Henry Chadwick
Encyclopedia
Henry Chadwick often called the "father of baseball
," was a sportswriter, baseball statistician
and historian
.
, England
, and raised on cricket
, Chadwick was one of the prime movers in the rise of baseball to its unprecedented popularity at the turn of the 20th century. Chadwick moved to Brooklyn
with his family at the age of 12, and became a frequent player of early ball games such as rounders
. He began covering cricket for numerous local newspapers such as the Long Island Star. It is said Chadwick first came across baseball in 1856 in New York
as a young cricket reporter, while watching a match between New York's Eagle and Gotham clubs. In 1857 he focused his attention as a journalist and writer on baseball after joining the New York Clipper, and was also soon hired on to provide coverage for other New York papers including the Sunday Mecury
. A keen amateur statistician
and professional writer, he helped sculpt the public perception of the game, as well as providing the basis for the records of team's and player's achievements in the form of baseball statistics.
Chadwick edited The Beadle Baseball Player, the first baseball guide on public sale, as well as the Spalding and Reach annual guides for a number of years and in this capacity promoted the game and influenced the then-infant discipline of sports journalism
. He also served on baseball rules committees and influenced the game itself.
In his 1861 Beadle guide, he listed totals of games played, outs, runs, home runs, and strikeouts for hitters on prominent clubs, the first database of its kind. His goal was to come up with numerical evidence as that would prove what players helped or hurt a team to win.
In 1867 he accompanied the National Base Ball Club of Washington D.C. on their inaugural national tour, as their official scorer, and in 1874 was instrumental in organizing a similar tour of England, which included games of both baseball and cricket. In his role as journalist
, he campaigned against the detrimental effects on the game of both alcohol
and gambling
.
Despite a friendship with Albert Spalding
, Chadwick was scornful of the attempts to have Abner Doubleday
declared the inventor of baseball. "He means well", said Chadwick, "but he don't know".
He is credited with devising the baseball box score
(which he adapted from the cricket scorecard) for reporting game events. The first box score was a grid with nine rows for players and nine columns for innings. The original box scores also created the often puzzling abbreviation for strikeout as "K" - "K" being the last letter of "struck" in "struck out." The basic format and structure of the box score has changed little since the earliest of ones designed by Chadwick. He is also credited with devising such statistical measures
as batting average
and earned run average
. Ironically, ERA originated not in the goal of measuring a pitcher's worth but to differentiate between runs caused by batting skill (hits) and lack of fielding skill (errors). He is also noted as believing fielding range to be a superior skill to avoiding errors.
The following description of a game was written by Henry Chadwick and appeared in his Base Ball Memoranda. It is typical of his style of sports journalism, and that of his time:
For his contributions to the game of Baseball, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame
by the Veterans Committee in 1938
.
Chadwick was the younger half brother of Sir Edwin Chadwick
, England's sanitary philosopher who developed environmental measures and laws designed to counteract the effects of the Industrial Revolution.
Chadwick died at age 83 in Brooklyn, New York
and is interred in Green-Wood Cemetery
in Brooklyn. "Father of Base Ball" is inscribed on his grave marker.
Henry Chadwick at www.sorabji.com
See also: Baseball statistics
Baseball
Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each. The aim is to score runs by hitting a thrown ball with a bat and touching a series of four bases arranged at the corners of a ninety-foot diamond...
," was a sportswriter, baseball statistician
Baseball statistics
Statistics play an important role in summarizing baseball performance and evaluating players in the sport.Since the flow of a baseball game has natural breaks to it, and normally players act individually rather than performing in clusters, the sport lends itself to easy record-keeping and statistics...
and historian
History
History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
.
Biography
Born in ExeterExeter
Exeter is a historic city in Devon, England. It lies within the ceremonial county of Devon, of which it is the county town as well as the home of Devon County Council. Currently the administrative area has the status of a non-metropolitan district, and is therefore under the administration of the...
, England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
, and raised on cricket
Cricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
, Chadwick was one of the prime movers in the rise of baseball to its unprecedented popularity at the turn of the 20th century. Chadwick moved to Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
with his family at the age of 12, and became a frequent player of early ball games such as rounders
Rounders
Rounders is a game played between two teams of either gender. The game originated in England where it was played in Tudor times. Rounders is a striking and fielding team game that involves hitting a small, hard, leather-cased ball with a round wooden, plastic or metal bat. The players score by...
. He began covering cricket for numerous local newspapers such as the Long Island Star. It is said Chadwick first came across baseball in 1856 in New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
as a young cricket reporter, while watching a match between New York's Eagle and Gotham clubs. In 1857 he focused his attention as a journalist and writer on baseball after joining the New York Clipper, and was also soon hired on to provide coverage for other New York papers including the Sunday Mecury
Sunday Mercury (New York)
The Sunday Mercury was a weekly Sunday newspaper published in New York City that grew to become the highest-circulation weekly newspaper in the United States at its peak...
. A keen amateur statistician
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
and professional writer, he helped sculpt the public perception of the game, as well as providing the basis for the records of team's and player's achievements in the form of baseball statistics.
Chadwick edited The Beadle Baseball Player, the first baseball guide on public sale, as well as the Spalding and Reach annual guides for a number of years and in this capacity promoted the game and influenced the then-infant discipline of sports journalism
Sports journalism
Sports journalism is a form of journalism that reports on sports topics and events.While the sports department within some newspapers has been mockingly called the toy department, because sports journalists do not concern themselves with the 'serious' topics covered by the news desk, sports...
. He also served on baseball rules committees and influenced the game itself.
In his 1861 Beadle guide, he listed totals of games played, outs, runs, home runs, and strikeouts for hitters on prominent clubs, the first database of its kind. His goal was to come up with numerical evidence as that would prove what players helped or hurt a team to win.
In 1867 he accompanied the National Base Ball Club of Washington D.C. on their inaugural national tour, as their official scorer, and in 1874 was instrumental in organizing a similar tour of England, which included games of both baseball and cricket. In his role as journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
, he campaigned against the detrimental effects on the game of both alcohol
Alcoholic beverage
An alcoholic beverage is a drink containing ethanol, commonly known as alcohol. Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits. They are legally consumed in most countries, and over 100 countries have laws regulating their production, sale, and consumption...
and gambling
Gambling
Gambling is the wagering of money or something of material value on an event with an uncertain outcome with the primary intent of winning additional money and/or material goods...
.
Despite a friendship with Albert Spalding
Albert Spalding
Albert Goodwill Spalding was a professional baseball player, manager and co-founder of A.G. Spalding sporting goods company.-Biography:...
, Chadwick was scornful of the attempts to have Abner Doubleday
Abner Doubleday
Abner Doubleday was a career United States Army officer and Union general in the American Civil War. He fired the first shot in defense of Fort Sumter, the opening battle of the war, and had a pivotal role in the early fighting at the Battle of Gettysburg. Gettysburg was his finest hour, but his...
declared the inventor of baseball. "He means well", said Chadwick, "but he don't know".
Box score (baseball)
In baseball, the statistical summary of a game is reported in a box score. An abbreviated version of the box score, duplicated from the field scoreboard, is the line score...
(which he adapted from the cricket scorecard) for reporting game events. The first box score was a grid with nine rows for players and nine columns for innings. The original box scores also created the often puzzling abbreviation for strikeout as "K" - "K" being the last letter of "struck" in "struck out." The basic format and structure of the box score has changed little since the earliest of ones designed by Chadwick. He is also credited with devising such statistical measures
Baseball statistics
Statistics play an important role in summarizing baseball performance and evaluating players in the sport.Since the flow of a baseball game has natural breaks to it, and normally players act individually rather than performing in clusters, the sport lends itself to easy record-keeping and statistics...
as batting average
Batting average
Batting average is a statistic in both cricket and baseball that measures the performance of cricket batsmen and baseball hitters. The two statistics are related in that baseball averages are directly descended from the concept of cricket averages.- Cricket :...
and earned run average
Earned run average
In baseball statistics, earned run average is the mean of earned runs given up by a pitcher per nine innings pitched. It is determined by dividing the number of earned runs allowed by the number of innings pitched and multiplying by nine...
. Ironically, ERA originated not in the goal of measuring a pitcher's worth but to differentiate between runs caused by batting skill (hits) and lack of fielding skill (errors). He is also noted as believing fielding range to be a superior skill to avoiding errors.
The following description of a game was written by Henry Chadwick and appeared in his Base Ball Memoranda. It is typical of his style of sports journalism, and that of his time:
- A Base Ball tourney had been held in Chicago on July 4, 1867, in which the Excelsiors of that city and the Forest City Club, of Rockford, had been the leading contestants. The former had defeated the Forest City nine in two games, by the very close scores of 45-41 in one, and 28-25 in another, when the Forest Citys were invited to meet the Nationals at Chicago on July 25th, a day which proved the most notable of the tour. The contest took place at Dexter Park, before a vast crowd of spectators, the majority of whom looked to see the Nationals have almost a walk-over. In the game A. G. SpaldingAlbert SpaldingAlbert Goodwill Spalding was a professional baseball player, manager and co-founder of A.G. Spalding sporting goods company.-Biography:...
was pitcher and Ross BarnesRoss BarnesCharles Roscoe Barnes was one of the stars of baseball's National Association and the early National League , playing second base and shortstop. He played for the dominant Boston Red Stockings teams of the early 1870s, along with Albert Spalding, Cal McVey, George Wright, Harry Wright, Jim...
shortstop for the Forest City nine; these two afterwards becoming famous as star players of the Boston professional team of the early seventies. Williams was pitcher for the Nationals and Frank Norton catcher. The Nationals took the lead in the first innings by 3 to 2; but in the next two innings they added but five runs to their score, while the Forest Citys added thirteen to theirs, thereby taking the lead by a score of fifteen to eight, to the great surprise of the crowd and the delight of the Rockfords. The Nationals tried hard to recover the lost ground. The final result, however, was the success of the Forest Citys by a score of 29 to 23 in a nine innings game, twice interrupted by rain.
For his contributions to the game of Baseball, he was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame
National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum
The National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum is an American history museum and hall of fame, located at 25 Main Street in Cooperstown, New York, operated by private interests serving as the central point for the study of the history of baseball in the United States and beyond, the display of...
by the Veterans Committee in 1938
Baseball Hall of Fame balloting, 1938
The 1938 elections to select inductees to the Baseball Hall of Fame were conducted along much the same lines as the 1937 vote. Toward the goal of 10 initial inductees from the 20th century, 8 had now been selected; members of the Baseball Writers Association of America were once again given...
.
Chadwick was the younger half brother of Sir Edwin Chadwick
Edwin Chadwick
Sir Edwin Chadwick KCB was an English social reformer, noted for his work to reform the Poor Laws and improve sanitary conditions and public health...
, England's sanitary philosopher who developed environmental measures and laws designed to counteract the effects of the Industrial Revolution.
Chadwick died at age 83 in Brooklyn, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
and is interred in Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery
Green-Wood Cemetery was founded in 1838 as a rural cemetery in Brooklyn, Kings County , New York. It was granted National Historic Landmark status in 2006 by the U.S. Department of the Interior.-History:...
in Brooklyn. "Father of Base Ball" is inscribed on his grave marker.
Henry Chadwick at www.sorabji.com
See also: Baseball statistics
Baseball statistics
Statistics play an important role in summarizing baseball performance and evaluating players in the sport.Since the flow of a baseball game has natural breaks to it, and normally players act individually rather than performing in clusters, the sport lends itself to easy record-keeping and statistics...
External links
- henrychadwick.com - fansite
- Hall of Fame graves - Gravesites of Baseball Hall of Famers
- The Game of Base Ball (1868)—Complete text of Chadwick's 1868 book
- Review of "The Father of Baseball: A Biography of Henry Chadwick"