday, September 8th." (It seems that the first image of a baseball game in general (played by children in this case) appeared in Robin Carver's The Book of Sports and published in Boston in 1834.) Another version of this image appeared just a week later, in the New York Clipper , on September 19, 1857.
- “For the remainder of the 1850's, Porter's Spirit excelled in its baseball coverage, recording several pioneering firsts. Most noteworthy is the front page of the September 12th 1857 issue, which feature the earliest illustration of adults playing a baseball match” (the Eagle and Gotham Clubs on the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, NJ)--David Block, Baseball Before We Knew It: A Search for the Roots of the Game, page 226.
- The image is "...believed [to be] the first published drawing of an American Baseball game. It was published on September 12, 1857 in Porter's Spirit of the Times". -https://www.awesomestories.com/asset/view/First-Published-Picture-of-an-American-Baseball-Game
-
The image is also reproduced and commented on as the “First -ever depiction in the press of an actual baseball game in progress” by Peter J. Nash in Baseball Legends of Brooklyn's Green-Wood Cemetery, pg 35.
- Also, a less categorical but still stimulating observation is made by Joel Zoss, John Bowman, John Stewart in Diamonds in the Rough: The Untold History of Baseball, page 233, that the wood engraving "may well be the earliest known drawing [sic] of grown men playing what is clearly a game of baseball". Pretty much the same testament is written by Steven A. Riess in his Sports in America from Colonial Times to the Twenty-First Century...
There is baseball coverage in 20 of the 26 issues, mostly densely-packed single-column length reporting on games, scores, and general observations, the average weekly coverage being about 1000 words--so, overall, there's about 15k words of baseball for 1857 and into early 1858, which is, well, considerable.
The issues containing baseball ("base ball") reports include 9/12/1857, 9/19, 9/26, 10/3, 10/10, 10/17, 10/24, 10/31, 11/7, 11/14, 11/21, 11/28, 12/5, 12/12, 12/19/, 12/26, 1/2/1858, 1/9, and 1/16/1858--basically a straight weekly run from 9/12/1857 through 1/16/1858.
There's a lot of other material on pistols, pigeon shooting, "fistiana", billiards, cricket, "fur/fin/feather", fishing, veterinary reports, columns for checkers and chess, and of course there was a lot of horse racing coverage--all of which are a far second to the great game.
And just for the record there is a sub-series within the series of articles on baseball, the articles numbered 2-13 and beginning 31 October 1857--I could find no evidence of a number 1 even though there eight previous baseball articles before the #2.
Also, here's a report about a club playing an "antiquarian" version of the game--I have no idea what that was...
Comments