Intern Update: Base Ball Score Book

By CHS Intern Ryan Bachman.

Baseball Score Book
(Collection of Cornwall Historical Society)

Among the shelves of scrapbooks, diaries, and account books in the Cornwall Historical Society vault sits a baseball score book from the late nineteenth century.  From 1869 through 1890, dozens of Cornwall baseball players jotted down their names and statistics, and their notes give insight into sports culture in rural Connecticut during the final decades of the 1800s. 

All of the ballplayers listed in the record book were men in their early- to mid-twenties. Games were played during the summer and fall, and it appears that the timing of games may have prevented many young professionals from taking part. Instead, the majority of people who took part were college students. In one typical 1878 game between the Blue Gulls Base Ball Club and the Black Legs Base Ball Club played near the village green, six of the athletes whose identities are known were college students at the time. 

Team names were occasionally chosen for the neighborhoods where their players lived, such as in a game between the Dudleytown Base Ball Club and the Dibble Hill Base Ball Club, but other team names were taken in a more light-hearted manner. For example, in 1870 the Pot Base Ball Club played the Kettle Base Ball Club in Cornwall Plains, and eight years later, the players of the Muffin Base Ball Club took on the Booze Base Ball Club near Ballyhack. Most of the team names found in the record book were of the lighthearted variety, and these teams typically only existed for one or two games, with the notable exception of the Drunkard Base Ball Club.