The Irish standard., 1886-09-04
FATHER OF BASEBALL.
The Career OF the Chief Promoter
of the National Game.
Henry Chadwick's Interesting Work in
Behalf of Pure Outdoor Exerciso-A
Friend of Honest Players and a
Foe Of All Corruption.
PHILADELPHIA Times. I

Philadelphia Times.l
Probably the best known of all men in
any way connected with the game of base
| ball is Henry Chadwick, of Brooklyn, N.
! Y. He is better known throughout the
country as Father Chadwick and is often
referred to rs the founder of the National
game While Mr.. Chadwick can not lay
claim to being the founder Of the game, it is
certain that under his fostering care the
game has grown from crude pastlme to
be the most popular pas time of the world,
with g. following counted by the millions
All the improvements made in the game in
it's early days were suggested by Mr.. Chad
wick. Flo was very justly referred to as
the authority" and the title still adheres
to him. Mr. Chadwick, besides being the
best known Of all baseball authors, has
written a complete library of books re-
/, ferring to cricket and kindred sports. Mr..
| Chadwick is the 'sGrand Old Man" of base
ball He has an imposing appearance, be-
| ing over six feet i'll height, isheavily built,
has an iron gray beard, which adds =
charm to his strong, ruddy face. and he
has pleasant, forcible way Of expressing
and explaining his ideas, which carries
conviction with it. In appearance Mr..
Chadwick is not an old man by any means.
He is still strong and active and occasion
! ally takes exercise On the diamond.
| Mr.. Chadwick was born in England in
1924 and he is therefore in his sixty-second
year. He is the son of Mr.. james Chad
wick, formerly editor of the Western Times,
the principal West of England paper. He
ico leo ~f y;o1-
the great English sanitary philosopher
He began his journalistic career in 1874, as
contributor to the Long Island Star, Of
Brooklyn, but he did not adopt journalism
as profession until ten or twelve years
later, when he became cricket reporter for
! the New York Times, in 1856, under City
Editor Augustus Maverick. The same year
he began writing for the New Y rk Clipper,
but was not regularly engaged on that
journal until 1857. His first important
baseball report was that of the series OF
games between picked mines OF New York
and Brooklyn, played at the Fashion Race
Course, Long Island, in 1858. From 1856 to
1886 MI. Chadwick was the leading reporter
of baseball ON the New York daily papers,
he being the first to report the National
game for the New York Herald, and he aft
erwards wrote up baseball for the Times.
7r1onne, Sun, Daily Ne~s, Sunday Times,
Sunday Dispatch, ETC., and he was Mr..
Cauldwell's successor on the Sunday
-Merc~ry = for over q dozen years.
All this time he was base
ball and cricket editor of the New York
Clipper, and was on that paper from 1857
to 1867, when he gave up his position TO
! take charge Of the american Chronicle Of
Sports In 1868, however, he resumed his
position on the Clipper, which he has since
retained, though since the death of Mr..
Queen he has not written as much for that
paper as before, Mr.. Garno having taken
entire editorial charge Of the Clipper. This
year Mr.. Chadwick concluded q period of
thirty years Of baseball and cricket re-
porting on the Now York dailies, and he
permanently retired from that arena last
winter, when he resigned all his positions
on the DALI s to accept a position on the
editorial staff Of the Outing monthly mag
azine of sports, position more congenial
to his advancing years In the ZOOS he took
position on the staff of the Brooklyn
Eagle, he being then contemporaneous with
such writers on that paper as Joe Howard,
then city editor; John Stanton, ''Cory
O'Lanus,'' and Thomas Klnsella and 9TH
crs, all of whom, except Mr.. Howard, he
has seen carried to their graves, leaving
himself as the oldest writer now on the
Brooklyn Eagle and the only ono who was
on tile editorial staff Of shat paper twenty
odd years ago. Mr.. Chadwick confines his
journalistic work now entirely to the Clip
per, the Eagle and the Outing, and he will
doubtless s'die in harness" for journalistic
| work is his life and pleasure.
In s'Chadwick's Game Of BASEBALL"
published in 1868, Mr.. Chadwick tells how
he first became interested in the National
game:
eli was in 1856" he says, "when, on
| returning from an early closing of a
| cricket match at Fox Hall, Hoboken,
CHANGED to go through the Elysian Fields
during the pl ogress of baseball match
between the then noted Eagle and Gotham
clubs. The game was being sharply
played on both sides, and watched 1T
with deeper interest than any previous
match of the kind Ihad seen. 1t was not
long before was struck with the idea that
baseball was just the game for National
sport for Americans and, rejecting on the
subject on my return home, came to the
conclusion that, from this game OF bail,
powerful lever might be made by means
of which our people could be Lifted into a
position of more devotion to physical ex-
ercise and healthful outdoor recreation
than they had hitherto been noted for"
He goes on to say that: "From the
period thatI first became an ardent adj
mirer of BASEBALL have devoted my eff
forts to the improvement of the game and
to fostering it in every way thought
likely to promote the object I had in view,
which was to build up National field
game for Americans such as cricket was
for England
tt would require pages to follow the
progress of Mr.. Chadwick from this period
in the early history Of base ball through
that in which, as chairman of the commit
tee of rules of the old National Associa-
ton, he revised and improved the playing
rules of the game, up to the time of the in
auguration of the professional system of
ball playing, when, after seeing the Ma
tional League organized, he retired from
further personal work in connection with
association conventions, not however, TN
til he had seen the fruits Of his early labors
develop into game fully established as
the great popular field sport of the coun-
try. Mr.. Chadwick now devotes himself
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