Elysian Fields, Hoboken, New Jersey
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Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey is believed to be the site of the first organized baseball game, giving Hoboken, rather than Cooperstown, New York, a strong claim to be the birthplace of baseball.
In 1845, Knickerbocker Club of New York City began using Elysian Fields in Hoboken to play baseball due to the lack of suitable grounds across the Hudson River in Manhattan. On June 19, 1846, the Knickerbockers played the New York Nine on these grounds in the first organized game between two clubs. By the 1850's, several Manhattan-based member clubs of the National Association of Base Ball Players were using the grounds as their home field.
In 1856, Elysian Fields was the place that inspired pioneering journalist Henry Chadwick, then a cricket writer for the New York Times, to develop the idea that baseball could be America's National Pastime. As Chadwick relates:
"I chanced to go through Elysian Fields during the progress of a contest between the noted Eagle and Gotham Clubs. The game was being sharply played on both sides, and I watched it with deeper interest that any previous ball match between clubs I had seen. It was not long before I was struck with the idea that base ball was just the game for a national sport for Americans."
Chadwick went on to become the game's preeminent reporter developing baseball's statistics and scoring system. For his contributions he became known as "The Father of Baseball."
In 1865, the grounds hosted a championship match between the Mutual Club of New York and the Atlantic Club of Brooklyn that was attended by an estimated 20,000 fans and captured in the Currier & Ives lithograph "The American National Game of Base Ball".
With the construction of two significant baseball parks in Brooklyn enclosed by fences, enabling promoters there to charge admission to games, the prominence of Elysian Fields began to diminish. In 1868, the leading Manhattan club, the New York Mutuals, shifted its home games to the Union Grounds in Brooklyn. In 1880, the founders of the New York Metropolitans and New York Giants finally succeeded in siting a ballpark on Manhattan that became known as the Polo Grounds.
The last recorded professional baseball game at Elysian Fields occurred in 1873. The large parkland area was eventually developed for housing. A small remnant of the park remains, on 11th Street, with a plaque denoting its connection to early baseball.
