View of an 1886 Baseball Game

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Posted By: Jay Miller

Ever wonder what a baseball game was like in the mid-1880s. This fantastic cabinet presents an image of the 1886 "record breaking" game between Detroit and Chicago. It came from the estate of Hardy Richardson, a star left fielder of Detroit and later Boston. The amazing thing to me is the number of horse carriages in the outfield. To my knowledge this is one of the few in-game baseball views from this period in existence.

Note that Hardy's family wrote a biography of him on the back. The fountain pen writing probably was done around the turn of the century and a later pencil note mentions his death in the mid-1930s.