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Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War

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The title of George B. Kirsch's book Baseball in Blue & Gray is a tad misleading. It implies that the book is a history of baseball as played by soldiers in the American Civil War. Though one chapter, titled battlefront, is devoted to baseball as it was played in the military and prison camps of that war, the remainder of the book is best captured by its sub-title - The National Pastime During the Civil War. As a history of how baseball developed, progressed, and grew into the American National Pastime during the first half of the 1860s, this book does a fine job. If, however, you are looking for a book full of Civil War baseball antidotes, you will find this book a disappointment.
Kirsch begins with a quick history lesson on the origins of baseball. He claims that the game is distantly related to the English game of rounders, not the more famous English bat and ball game cricket. Rounders underwent a major transformation in America, and emerged as the game of townball, a unique American version of the game that was widely played throughout the country in the antebellum years. In the 1840s, a New York club, the Knickerbockers, developed rules of play for townball that qualified it as the earliest form of baseball. This New York style of play became quickly popular, and by the 1850s had spread all over the region and beyond. Kirsch claims that the soldiers in the Civil War helped to spread the new form of the game around the country, but has little more than antidotal evidence for this claim.
The real virtue of Baseball in Blue & Gray is not its Civil War tie in, put the wealth of knowledge on the early development of baseball in the days before professional leagues. Kirsch shows how the game progressed from being an amusement of a few gentlemen's clubs in New York, Philadelphia, and Boston in the 1850s, to having an honest claim to the title of the National Pastime by 1870. He tells how men like Henry Chadwick and Albert Spalding help to shape what the game became, and shows why their names are enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
At 135 pages, Baseball in Blue & Gray is but a brief book. It is written in a clear and concise manner, and is easy reading. Anyone interested in the history of the origins and development of baseball should find it worthwhile, although those who are searching primarily for the Civil War angle may find it a bit disappointing, as it was somewhat of a stretch to market this baseball history as Civil War literature.

Theo Logos

George Kirsch's book about baseball during the middle of the 19th century, particularly the Civil War years, is a little too scholarly and a little too detailed to be considered light reading, in spite of its fairly small size.

But it's still a very engaging book, which will inform and entertain reasonably literate baseball fans (yes, I know these often seem scarce).

The Abner Doubleday legend was put to bed long ago, as was the myth that Lincoln, on his deathbed, begged Doubleday to keep baseball alive (with a bullet lodged 6 inches in his brain, Lincoln never regained consciousness after being shot).

Still, traditionalists will find much to cheer, for in place of these legends, and in a relatively short space, Kirsch provides a wealth of information that actually does establish baseball as a uniquely American activity.

The traditionally English pastime of rounders is of distant ancestry to American baseball, more so than cricket, but as Kirsch notes - citing Henry Chadwick - baseball modified and improved in the United States to an extent almost to deprive it of any or its original features beyond the mere groundwork of the game.

Chadwick's name comes up frequently in this volume, and Kirsch provides information justifying the present-day consensus that the English-born American-raised Chadwick was the "father" of modern-day baseball - having extensively promoted the game, worked assiduously in an effort to keep it free of corruptive elements such as gambling, and invented the first set of statistics and box scores to record and summarize the action.

There is apparently no reliable evidence of Lincoln participating in or actively following baseball during his life, but the mystiques conjured in the imagination by both Lincoln and baseball almost demand a legendary connection between the two. The fictitious dying wish expressed by Lincoln to Doubleday is undoubtedly wish-fulfillment.

Kirsch does provide some contemporary anecdotal evidence connecting Lincoln with baseball. This includes one amusing political cartoon in which Lincoln and the three defeated presidential candidates from the 1860 election assume the easy poses of "strikers" and use baseball terminology to describe their respective views of the campaign. In this cartoon, John Breckenridge remarks that old Abe was able to make such a "good lick" because he had that "confounded rail to strike with".

The stories about baseball being played by both Union and Confederate soldiers among themselves or even against each other in between battles and in prison camps apparently have a great deal of truth to them - at least during the first two years of the war when the carnage was relatively light and provisions were relatively ample.

Interestingly enough, baseball was also played largely without interruption by many of the same amateur club members and fraternal organization members who had competed before the war - those who were able to delay or avoid military service. There are even recorded histories of baseball games being played by slaves on southern plantations.

Every time this country undergoes a national crisis, or even a local one, such as the San Francisco earthquake of 1989 - a segment of the population always decries the continuation of sporting events as unseemly and insensitive.

In this context, the fact that amateur baseball (the concept of professionals playing for monetary gain was largely unheard of at the time) continued largely unabated during the most bloody national crisis in American history should provide food for thought. Benefits from the proceeds were often donated to the war effort and remembrances acknowledged as part of the game ceremonies, as would later be the case during other crises from World War I to September 11.

Another thing that I found both informative and pleasing addresses the arguments made by today's pseudo-traditionalists like George Will, who insist that baseball was MEANT to be a unending game proceeding at a snail's pace concomitant with the lengthy passage of time on a sultry summer afternoon - and who oppose all efforts to speed up the game on that basis.

Contemporary newspaper accounts of baseball from this era make clear that the reason why America so passionately adopted baseball as its own unique brand of recreation - and why it was favorably regarded by military authorities as a pastime for soldiers was the strenuousness and fast pace of the 19th century game.

One commentator alludes to baseball as "an admirable preliminary school" for attaining the qualifications of a first-rate soldier because its practice enhanced "the endurance of bodily fatigue and the cultivation of activity of movement."

How 19th century baseball fans would regard today`s "hurlers" who stall endlessly between pitches and who throw incessantly to first base, as well as today`s "strikers" who pass interminable time preparing themselves outside of the batter's box is anyone's guess.

As other reviewers have said, the title is somewhat misleading. I bought it at the Gettysburg battlefield. Being a Civil War buff and a baseball buff, I thought it would be an interesting way to combine two of my interests. I expected (based on the title) to read about baseball being played by soldiers on both sides of the war.

There is very little of that, however. Rather, the book focuses on the origins of the game and how it blossomed into what it is today during the Civil War years. In other words, it should have been entitled, "Baseball's 19th Century Roots" or something similar.

That said, the author did an outstanding job researching and documenting his findings. When questions remain unanswered or sources are ambiguous, he says so -- a mark of a true historian. Lesser historians try to justify their predispositions or biases, but Kirsch does not.

Like another reviewer said, I would not consider this light afternoon reading. Buy this book if you are interested in baseball's origins and its history, especially during the middle and late 19th century. Do not buy it if you are simply a Civil War buff with no interest in baseball history looking for a change of pace.

America's favorite pastime existed in the Civil War? As a Civil War historian it never crossed my mind that baseball existed in the mid nineteenth century. But it did and it was popular! This book not only relates baseball to the Civil War but also presents the roots of America's favorite pastime. While many baseball and sports historians claim that Abner Doubleday, a Union general in the Civil War, was instrumental in creating the baseball we know today, Kirsch shows evidence that the game was actually developed in the 1840's and 1850's.

The Civil War hurt baseball for obvious reasons- the first being that several of its key players choose to drop their bats and pick up the rifle. The second explanation for baseball's decline during the early stages of war was the shift of focus from baseball to the war front. American nationalism was high and baseball took a back seat to the war effort, at least for the first couple of years. Baseball fans became more interested in how there country was doing rather than who won the local ball game. But as Kirsch explains, the game did not die with the Civil War, but rather came stronger as it progressed. Games in 1864 and 1865 were popular, especially in the bigger cities such as Philadelphia and New York City. Soldiers in the camps and prisons used baseball as a form of entertainment. The game was beginning to show its true popularity.

As Kirsch says, his book shows that American nationalism and baseball really came of age at the end of the Civil War. As the death toll for both armies began to mount, the people looked for ways to entertain themselves and perhaps escape the realities of being at war. Going to theaters, band concerts, and other forms of entertainment were essential to ease the pain. Baseball was easing the tensions of a dividing nation while slowly improving the racial relations of blacks and whites. Baseball was not considered America's favorite pastime in 1850 or 1865 but it was growing in popularity. Games became meaningful and the attendance began to rise. Local clubs became national teams and soon people in Chicago were interested in how a New York team was doing. Baseball was soon to be our nation's pastime.