History Awakens: A Postscript
FATHER CHADWICK’s feelings were bruised. How could a thoroughgoing revision of the game take place without him? How could a coal dealer (Hulbert) and a mere ballplayer (Spalding) reconstruct the game he had imagined, then willed into being? Chadwick called the National League approach an “anti-American method of doing business” but it was not long before he accepted Spalding’s apology for the brutal attack below (which Spalding may well have crafted for Lewis Meacham, the baseball reporter at the Chicago Tribune). What sweetened Spalding’s apology was his invitation to Chadwick to edit his annual Spalding Guide, a new rival to the venerable Beadle’s Dime Base-Ball Player and DeWitt Guide (both of which limped into the next decade).
Below, from the Chicago Tribune of April 2, 1876, a scathing attack on the “Father of the Game”:
A Father Without A Child
There is nowhere in the world so sad a spectacle as a cynical carping old man who has outgrown his usefulness, and who being left far behind in the progress of events, vainly attempts to hold back the world to his place, and grumbles because his little say-so is not taken as law. This becomes sadder than ever when the useless old man finds himself placed in a position where he should be an authority, but in which he cannot even maintain the appearance of respectable mediocrity. Such a man is Henry Chadwick, of The Clipper, who though not old in years, has had experience enough to have made himself a man of respect had heaven but given him a head. For some years The Clipper was recognized as an authority in base ball, and at last Chadwick made the fatal error of confounding cause and effect, and so came to believe that he made base ball, instead of contenting himself with the truth, that base ball made him. Full of this mania, he proceeded to call himself the “Father of the Game,” and to assume much on the strength of the title. But he found an unruly child, and one which disinherited its papa with rapidity and ease. During several years up to this present, Chadwick had been in the habit of attending conventions and forcing himself on them by the most barefaced assumption, with the implied threat that, if he was not offered to run things, down would come The Clipper on the organization. By the lowest kind of toadying to Harry Wright (who was the originator of all the meritorious ideas given to the world as his) and to Philadelphia, and by persistent, unjust, and disgraceful abuse on everything Western, — especially Chicagoan, — the man managed to keep the East under his thumb, and so ruled the game. He attempted the same scheme this year, and printed in his paper a mass of verbiage which he was pleased to name the “improved rules,” and which he expected to force down the throats of the professionals.
But, as noted above, the game had grown, the West had grown, and both had outgrown Chadwick and all allied frauds. The necessity for the League had arisen, and it was formed without the knowledge, consent, or presence of “The Father of the Game, and without any recourse to his “amended rules.” Here was a double blow, for both the old man’s vanity and pocket were wounded. As soon as he came to know of the new organization, he rushed around to every member present and demanded the publication of the rules: but the wicked child put his thumb up and bade his self-styled father begone, saying that the rules would be published by the firm who bid for the privilege. Then the man moaned, and begged, and threatened by turns, but the managers, joyously free from his dominion, refused to take him up and carry him further.
Then there was wrath in the breath of “The Veteran,” and he gave himself up to denunciation in the Clipper. Since that time he has turned more ways than one not a reader of the Clipper and World would believe possible. The reason of this is easy to be seen: for some years Chadwick has made a handsome sum yearly by editing a book of rules with one hand and then puffing it into prominence and sale with the other. This pastime is disturbed and the general welcome which the League and its clear and simple rules have met is gall and wormwood to the unprincipled speculator by name Chadwick. From this cause has grown all the wrath, and it is redoubled by the actions of the amateur associations; for, when Chadwick was dumped into the street by the professionals, he took up with the amateur association, and carried into their camp the bundle of rules which he had been building. The Association in question adopted the mass of verbiage, and made the old man’s heart and pocket glad for a moment, only to be saddened again by the refusal of the amateurs to swallow the pill made up for them. The Chicago Amateur Association led off by ignoring Chadwick and adopting the League rules. The New England Association followed suit, and all the Western and Southwestern clubs have done the same thing. This is disheartening, and Chadwick has accordingly gone to work to pick the League rules to pieces with little or no success.
Without spending more words with the man who styles himself “the Father of the Game,” it is enough to say of him that he was always a fraud in the business; that he always depended on other brains than his own for his ideas; that he is miles and leagues behind the age; that he is a played-out and passed-by man who never cared for the National Game further than as he could draw money out of it; and, finally, that members of the League will do themselves an injustice if they allow his efforts to break up the organization to influence them in any way.
