The Knickerbocker Flag
Baseball in 25 Objects: thirteenth in this year’s series
What is this unprepossessing pennant? When and how— and, most importantly, why — was it made? I don’t have all the answers but , as something of an expert on the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, founded in 1845, I have some. It makes for a strange and twisty tale, and a worthy entrant in this year’s 25 Objects series.
Almost eleven years ago I published a story at Our Game titled “Too Late to Reach Home Plate” (https://bit.ly/3AtthMr). In fact, I had first written the story in 2005, for the Woodstock Times, bemoaning the fact that the great Knickerbocker pioneer, James Whyte Davis — nicknamed “Too Late” for his habit of tardiness at Knick practices — had been lying in the sod at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery for more than a century, without a headstone. In a letter to New York Giants owner Edward Baker Talcott in 1893, published in The Sun the following year, Davis had written:
My wish is that Baseball players be invited to subscribe Ten Cents each and no matter how small a sum is collected, it will be sufficient to place an oak board with an inscription on my resting place, but whatever it may be, I would like it as durable as possible without any ornamentation — simply something that “he who runs may read.”
All relations and immediate friends are well informed that I desire to be buried in my baseball suit, and wrapped in the original flag of the old Knickerbockers (1845), which is now and has been festooned over my bureau for the past eighteen years, and interred with the least possible cost.
On May 14, 2016, MLB and SABR, plus a handful of individuals, combined to place the marker that Davis had so long ago sought, bearing the inscription he had long ago penned for Talcott:
Wrapped in the Original Flag
Of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of N.Y.,
Here lies the body of James Whyte Davis,
A member for thirty years.
He was not “Too Late”
Reaching the “Home Plate.”
Born March 2, 1826.
Died [blank, of course; he would die on February 15, 1899]
I should be pleased to show you a glass case containing the trophies of my silver wedding with the Old Knickerbockers in 1875 and which I intend to bequeath to you, should you so desire, as a slight mark of appreciation of the kindly act which you have undertaken to perform. [Emphasis added — jt] Kindly acknowledge receipt of this, and I am, yours sincerely and thankfully, James Whyte Davis
After alerting readers at Our Game to this happy epilogue, I received a comment at the blog from Dan B.:
Interesting article. I actually have a replica knickerbockers pennant and an early print plate dealing with Mr. Davis. Would be glad to show them. Just shoot me an email. Thanks.
He and I settled on a price and I purchased the pennant, shown above, plus some newspaper zinc blocks and assorted papers. These his grandfather, James J. O’Meara, a devotee of the early game, had obtained in unknown fashion (Dan speculated that his grandfather might have obtained it during a visit to Cooperstown). O’Meara had acquired or, less likely, commissioned two such pennants: one he had donated to the Hall of Fame in 1955; the other I was now prepared to acquire. Might the pennant derive from the vintage re-creation game of June 12, 1939, I wondered at first … but the associated newspaper copy and blocks from the 1890s did not fit that scenario.
I had believed that prior to my own research few persons alive knew that the Knickerbockers had flown a pennant over their clubhouse at the Elysian Fields, let alone what that banner had looked like. On the other hand, I knew (1) that Davis arranged to have his body wrapped in the original Knickerbocker flag that he had been given in 1875, to mark his 25th anniversary with the club; (2) that only visitors to his home, where the flag was hung above his bedstead, could recall what it had looked like; (3) that the flag dated not to 1845 but to 1855. As Charles A. Peverelly had written in his section on the Knicks in the 1866 Book of American Pastimes:
On the 13th of August [1855], the uniform of the club was again regulated. Blue woolen pants, white flannel shirt, with narrow blue braid, mohair cap, and belt of patent leather. With the exception of a change of cap [it had originally been a broad-brimmed straw hat], the uniform has ever since remained the same. On the 27th of August the first flag staff was raised, and the Knickerbocker banner unfurled.
Furthermore, I knew exactly what that flag looked like because Davis, as club secretary, had designed it and had drawn its diagram in the minutes of the club’s meeting book for 1855. I had perused that volume back in 1983 at the New York Public Library and had taken notes on a yellow legal pad which I retain.
From the size of the pennant pictured above and its hand-sewn nature, I believe it dates to before 1910 and perhaps a few years earlier. The craze for souvenir collegiate banners began just before 1900, and for baseball pennants a bit later, but a “whip pennant” had been awarded to the champions of baseball’s first professional league, the Athletics of 1871. “… [E]ach club desiring to contest for the championship shall communicate previous to the 1st of May of each year, and with such communication shall transmit $10 to be used in the purchase of a whip to be flown by the champion club.”
From the printed materials Dan had sent me, I began to speculate whether the manuscript letter to Talcott might be in Davis’ own hand, with his fine chirography (penmanship) augmented by a crude attempt at a monogram. In The Sun of January 16, 1876, Davis had boasted mildly of his ability as a penman, stating that he had won an award from The American Institute as “the best chirographist in the city.”
In that same issue of The Sun a reporter notes, upon visiting Davis at home:
Mr. Davis was visited in his room in University Place in the evening. He said he was an enthusiast on the subject of base ball. He had been a member of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club for 25 years. Hanging over the bed was the old original worn and tattered flag of the club, which he said was to be used as his shroud when he died. In a glass case, that looked like a handsome aquarium, were stowed away a piece of an old style base-ball shirt, a blue sash with “Poor Old Davis” embroidered on it, a silver ball, and crossed bats, presented to him last September by the other members of the Knickerbocker Club, and a blue base-ball belt. Two immense straw hats hung on the wall by the tattered flag which was to be buried with him.
Those hats were part of the original Knickerbocker uniform, beginning in 1849. Davis played his first game with the club on September 12, 1850.
Edward B. Talcott sold his controlling interest in the New York Giants to Andrew Freedman in 1895 and returned to stock brokerage. He retired from that line of work in 1910 or so and located to a home in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey. Though he did not arrange for Davis’ burial at Green-Wood, complete with marker, he seems to have accepted the bequest of Davis’s 25th-anniversary trophy case and the other items in his room that were not set aside to be buried with him.
Talcott died childless at his home on April 6, 1941. His widow or her family may have put the trophy up for auction on eBay in 2005. The auctioneer wrote:
“The seller discovered the trophy in the attic of her husband’s uncle in New Jersey after the uncle passed away in 1977. He was in his 80s at the time, and had been a huge baseball fan. She doesn’t have any other information other than that he was a big fan and grew up in the area in the early 1900s. She has had it in storage ever since, but wants someone to own it who truly appreciates the history of baseball and the significance of this piece.”
The winning bidder was not identified, but I hope he or she somehow got those big straw hats which, with blue pantaloons and a white flannel shirt, Davis had worn when he first played ball with the Knicks.
