Elysian Fields, Hoboken, New Jersey
| Location | 11th and Washington Streets Hoboken, New Jersey 07030 |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 40°45′00″N 74°01′39″W / 40.74995°N 74.02737°WCoordinates: 40°45′00″N 74°01′39″W / 40.74995°N 74.02737°W |
| Owner | Col. John Stevens III, Edwin Augustus Stevens, John Cox Stevens, Robert L. Stevens |
| Capacity | 20,000 (approx.) |
| Opened | by 1845 |
| Closed | 1880s |
| Tenants | |
| New York Knickerbockers, New York Mutuals, New York Metropolitans (1880) | |
Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey is believed to be the site of the first organized baseball game, giving Hoboken a strong claim to be the birthplace of baseball.
In 1845, Knickerbocker Club of New York City began using Elysian Fields in Hoboken to play baseball due to the lack of suitable grounds across the Hudson River in Manhattan. On June 19, 1846, the Knickerbockers played the New York nine on these grounds in the first organized game between two clubs; Alexander Cartwright was the umpire. By the 1850s, several Manhattan-based member clubs of the National Association of Base Ball Players were using the grounds as their home field.
In 1856, Elysian Fields was the place that inspired pioneering journalist Henry Chadwick, then a cricket writer for The New York Times, to develop the idea that baseball could be America's National Pastime. As Chadwick relates:
"I chanced to go through Elysian Fields during the progress of a contest between the noted Eagle and Gotham Clubs. The game was being sharply played on both sides, and I watched it with deeper interest that any previous ball match between clubs I had seen. It was not long before I was struck with the idea that base ball was just the game for a national sport for Americans."
Chadwick went on to become the game's preeminent reporter developing baseball's statistics and scoring system.
In 1859, an international cricket match was held with an All-England Eleven as part of an English tour of North America.
In 1865, the grounds hosted a championship match between the Mutual Club of New York 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".
...
Wikipedia