page_title: Hoboken, New Jersey
section_title: Birthplace of baseball
hierarchical_section_title: Hoboken, New Jersey / History / 19th century / Birthplace of baseball
caption_attribution_description: English: "The American National Game of Baseball - Grand Match for the Championship", depiction of a baseball game at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, NJ. One of the teams is probably the New York Knickerbockers. Lithograph by Currier &amp; Ives.
context_page_description: Hoboken is a city in Hudson County, New Jersey, United States. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city's population was 50,005, having grown by 11,428 from 38,577 counted in the 2000 Census, which had in turn increased by 5,180 from the 33,397 in the 1990 Census. Hoboken is part of the New York metropolitan area and is the site of Hoboken Terminal, a major transportation hub for the tri-state region.
  Hoboken was first settled as part of the Pavonia, New Netherland colony in the 17th century. During the early 19th century the city was developed by Colonel John Stevens, first as a resort and later as a residential neighborhood. Originally part of Bergen Township and later North Bergen Township, it became a separate township in 1849 and was incorporated as a city in 1855. Hoboken is the location of the first recorded game of baseball and of the Stevens Institute of Technology, one of the oldest technological universities in the United States. It is also known as the birthplace and hometown of Frank Sinatra; various streets and parks in the city have been named after him.
context_section_description: The first officially recorded game of baseball took place in Hoboken in 1846 between Knickerbocker Club and New York Nine at Elysian Fields. In 1845, the Knickerbocker Club, which had been founded by Alexander Cartwright, began using Elysian Fields to play baseball due to the lack of suitable grounds on Manhattan. Team members included players of the St George's Cricket Club, the brothers Harry and George Wright, and Henry Chadwick, the English-born journalist who coined the term "America's Pastime".
  By the 1850s, several Manhattan-based members of the National Association of Base Ball Players were using the grounds as their home field while St. George's continued to organize international matches between Canada, England and the United States at the same venue. In 1859, George Parr's All England Eleven of professional cricketers played the United States XXII at Hoboken, easily defeating the local competition. Sam Wright and his sons Harry and George Wright played on the defeated United States team, a loss which inadvertently encouraged local players to take up baseball. Henry Chadwick believed that baseball and not cricket should become the national pastime after the game drawing the conclusion that amateur American players did not have the leisure time required to develop cricket skills to the high technical level required of professional players. Harry Wright and George Wright then became two of the first professional baseball players in the United States when Aaron Champion raised funds to found the Cincinnati Red Stockings in 1869.
  In 1865 the grounds hosted a championship match between the Mutual Club of New York City 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 enclosed by fences in Brooklyn, enabling promoters there to charge admission to games, the prominence of Elysian Fields diminished.  In 1868 the leading Manhattan club, Mutual, 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 in Manhattan that became known as the Polo Grounds.
caption: Early baseball game played at Elysian Fields, Hoboken (Currier & Ives lithograph)
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