LOT #80040 |
Sold on Aug 1, 2013 for: Not Sold
1862 Williams College Photograph Album Signed by Five Participants in the First Intercollegiate Baseball Game....
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Description
Seminal artifact is a one-of-a-kind memento of the sport's infancy
1862 Williams College Photograph Album Signed by Five Participants in the First Intercollegiate Baseball Game. "EXTRA!" trumpets the headline of the "Amherst Express" in a banner headline utilizing booming typeface one might expect for a declaration of war or death of a President. "Williams and Amherst, Base Ball and Chest! Muscle and Mind!!, July 1st and 2d, 1859." And so the battle was set, a friendly competition between two historic Massachusetts educational institutions that stands tall in history as the first game of baseball ever waged between collegiate opponents.Thirteen members were selected by student body ballot for each team, with substitutions allowed only in the case of injury. Neither team wore uniforms, but the Williams squad sported club belts. Each team provided a baseball and a bat, the former constructed from a lead pellet wound with yarn and then sewn shut inside a calfskin shell. An inning consisted of a single out but the game nonetheless lasted three and a half hours, with a recess between the fifth and sixth innings much like in cricket.
It was expected that the Amherst team, comprised of older, more physical players, would claim the baseball half of the competition, with the more cerebral Williams team the favorite for the chess portion. But ultimately the Amherst side swept the proceedings, their raucous celebration lasting through the evening and on to Independence Day the following morning. The final score of the baseball game, played under the early "Massachusetts Rules," was a nail-biting seventy-three to thirty-two.
Five members of the defeated Williams team (Blagden, Nason, Rogers and two Parkers) appear within this thrilling leatherbound volume compiling photographic salt prints of over eighty subjects. Each card stock 9.5x12" page holds an oval photographic vignette at center (approximately 4.5x6"), with all but a handful autographed in 8/10 or better fountain pen ink below. The pages have quite expectedly come loose from the sumptuously tooled leather binding but otherwise exhibit only a small degree of foxing to suggest over a century and a half of existence. All subjects wear civilian clothing.
Our consignor's research indicates that these photos derive from the estate of Francis Snow, who later became one of the three original faculty members of the University of Kansas and a long-serving Chancellor of the school. Also included in the lot is a 1912 volume providing a Fiftieth Anniversary Report of this 1862 class. Softcover book is missing spine and front cover is detached, othewise solid.
Auction Info
2013 August 1 - 2 Platinum Night Sports Auction - Chicago #7080 (go to Auction Home page)
Auction Dates
August, 2013
1st-2nd
Thursday-Friday
Bids + Registered Phone Bidders: 0
Lot Tracking Activity: N/A
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Buyer's Premium per Lot:
19.5% of the successful bid per lot.
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