America's First Baseball Book: The Base Ball Player's Pocket Companion

[Archive]

Posted By: barrysloate

As per a request earlier this week to discuss particular pieces of baseball memorabilia, I thought I would get the ball rolling:

As baseball grew in popularity in the 1850's, fans of the game wanted to know more about it, particularly the rules and their finer points. There was limited access to the game in print save a paragraph or two in a local newspaper, or a column in a weekly paper such as Porter's Spirit of the Times. Fans actually wrote to the editors of various newspapers requesting more detailed coverage, as well as asking if a book about the game might one day be written.

In 1858, Mayhew and Baker of Boston published a book called the Manual of Cricket and Baseball. While it was the first of its kind available to the public, 20 of its 24 pages were devoted to cricket, and only the final four pages contained some very rudimentary rules of how baseball was played.

However, in 1859, the same company published the Base Ball Player's Pocket Companion, a 36 page guide that was the very first book in America devoted entirely to the game of baseball. Its contents included a detailed discussion of the differences between the Massachusetts and New York style of play (the latter which would ultimately become universally accepted); a set of basic rules; a constitution that teams joining the National Association of Amateur Baseball Players would have to abide by; and four woodcut engravings featuring ballplayers batting and fielding. The book would prove to be immensely popular, and it would be reissued in 1860 and 1861 (with a blue metallic cover the final year).

When I wrote my article on rare baseball books in issue #3 of VCBC, I only knew of these three editions. Since then I have discovered three separate editions for 1860 alone. This suggests two things: 1) the rules were regularly being refined at that time, and 2) the book was popular enough that there was a need to reissue it several times during that year.

In 1861, with the start of the Civil War, much of organized baseball would take a hiatus. Likewise, it would be the last year of the Pocket Companion.

Today it is a very rare and desirable collectible, with perhaps a dozen or so copies known of all the editions combined. It is rightly considered the very first baseball guide ever issued, and as such it is a landmark work.