Father Of Baseball

If you would be asked who the father of baseball is, you would probably think of a player whose name is already in the hall of fame. You would definitely consider an individual who has won a series of championship matches where before the most coveted title was garnered, he went through fire and brimstone, so to speak, practicing for the most awaited day. Well if that is your qualification of who father baseball is then you are miles apart from the real deal. The baseball father is not in any manner a professional athlete nor a member of a sports team who rose from the bleachers to the field.

The father of baseball is none other man British- born yet American- raised, Henry Chadwick. He is considered as one of the significant personalities in the nineteenth century history of the game. Henry was never given an opportunity to play the sport except for a scrub match way back in 1848. With that, you may be wondering why he was hailed as the father baseball. Chadwick’s contribution was actually in the “scientific” sense of the activity where its relevance is widely observed in how this kind of recreation is practiced not only among amateurs but even in the professional level.

Before discussing the achievements of Henry Chadwick, it would be good to know a little something about his life. The father of baseball was born on the fifth of October 1824 in Exeter, England. At a young age, his parents decided to migrate to the United States. Henry’s father was a journalist while his mother was for him, an enlightenment personality in his existence. Together with his younger sister, Rosa, they transferred to Rosa in New York in 1837. However, the Chadwick’s did not stay long in the said area because they then moved to Brooklyn where the still young father baseball had a lot of fond memories.

It was in Brooklyn, New York where the father of baseball first witnessed cricket. In 1838, Henry Chadwick was a spectator in a historical match between Nottingham and Sheffield, both of which were British teams. It was that sport where he was brought back to the period where way back in England, he together with his friends would create a small hole on the ground and fill it with rocks laid in a circular position. Henry and his playmates did all that as plates for the home as well as with the three other bases. Little did Chadwick know, it would serve as a foundation for what he will be famous for.

When the father of baseball was already an adult, he chose music as his career. Henry Chadwick was actually a well- rounded individual where his interests ranged from a lot of aspects. To earn money, he taught piano lessons where he also composed a lot of quadrilles and waltzes. Even with the said accomplishments, Henry was brought back to his genuine destiny which was in journalism. It was actually in writing that Chadwick became the father baseball. If not for articles, his name would not ring a bell in the history of the sport. Such profession he inherited from his father when they were still living in England.

By 1844, the father of baseball began to work in a local daily circulated around Brooklyn entitled Long Island Star. In the middle portion of the 1850’s, Henry Chadwick incorporated his passion in sports into journalism. He was first writing about cricket for New York Times where he regularly visited the Elysian Fields located in New Jersey to cover the games. It was there that he discovered a probable British activity involving ball and bat can be practiced in America. During 1856 where he watched the competition between Eagle and Gotham teams, he was determined that he can make a “national recreation” through the power of the pen.

Since that time, Henry Chadwick was able to publish a lot of his articles about baseball and the rest as they say, is history.