New York’s First Ballpark
Before the Polo Grounds, a ballpark built for women’s baseball
While baseball had been played at open grounds in Manhattan since the 1820s — notably at Madison Square by the Knickerbockers and the Gothams — no one had thought to construct an enclosed park with a grandstand: i.e., seats for which an admission might be paid. The first such parks in the region — the Union Grounds and the Capitoline — were converted from skating ponds in Brooklyn in the 1860s. (Brooklyn was a city separate from New York until merging with it in 1898.)
Then in 1879 a ramshackle ballpark built especially for women to play baseball went up near where Bloomingdale’s department store is situated today. One year later, entrepreneurs built the first Polo Grounds at 110th Street and Fifth Avenue.
For some of the material below I rely upon Baseball 1845–1881: From the Newspaper Accounts, self-published by Preston D. Orem in 1961. Other material derives from my own Baseball in the Garden of Eden and my storehouse of baseball imagery.
A New York World reporter observed an unusual sight on a vacant lot at 59th Street and Madison Avenue, New York City. Blondes and brunettes, wearing respectively blue and red skirts, were vigorously practicing and had been for about a month. The play was earnest and often savage, the viciously whacked ball often passed the pitcher, and base running was a cross between a skip and a jog-trot. Small jockey caps adorned the knots of plaited hair. When these caps came off, and they usually did, all thoughts of the ball were dismissed until the cap was recovered. Once in a while a fly was caught in an accidental sort of way upon which the players gathered around for congratulations.
There were the usual ball field incidents. The red catcher took a ball upon her eye lid but allowed it to fall off, while she sat down to endure the ministrations of the first and second base women. Styles of play varied. The blonde captain was very tall and the best hitter. When she made a hit, she just went on right around the bases in perfect confidence that there would be plenty of muffing behind her. The blue catcher wore her hair down her back. When she struck out, as she always seemed to do, she would dash off in a nebulous manner, pursued by the ball, and usually made first as the ball would be thrown wide for fear of hitting some of her, of which there was plenty.
Batting was unique. The bat was held above the head and brought down with a force and grace that would adorn domestic discipline with a broom. When a home run was made, there was a general hugging and kissing in the players’ tent as the victor came in. The blondes won the practice game, 45 to 31.
The manager of these teams (Sylvester Franklin Wilson, born as Christian Wilson but also known as W.S. Franklin as well as other aliases) was interviewed and said, placing his hand upon his heart:
My object is to start a new thing. To develop the women of America, I am going to open a field for their physical perfection. There is to be base ball, lacrosse, archery, polo, walking, running, velocipede riding and everything. The ponies are now in training. Doctors tell me it will knock seven-eighths of their business sky high. I am going to travel round the country from Omaha to Boston. It is going to work a revolution in this country and the world. I tell you this is the biggest thing that has ever happened for the women of America.
The reporter was deeply impressed.
5,000 at Philadelphia was the largest baseball crowd there in years. 3,500 tickets had been sold in advance and 1,000 more bought tickets at the gate. The moneyless crowd outside made an attack on the fence and, notwithstanding the police, entered the park.
The pavilion was crowded to the limit. There were 3,000 on the diamond, along the baselines and elsewhere. The police, all twelve of them, could not budge this happy Fourth of July gathering, who just laughed. More police were summoned and could just get the people back two or three feet from the bases.
The baseball women appeared; they had been exhibited at a local variety theatre all week. Philadelphia had blue suits, New York red ones. The dresses were cut short to the knees and very loose. Philadelphia batted first. When New York came to the bat the crowd pressed forward again and the players were shoved in all directions. The police drew their clubs and some heads were smashed. Two woman players fainted and were carried from the field; then the rest left also.
The mob refused to retire and a series of drunken brawls broke out with rings of spectators forming around the more exciting matches. After the fights were finished, or at least interrupted, about 500 went to the box office and demanded refunds but the gatekeepers refused to give back any money. Many then simply left; the others returned to the scenes of disorder.
The police finally obtained ropes but no one was hung, the gang were just forced behind the barriers. In an attempt to quiet the mob to some extent, at least, the ladies were brought out again and the match continued.
The game was a complete farce as not the least baseball talent was displayed. Every fly was muffed and outs were made only by chance. There were at least 20 “home runs” on errors. Each side scored over 50 runs. Of course the home nine won but it was useless to try to keep a score. After the game there was another general uproar.
The ladies were a part of two teams run by Sylvester Wilson of New York city whose baseball experience had suddenly ended when he had been arrested for attacks on three of his players, all said to be variety actresses from New York. The girls were returned to the stage of the Grand Central Variety Theatre of Philadelphia.
By the mid-1870s exhibitions of women’s baseball had generally taken the form of Blondes versus Brunettes, with varying geographic modifiers applied to each. These pulchritudinous nines typically used a smaller than regulation ball made only of yarn, played the game on a fifty-foot diamond, and barnstormed their way through a legion of appreciative “bald-headed men,” a code name in theatrical circles for voyeurists of a certain age who liked to sit in the first row.
The Brooklyn Eagle called Sylvester F. Wilson “the abductor of girls on baseball pretexts.” Although he proclaimed that none of his players came from the stage and that his exhibitions were of the highest class and virtue, he had been arrested in New York for kidnapping a sixteen-year-old girl from her home in Binghamton.
The Kansas City Star, commenting on the five-year sentence meted out to Wilson in 1891, wrote, “He has been arrested more than 100 times and for various crimes, and Secretary Jenkins of the New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children says he has ruined more young girls than any man living.”
