Baseball Images Linked to our Past

Vintage Baseball Images Offer Glimpse of the Past

This stereoview shows a baseball game being played on Washington Green, possibly a few years earlier than the well-known baseball photograph in the school’s archives. Woodruff House, which still stands at 1 Kirby Road, is in the background.

Last spring, John Gennantonio, a collector of 19thcentury baseball memorabilia, contacted The Frederick Gunn School about a pair of vintage photographs he had recently acquired. One was a small, black-and-white photograph about the size of a calling card, known as a cartes de visite, or CdV. The other was a stereoview, a precursor of the modern 3-D image, which must be viewed with a stereoscope to achieve a three-dimensional effect. On the back of the CdV was a handwritten notation, “baseball at The Gunnery,” Gennantonio’s first clue to the provenance of the photographs. On the orange mat framing the stereoview was a second clue: the words “first” and “second” nine, and what appears to be the letters “W.B.B.C.”

When Gennantonio contacted the school, he had two questions: Were these images taken at what was then The Gunnery? And could they be even older than the first known photograph of a baseball game in progress — the one taken at the first Gunnery reunion on August 4, 1869, on Washington Green? That photograph, in which school founder Frederick Gunn appears, is a treasured piece of school history, a reflection of life in our small town, and baseball in its earliest days. It was also featured in Ken Burns’ documentary and book, “Baseball.”

In response to Gennantonio’s first question, then-School Archivist Misa Giroux and Stephen Bartkus, Curator of the Gunn Historical Museum, both confirmed immediately that the images were indeed taken on Washington Green. “These are amazing!” Bartkus said. “They are 100% Washington Green and The Gunnery. The building in the background is 1 Kirby Road, now known as Woodruff House.”

Gennantonio was thrilled by this news, but as for the question of when the images were created — and whether they predate the 1869 image in the Paula and George Krimsky ’60 Archives and Special Collections — that remains a mystery for now.

Just looking for that diamond in the rough

A native of Cincinnati, Gennantonio has been fascinated with baseball, and the Cincinnati Reds in particular, since his youth. “I think it’s because I grew up around the Big Red Machine, going to games with my parents, and idolizing Pete Rose, Johnny Bench, Joe Morgan, the Great Eight. I started collecting baseball cards and I found out that I really loved the history of the game,” he said. “Any piece of baseball memorabilia — a photograph, a glove — there’s a story behind it.”

Early on, he looked to John Thorne, who has been the Official Historian for Major League Baseball since 2011, and Barry Halper, who amassed an extensive and unique collection of baseball memorabilia, with great admiration.

“I always hung around baseball collectors who were more historians. I loved the 1869 Red Stockings. They go back to the beginnings of the game,” he said, noting that in the 35 years he has been collecting, he has studied with and lent items from his own collection to the Cincinnati Reds Hall of Fame and Museum.

He acquired the early Gunnery baseball photos more than two years ago through an auction clearinghouse. He spends at least 90 minutes every day, seven days a week, digging through online auction listings, “scouring through millions of old CdVs and cabinet cards, just looking for that diamond in the rough.” Over time, he built a library of books that he uses to research the items he collects, enough to fill a “memorabilia room” in his home.

One of the “diamonds” in his collection is a CdV of two baseball teams taking their hats off to one another after a game. “They’re saying, ‘Hazah!’ One team beat the other team, and saluted the other team that lost by saying, ‘Hazah!’ It was a gentleman’s tradition. The team that lost, they raised their hats to the winners saying, ‘Thanks for being good sports. Thanks for being winners today.’”

Gennantonio’s extensive knowledge about early baseball is also derived from his participation in Civil War-era re-enactments of baseball games. His team was sponsored by the Cincinnati Reds and played by 1860 rules.

Looking at the CdV of The Gunnery game, he pointed to the pitcher’s stance, as a tell-tale sign that the game took place before 1869. The pitcher’s right arm is held straight by his side at a 45-degree angle, preparing to throw the ball underhanded to the player at bat. This straight-arm, underhanded pitching style was characteristic of early baseball games that would have pre-dated the one depicted in the school’s 1869 photograph. A pitcher in those early days “was not allowed to touch his body. He was not allowed to bend his arm. He had to throw underhand and keep his arm completely straight. That A prized photograph from Gennantonio’s collection in Cincinnati shows two teams of baseball was until like 1868,” said Gennantonio, players taking their hats off to each other at the end of a game. whose collection includes a rare bronze sculpture by Deacon and Muller dated 1868 of a pitcher, or “hurler,” holding his arm exactly the same way. “I call it the A-frame pose. It’s dead-on what you see in the early photographs.”

The continuation of the story

In his Gunn Scholar report, “Metropolitan Baseball in a Small Town Setting,” which is held by the National Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, Mark Rhoads ’04 wrote about the early rules of baseball, and identified many of the players and spectators in the school’s photograph from 1869. The players were alumni and residents of local towns, not students, and it was one of several games played on Washington Green over the course of that week. “It’s very exciting,” Rhoads said about the newly discovered baseball images, which he compared to the one he researched so carefully. “It’s amazing to me that something so old, that we’ve looked at so closely, there’s still other pieces to unfold. It’s a continuation of the story, and I wish Mrs. Krimsky was alive to help unfold it, too,” Rhoads said, referring to longtime School Archivist Paula Krimsky, who established the Gunn Scholar program in 2002 and aided him in his research. “To think that there’s all these Gunnery artifacts around the country is also intriguing. There might be more out there that we still don’t even know about.” Over the course of a year, Rhoads’ research took him from the school archives to the New Milford and Litchfield historical societies, the National Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Sterling Memorial Library’s Manuscripts and Archives at Yale University. In addition to identifying Mr. Gunn in the photograph as the probable coach of the Washington nine, he identified many other figures, including: future Head of School

Baseball, the national game, was played here as early as in any place, outside of a few large cities. This was largely because there were in the school, in the early sixties, three sons of Judge Van Cott of New York, a member of the famous Mutuals, the forerunners of the National ‘Giants’ of today. These three boys were good players, and the Gunnery was playing the national game with out-of-town clubs before Yale and Harvard had begun their matches.”

– John Brinsmade, the Stray Shot, June 1908 “The Gunnery” vs. “New Milford” was taken during the first Gunnery alumni reunion in August 1869. It is believed to be earliest known photograph of a baseball game in progress.

John Brinsmade (then a college student) in center field, William Van Cott Jr., the first captain of the first Gunnery team, as the third baseman, along with his brother, Daniel, who played shortstop, George Richards, Class of 1863, catcher, Hart Lyman, Class of 1864, second baseman, Robert Parsons, Class of 1865, left field, and Walter Southworth, Class of 1863, right field. Also in the 1869 photograph was the scorekeeper, Henry Ward Beecher Howard, who came to The Gunnery in 1863 and was related to Harriet Beecher Stowe, a Gunn Parent.

In his report, Rhoads noted The Gunnery nine were playing games with out-of-town clubs as early as 1859 — a decade before the reunion photograph was taken. So the newly discovered photographs could certainly pre-date that event, and if they did, the game they

depicted would have been played by different rules.

“The Gunnery nine was not only a good example of a new generation of baseball in the country, but the players and supporters were revolutionary leaders in the development of small town baseball,” Rhoads wrote. He pointed out that Judge William H. Van Cott, the first President of the National Association of Base Ball Players (organized in 1858), sent his three sons, Daniel, William, Jr., and Leonard, to what was then The Gunnery. The family matriarch was a member of the Mutual Base Ball Club of New York, and through his affiliation with the school, facilitated the evolution of what was then “a new and improved American game” on Washington Green, Rhoads said.

“Until then, only men in cities played using the new baseball rules, with overhand throws and diamond-shaped playing pitch. The three Van Cott boys were a bridge between New York City and nearby Washington,” Rhoads wrote.

As he explained in his report, baseball in Washington evolved from “town ball,” which was played on a square field and during which a batter could be called “out” if an opposing player hit him with the ball directly. In fact, Rhoads said Mr. Gunn “was known for stinging the runner when he threw the ball at them.”

Another rule in town ball was that the bases were wooden stakes, projecting four feet from the ground. This does not appear to be the case in either the 1869 photograph or the versions acquired by Gennantonio. Rhoads confirmed that “some of the rules of town ball and baseball no doubt overlapped,” but he concluded that the field in the 1869 photograph was a diamond, not a square, and that the game being played was baseball, not town ball. “Another way to tell that this game was not town ball was the score. The final score was 34 to 18,” and town ball required a team to score 100 points to win, Rhoads wrote.

But what of the newly discovered images? Further research is clearly warranted.

A Connection to Mr. Gunn

When Rhoads conducted his research, he was armed with the date of the event, the name of the photographer, and the names of the teams, “The Gunnery vs. New Milford,” which were written around the edges of the picture. The newly discovered images offer similar clues. The

The Gunnery Baseball Team, 1871, from the Paula and George Krimsky ’60 Archives acronym W.B.B.C., written on the stereograph, may be a reference to the New Milford team, which went by the name the Weantinogues. Or it could stand for the Waterbury or Woodbury teams. The Gunnery took on all three teams during that weeklong alumni reunion. In his research, Rhoads found box scores for all of those games recorded in issues of The Litchfield Enquirer, archived at the Litchfield Historical Society. Along with the scores, the newspaper included a note indicating that photographer S.C. Landon “was present, and took several stereoscopic views of the players.” Gennantonio’s images were recorded by a different photographer, E.R. Smith of Easthampton, Massachusetts, whose name is stamped on the back. Stephanie Levine, a librarian at the Emily Williston Memorial Library and Museum in Easthampton, was helpful in sharing that the photographer’s full name was Edward Ralph Smith. Born in Naugatuck, Connecticut, in 1845, Smith died in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1906 of complications of Bright’s Disease. He was married to Jennie E. Lyman and worked as a photographic artist in Easthampton circa 1865, according to the “History of Easthampton,” by Payson Williston. Levine supplied Smith’s death certificate, which revealed that his father, Ralph Smith, was born in Washington, and his mother, Maria Ward Smith, was an artist from Naugatuck. Further research revealed that two of Edward Smith’s aunts, Mary M. Smith and Ellen Smith Woodruff, lived in Washington, and his great-uncle, Bennett Gershom Fenn, was married to Phoebe Susannah Gunn Fenn — who was Mr. Gunn’s sister! That could explain why Edward was in Washington and photographed a baseball game at Mr. Gunn’s school. He was Mr. Gunn’s great-nephew by marriage.

Additionally, Rhoads identified the Colonial house in the center of the 1869 photograph as belonging to the Fenn family. According to the Town of Washington’s 1975 Report of the Historic District Study Commission, it was owned by Smith’s great-grandfather, Gershom Fenn, from 1811 to 1882. Those dates at least provide a timeframe for when the photographer may have visited the town.

A great beginning to go on

Both Rhoads and Gennantonio were curious about the buildings in the background of the newly discovered images, and in particular Woodruff House, which is situated between The PO and Green Hill Road. Originally a one-and-a-half story house, it was built circa 1790, according to the 1975 Historic District Commission report. Further study of historic photographs, like those on file at the Gunn Historical Museum, as well as a property record search, could help to answer Gennantonio’s question as to when the photos were made.

“The back of the cabinet card says, ‘baseball at The Gunnery.’ I thought maybe that implied it was The Gunnery team. But it doesn’t say specifically this was The Gunnery nine. My quest is always to be as specific as possible,” said Gennantonio, who hopes to contact Thorne, the MLB historian, and do some research in the archives at Yale and Princeton. He also plans to attend the National Sports Collectors Convention, which will be held in Atlantic City, New Jersey, next July. “It’s a great beginning to go on. Now we just have to find out, was it the same game or was it an earlier game? That history, and that heritage, is just priceless.”

Looking at the photograph, Rhoads pointed out a player on second base, looking to run. The shortstop’s position in the infield could suggest he expected the batter to bunt. The catcher is crouching behind home plate, perhaps waiting for the pitch to dribble in, while over in left field, or perhaps just beyond it, the photographer would have been standing.

Rhoads was 17 years old when he started his Gunn Scholar project, and captain of the baseball team. “I was approached by [former faculty member] Julia Alling ’81 P’19 and loved the idea and embarked on what’s become a 17-year journey. Every now and then I’ll get a phone call from you all,” said Rhoads, who spoke to two classes during Winterim last year about his research. “I have been tempted to continue the work, or probably more realistically, think that another Gunn Scholar would continue or prove me wrong or expand on it.”

“It’s not like you’re looking at a video of what happened back then,” he said. “You have to do some research, and those things might over time get confirmed — or the opposite. It’s still a living, breathing thing.” The pitcher’s right arm is held straight by his side at a 45-degree angle, preparing to throw the ball underhanded to the player at bat. This straightarm, underhanded pitching style was characteristic of early baseball games that would have pre-dated the one depicted in the school’s 1869 photograph. A pitcher in those early days “was not allowed to touch his body. He was not allowed to bend his arm. He had to throw underhand and keep his arm completely straight. That was until like 1868.”

– John Gennantonio