A Tip of the (Baseball) Cap....

As part of my seasonal shift to baseball I had fully intended to post two rather lengthy articles that I had published back in the 1990s.  One was on baseball as played by the troopers of Custer's Seventh Cavalry.  The other was on a bizarre 19th century baseball team that existed as an advertising venue for a quack medicine manufacturer.

I dredged up my old copies, updated a few points of research and got the OK from the good folks at SABR, the Society for American Baseball Research who had included them in one of their scholarly publications.

As I geared up for the task of editing them down to something that non-baseball fans might find engaging I discovered something....both topics had been redone, and redone better on somebody elses' blogs!

In each case there was due credit given, and indeed it looks to me as if my work was the foundation on which they built.  But these folks have done additional work, corrected a few of my research errors and in general written the blog posts I would have liked to have done.

So for those interested in the arcana of 19th century baseball I shall just supply the links.  Good job, fellow baseball cultists!

The strange tale of the Rochester Hop Bitters baseball team contains rascals, future Hall of Famers and a more or less hapless team whose performance was not improved by being asked to take a swig of herb laced alcoholic patent medicine before each game.

This article on Baseball with Custers Seventh Cavalry is built around an imaginary baseball card for Captain Benteen, the animating spirit of the National Pastime in that ill fated regiment.  It is well done but leaves out a fair amount of detail on their play during garrison duty.

And for more, much, much more on the oddities of baseball history I direct you to the SABR index of articles from The National Pastime.