By Kristy McCaffrey
The earliest known mention of baseball in the United States
was in 1791 in Massachusetts. In 1845, the New York Knickerbockers was the
first team to play by modern baseball rules, although it was considered an
amateur club and far less popular than the game of cricket. But following the
Civil War, over 100 clubs were members of the National Association of Base Ball
Players (NABBP). The Chicago White Stockings won the championship in 1870.
Today they’re known as the Chicago Cubs and are the oldest team in American
organized sports.
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| Circa 1873 |
One of the first games played in the Arizona Territory was a
Christmas Day match at Camp Grant near Tucson in January 1873. A Prescott
paper, the Arizona Miner, reported, “In the afternoon, an exciting game of base
ball took place. This occupied the attention, [of] both of the combatants,
until one o’clock, when the welcome call to dinner was wafted to our ears, and
readily responded to.”
Baseball became a holiday fixture (Fourth of July and
Christmas Day) for many young communities in the Arizona Territory in the
1870’s and early 1880’s. Matches tended to be played in the winter or early
spring, with Christmas an especially favorite day for the sport.
On April 10, 1887, the Phoenix baseball club, with a number
of its players from Ft. McDowell, played Fort Lowell from Tucson at the
territorial fairgrounds with an audience of around 200 people (back then, fans
were nicknamed ‘kranks’). A severe wind and sand storm delayed the match for
half an hour and blowing sand remained a problem during the first few innings.
The Phoenicians, outfitted with “considerable good material here in ball
tossers” defeated the “boys in blue” 14-7. At one point in the eighth inning,
the crowd surrounding the field made so much noise that the local players
couldn’t hear their coaches’ directions and instead of scoring a possible three
runs, only marked a single tally.
By 1900, amateur football had become popular and replaced
baseball as the traditional game played on Thanksgiving and Christmas.
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