1851
STERN ORNAMENT FROM THE AMERICA
J
John Cox Stevens was one of the great sports impresarios in American history. He introduced cricket to the United States; backed Eclipse in the Great Match Race (see the 1823 entry); and owned the Elysian Fields, where the first organized baseball game was played (see the 1853 entry).1 In 1851 he turned his attention to a bigger goal: beating the British.
In that year he formed a syndicate of six men, including James A. Hamilton, son of Alexander, to pay for the construction of a yacht to sail to Great Britain during the Great Exhibition of 1851. Called the America, it was designed by George Steers, who had made his name as a crafty designer of the pilot boats that sailed New York waters. These boats had to be fast to outrace the competition, and they had to be robust and maneuverable in all kinds of water.
Steers took all of his experience working with pilot boats and applied it to the America; 171 tons of Yankee ingenuity, she had a hollow, concave bow, with sails made of closely woven cotton that could be set relatively flat. It carried no topsails, giving it a simple profile; its hull was wedge-shaped and its rudder rounded. The center of displacement was aft of the beam rather than forward.2 All of this, noted the Illustrated London News, was “rather a violation of the old established ideas of naval architecture.”3 This large gilt eagle, about eight feet wide, was placed on the stern, keeping wooden watch on all that passed.4
As the America approached the Isle of Wight on August 1, 1851, the English cutter Laverock challenged its crew to a race. If there was dust on the high seas, the Laverock would have been left in it. The America won easily.5 Prior to this spanking, the British press had been characteristically patronizing regarding the unconventional Yankee yacht. Now, however, Stevens’s call for a race met with silence from the British. The Times of London noticed and scorned “the pith and courage”6—or lack thereof—of British yachtsmen.
Stung, the Royal Yacht Squadron invited Stevens to take part in an open regatta on August 22, a 53-mile circumference of the Isle of Wight, with the winner to be awarded a Cup of One Hundred Sovereigns.7 Stevens accepted. At 10:00 a.m. the 15 yachts sailed. The America got off poorly, but took the lead shortly after the first mark and never lost it, even when it lost its jibboom and had to pause to clear the wreckage. By the time it reached the vicinity of the royal yacht, the second-place Aurora was literally miles behind. This led to a famous exchange, which sounds too good to be true and therefore probably isn’t: “Which is first?” Queen Victoria asked an officer.
“The America.”
“Which is second?”
“Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second.”8
The Aurora narrowed the gap when the wind died down, but the America still won by 18 minutes. A week later the yacht left the speedy Titania in its wake, proving that the victory in the regatta was no fluke. Stevens sold the America and returned home via steamship, carrying the Cup of One Hundred Sovereigns. This 27-inch-high ewer, of high Victorian design, would become known as the America’s Cup, the oldest trophy in international sports and the most prestigious prize in yachting. That, of course, was not known at the time; the first America’s Cup race would not take place until 1870. But it was recognized on both sides of the Atlantic that something important had happened. The America revolutionized maritime design and forced others to take the young country’s capabilities seriously.
Life after the regatta was picaresque for the America. For the next decade, it was sold and re-sold to various Englishmen. During this period, the eagle ornament pictured on the previous page was removed and found a new calling above the door of a pub, The Eagle, on the Isle of Wight.9 (The Royal Yacht Squadron got it back and presented it to the New York Yacht Club in 1912.)10
Returning stateside in the early 1860s and fitted with a few guns, she was renamed the Memphis and served as a Confederate blockade runner until Union forces finally caught up. Scuttled in Florida, she was later raised and then joined the Union’s blockading fleet off Charleston and served as a training vessel at the US Naval Academy.11
A former Union general, Benjamin Butler, bought the yacht in 1873. In the South, Butler was known as “the beast” for his harsh rule during the occupation of New Orleans and Norfolk—and also, perhaps, for being remarkably ugly. Although Butler made a mysterious fortune during the war and rigged the sale to buy the former America,12 the famous yacht could not have landed in better hands; he pampered her rotten. But after his death in 1893 his heirs neglected her until she was sold, battered but still historic, in 1916 to a group of yachtsmen who wanted to keep her in the United States. The America returned to the Naval Academy in 1921; she was towed from New England to Maryland, stopping at yacht clubs all along the way. Two thousand midshipmen welcomed her back to Annapolis,13 where she lived until a snowstorm in 1942 damaged her beyond repair.
There was no formal epitaph for the America; the most apt tribute had been penned in 1851, not long after her famous victory. Punch, the British humor magazine, offered a new verse to a well-known song:
Yankee Doodle had a craft,
A rather tidy clipper,
And he challenged, while they laughed,
The Britishers to whip her.
Their whole yacht squadron she outsped,
And that on their own water;
Of all the lot she went ahead
And they came nowhere arter.14
1853
SOIL FROM THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
I
n Greek mythology, the souls of the heroic dead enjoyed paradise in the Elysian Fields. It’s fittingly poetic, then, that perhaps the first organized baseball game took place on the Elysian Fields of Hoboken, New Jersey.
The aptly named Alexander Joy Cartwright has long been credited with devising the first modern rules; it is on this basis he is often referred to as “the father of baseball.” There is some truth to the legend; in September 1845 he wrote 20 rules and regulations for his Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. Among them are some familiar concepts, such as three strikes for an out, three outs to an inning, and foul territory.1
But Cartwright was more like Moses, setting down familiar practices for what became known as the “New York game” (as opposed to the “Massachusetts game”).2 As one early baseball historian, John Ward, put it in 1888, “They recorded the rules of the game as they remembered them from boyhood, and as they found them in vogue at that time.”3 But others did as much or more; for example, not only did Daniel “Doc” Adams create the shortstop position,4 but he also led the legislative effort in 1857 that set the bases 90 feet apart and established nine innings as the standard. These “Laws of Base Ball” sold at auction in April 2016 for $3.26 million.5 Adams, too, was associated with the Knickerbockers.
Over time the New York game, itself derived from “town ball,” which was a fairly primitive and informal pastime derived from the English game of rounders, evolved into the much more challenging one that became baseball. There is a nice symmetry to the fact that Cartwright, Adams, and their Knickerbocker cronies often played in the open area around Madison Avenue and East 27th Street, the future location of the first Madison Square Garden.
Looking for more space and less congestion, the gang began to take the ferry to the Elysian Fields, an expansive park on the other side of the Hudson River. It was there, on June 19, 1846, that the Knickerbockers played the New York Base Ball Club in what could be considered the first formal game played under modern rules.6 The Knickerbockers lost 23–1.7
This modest chunk of soil comes from that field; some of the original Knickerbockers might have slid on these exact ounces of dirt.8 In 1853 on a visit to the area, a young man named James Orr attended a ball game there. Orr was so taken with the new sport—he would call watching this game one of the most sublime moments of his life9—that he dug up a piece of the field to remember the occasion. He put the soil in a box with a note explaining where it was from and why it was important to him. The family kept it for generations.
Three years after Orr’s sublime experience, an English-born sportswriter named Henry Chadwick—confusingly, he is also often referred to as the “father of baseball”—visited the Elysian Fields and had a reaction not unlike Orr’s. This, he said, was “just the game for a national sport for Americans.” Chadwick became a tireless publicist for baseball. He also invented the box score,10 reason enough for his inclusion in the Hall of Fame.
Modern scholarship has cast some doubt on whether Cartwright was quite as important as he has been made out to be; indeed, his Hall of Fame plaque is riddled with errors (he didn’t set the bases 90 feet apart, for example). Unlike the silly myth of Abner Doubleday inventing the game on a rainy day in Cooperstown, however, there is a solid basis of fact related to Cartwright. He was an early player, in every sense of the word, on the Elysian fields of baseball.
1860
ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S HANDBALL
I
n his early days in New Salem, Indiana, Abraham Lincoln made his name among the tough Clary Grove gang by wrestling their leader, Jack Armstrong, to a draw.1 That was the first of many matches; Lincoln lost only once in 12 years, as far as the US Wrestling Hall of Fame can determine. Indeed, young Lincoln was known for two things: his character and his strength.
Like many an accomplished sportsman, Lincoln had attitude. After winning one wrestling match with indifferent ease, he is said to have shouted to the crowd, “Any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns!”2 Lincoln was also an excellent runner and jumper, the latter no doubt helped by his unusual height.3 His friends were awed by his strength; one contemporary described him as “a Hercules.”
As a grown man in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln’s favorite athletic activity was a handball game known as “fives,” played against a brick wall in an alley near his law office. One of his opponents described the scene: “Here is where ‘Old Abe’ was always champion, for his long arms and long legs served a good purpose in reaching and returning the ball from any angle his adversary could send it to the wall.”4 Another observer was less complimentary, saying that Lincoln’s “suppleness, leaps, and strides to strike the ball were comical in the extreme.”5
Lincoln was not out for style points, however. He liked the competition, and a rousing game of fives was also a good way to relieve the stress of life with his wife, Mary Todd; the law; and politics. So it is not altogether surprising that in May 1860, with the presidential nominating convention going on in Chicago, he went down to the alley for a game. On the first ballot, William Seward of New York took the most votes, with Lincoln second. On the second ballot, Lincoln narrowed the gap. The suspense must have been excruciating.
When the messenger came with the results of the third ballot, Lincoln opened the telegram, read the news, and didn’t finish the game. Instead, he headed home, saying, “There is a little woman down on Eighth Street who will be glad to hear this news.”6
The ball in this picture may not be the exact one Lincoln played with as he waited for word from Chicago, but it certainly could be. It was found in a dresser in his home, and when Lincoln left Springfield after the election, he never returned alive.
1870
SPORTSMAN’S HALL
A
nimal sports such as bearbaiting and cockfighting were popular in the nineteenth century. Dogfighting, in which specially trained canines fought to the death, was a more specialized taste. The same was true for dog versus rat fights, in which a squirming bag of rodents was dumped in the pit and officials timed how long it took the dogs to kill them. There are also records of man versus rat fights, but not many: even nineteenth-century New York had its limits.1 This was all legal; there were no animal cruelty laws until 1868, and even then prosecution was uncertain. One judge threw out a case on the grounds that there was nothing wrong with “the fine sport of dog-fighting.”2
Owned by Kit Burns, a former notable in the notorious Irish American Dead Rabbits gang, the 25-squarefoot basement hall in the building on lower Manhattan’s eastern waterfront known as Sportsman’s Hall was the city’s most popular venue for such contests. “Nowhere,” wrote one disapproving observer, “could the moolahs and thugs find such delectable divertissement as Burns’ pits.”3
Public attitudes began to change, though, and in late 1870 the police waded into the middle of a heated bout between two dogs, Slasher and Old Rocks, and arrested 34 spectators. The cops also took away a cage of 150 rats meant for entertainment later in the evening, dumping them in the East River. Burns died before the trial, but his successors agreed not to hold any more dogfights; they told the New York Times that from then on, they’d stick to selling “rum and rats.” And by the way, Burns’s widow argued, she wanted compensation for those 150 rats.4
Built in the 1770s, this is one of the oldest buildings in New York City. It started as a home for a sea captain and has also served as a residence for fallen women, an apothecary, and a shoe store. In the late 1990s it was in such terrible condition that the city government gave it to a developer, on condition that the exterior be preserved. It now houses luxury apartments. Kit Burns would be appalled.
1889
JOHN L. SULLIVAN’S DUMBBELL
J
ohn L. Sullivan, America’s first sports superstar, was also the first athlete to earn $1 million. He pioneered other types of action, too. He dabbled in show biz and willing women. He drank too much. He had a posse of hangers-on. And he died destitute.
Remarkably, he managed all this even though at the height of his fame, his sport was illegal in every state.1 Today, boxing and prizefighting are synonymous. In the nineteenth century, however, they were distinct. Boxing, which gentlemen like Theodore Roosevelt did as a hobby at Harvard, was socially acceptable; prizefighting, which tough guys did for money, was not. Even so, prizefights took place all over the country, supported by a public that loved the action and a gambling culture that provided an economic base.
John L. was the best fighter in the land and had been regarded as such since at least 1882, when he pummeled Paddy Ryan to the canvas in 11 minutes. He hadn’t lost since, dispatching his challengers with contemptuous ease.
Jake Kilrain, who had made his name fighting around Boston, was good enough that Richard Fox, owner of the National Police Gazette, which covered the sport thoroughly, had proclaimed him champion. No one beyond Kilrain’s friends really believed this assertion (if they did). But if Kilrain could beat John L., he could turn that claim into reality, as well as pick up the $20,000 stake, the biggest purse ever.2
Sullivan’s people were sure that at his best, he could lick Kilrain with the proverbial one hand tied behind his back. The problem was that when they made the deal for a title match against Kilrain in early 1889, their man was suffering from the aftereffects of a particularly prolonged period of debauchery that had him seeing phantom rats.3 But the fight was set for July 8, 1889, six months away, more than enough time to dry him out. With two months left before the big fight, though, Sullivan’s backers were desperate; he was still a sodden mess. So they made a bet with Billy Muldoon, a famous trainer and reigning Greco-Roman wrestling champion.4 They would pay him $10,000 to get Sullivan in shape—to be paid only if he won.
Sullivan was shipped to Muldoon’s farm in an isolated part of upstate New York. Muldoon was ready for him. He told the only two bars in town not to serve Sullivan and banned the champ’s friends.
Sullivan hated it. He loathed Muldoon. And he wanted a drink. Despite Muldoon’s warning, a local bartender gave him one, or maybe three or four. Who was going to say no to the heavyweight champ? Muldoon hauled Sullivan out and wrestled him to the ground. With that, Sullivan got serious. Over the next seven weeks, he did whatever Muldoon asked, including milking cows, and was in bed by 9:00, with Muldoon asleep in the same room. He even bathed in brine to toughen his skin. After a few weeks, Sullivan was doing eight to ten miles of roadwork in the morning; in the afternoon, he worked out in a barn Muldoon had converted into a gym. Pictured here is one of the weights he used.5
Sullivan and Kilrain would fight under London Prize Ring rules. There were no gloves, and a round lasted as long as one man was on his feet; wrestling and grabbing were legal. The fight would end when one man could not go on. On a blistering hot day, a series of trains took spectators from New Orleans to a farm in Richburg, Mississippi, where a 20-foot-ring had been built. A little after 10:00 in the morning, the two stepped into the ring. Kilrain wore black knee breeches; Sullivan his famous green ones. Both were around 5 foot 10. Kilrain, 29, weighed in at 195 pounds. Sullivan, 30, was 207 pounds of superbly conditioned muscle.
One glance at Sullivan’s trim figure told Kilrain he couldn’t outslug the Boston Strong Boy; his strategy was to tire him out. But Sullivan was well able to chase Kilrain, even if he didn’t much like it. In the fourth round, which lasted 15 minutes, Sullivan became exasperated: “Why don’t you stand and fight like a man, you sonofabitch?”6 When there was an actual exchange of blows, he got the better of the action. As the fight wore on, Kilrain tired, not Sullivan, and he began to land thudding blows at will. In the seventy-sixth round, Kilrain’s seconds wouldn’t let him come out. Sullivan had won. Kilrain was devastated but philosophical; his telegram to his wife read: “Nature gave out. Not hurt, though licked. Your husband.”7 Various authorities came after the two for fighting illegally, and it took a lot of time and money to settle the charges.
The battle at Richburg was the last bare-knuckle heavyweight championship prizefight. Sullivan himself always preferred fighting with gloves and began to insist on it.8 With his stock as high as it would ever be, his opinion carried weight. In 1892, in the first title defense to be contested with gloves, Sullivan lost to 26-year-old Jim Corbett, crushed by a left to the jaw in the twenty-first round. It was the only loss of his career. Corbett’s deft use of feints and jabs and movement was altogether more sophisticated than the pounding rushes characteristic of Sullivan and his peers. Corbett is sometimes called the “father of modern boxing.”
This was also the first legal title fight; Louisiana had decriminalized the sport in 1890.9 For that, Sullivan must get a large share of the credit. While he was at times a rake and a drunk, he was also hugely popular. He lifted the sport from being a spectacle for lowlifes to one that also attracted the middle and upper classes. It was their support that successfully got the sport legalized in state after state.10 The first and last great champion of bare-knuckle boxing, Sullivan embodied one era and helped usher in a new one.
STERN ORNAMENT FROM THE AMERICA
J
John Cox Stevens was one of the great sports impresarios in American history. He introduced cricket to the United States; backed Eclipse in the Great Match Race (see the 1823 entry); and owned the Elysian Fields, where the first organized baseball game was played (see the 1853 entry).1 In 1851 he turned his attention to a bigger goal: beating the British.
In that year he formed a syndicate of six men, including James A. Hamilton, son of Alexander, to pay for the construction of a yacht to sail to Great Britain during the Great Exhibition of 1851. Called the America, it was designed by George Steers, who had made his name as a crafty designer of the pilot boats that sailed New York waters. These boats had to be fast to outrace the competition, and they had to be robust and maneuverable in all kinds of water.
Steers took all of his experience working with pilot boats and applied it to the America; 171 tons of Yankee ingenuity, she had a hollow, concave bow, with sails made of closely woven cotton that could be set relatively flat. It carried no topsails, giving it a simple profile; its hull was wedge-shaped and its rudder rounded. The center of displacement was aft of the beam rather than forward.2 All of this, noted the Illustrated London News, was “rather a violation of the old established ideas of naval architecture.”3 This large gilt eagle, about eight feet wide, was placed on the stern, keeping wooden watch on all that passed.4
As the America approached the Isle of Wight on August 1, 1851, the English cutter Laverock challenged its crew to a race. If there was dust on the high seas, the Laverock would have been left in it. The America won easily.5 Prior to this spanking, the British press had been characteristically patronizing regarding the unconventional Yankee yacht. Now, however, Stevens’s call for a race met with silence from the British. The Times of London noticed and scorned “the pith and courage”6—or lack thereof—of British yachtsmen.
Stung, the Royal Yacht Squadron invited Stevens to take part in an open regatta on August 22, a 53-mile circumference of the Isle of Wight, with the winner to be awarded a Cup of One Hundred Sovereigns.7 Stevens accepted. At 10:00 a.m. the 15 yachts sailed. The America got off poorly, but took the lead shortly after the first mark and never lost it, even when it lost its jibboom and had to pause to clear the wreckage. By the time it reached the vicinity of the royal yacht, the second-place Aurora was literally miles behind. This led to a famous exchange, which sounds too good to be true and therefore probably isn’t: “Which is first?” Queen Victoria asked an officer.
“The America.”
“Which is second?”
“Ah, Your Majesty, there is no second.”8
The Aurora narrowed the gap when the wind died down, but the America still won by 18 minutes. A week later the yacht left the speedy Titania in its wake, proving that the victory in the regatta was no fluke. Stevens sold the America and returned home via steamship, carrying the Cup of One Hundred Sovereigns. This 27-inch-high ewer, of high Victorian design, would become known as the America’s Cup, the oldest trophy in international sports and the most prestigious prize in yachting. That, of course, was not known at the time; the first America’s Cup race would not take place until 1870. But it was recognized on both sides of the Atlantic that something important had happened. The America revolutionized maritime design and forced others to take the young country’s capabilities seriously.
Life after the regatta was picaresque for the America. For the next decade, it was sold and re-sold to various Englishmen. During this period, the eagle ornament pictured on the previous page was removed and found a new calling above the door of a pub, The Eagle, on the Isle of Wight.9 (The Royal Yacht Squadron got it back and presented it to the New York Yacht Club in 1912.)10
Returning stateside in the early 1860s and fitted with a few guns, she was renamed the Memphis and served as a Confederate blockade runner until Union forces finally caught up. Scuttled in Florida, she was later raised and then joined the Union’s blockading fleet off Charleston and served as a training vessel at the US Naval Academy.11
A former Union general, Benjamin Butler, bought the yacht in 1873. In the South, Butler was known as “the beast” for his harsh rule during the occupation of New Orleans and Norfolk—and also, perhaps, for being remarkably ugly. Although Butler made a mysterious fortune during the war and rigged the sale to buy the former America,12 the famous yacht could not have landed in better hands; he pampered her rotten. But after his death in 1893 his heirs neglected her until she was sold, battered but still historic, in 1916 to a group of yachtsmen who wanted to keep her in the United States. The America returned to the Naval Academy in 1921; she was towed from New England to Maryland, stopping at yacht clubs all along the way. Two thousand midshipmen welcomed her back to Annapolis,13 where she lived until a snowstorm in 1942 damaged her beyond repair.
There was no formal epitaph for the America; the most apt tribute had been penned in 1851, not long after her famous victory. Punch, the British humor magazine, offered a new verse to a well-known song:
Yankee Doodle had a craft,
A rather tidy clipper,
And he challenged, while they laughed,
The Britishers to whip her.
Their whole yacht squadron she outsped,
And that on their own water;
Of all the lot she went ahead
And they came nowhere arter.14
1853
SOIL FROM THE ELYSIAN FIELDS
I
n Greek mythology, the souls of the heroic dead enjoyed paradise in the Elysian Fields. It’s fittingly poetic, then, that perhaps the first organized baseball game took place on the Elysian Fields of Hoboken, New Jersey.
The aptly named Alexander Joy Cartwright has long been credited with devising the first modern rules; it is on this basis he is often referred to as “the father of baseball.” There is some truth to the legend; in September 1845 he wrote 20 rules and regulations for his Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. Among them are some familiar concepts, such as three strikes for an out, three outs to an inning, and foul territory.1
But Cartwright was more like Moses, setting down familiar practices for what became known as the “New York game” (as opposed to the “Massachusetts game”).2 As one early baseball historian, John Ward, put it in 1888, “They recorded the rules of the game as they remembered them from boyhood, and as they found them in vogue at that time.”3 But others did as much or more; for example, not only did Daniel “Doc” Adams create the shortstop position,4 but he also led the legislative effort in 1857 that set the bases 90 feet apart and established nine innings as the standard. These “Laws of Base Ball” sold at auction in April 2016 for $3.26 million.5 Adams, too, was associated with the Knickerbockers.
Over time the New York game, itself derived from “town ball,” which was a fairly primitive and informal pastime derived from the English game of rounders, evolved into the much more challenging one that became baseball. There is a nice symmetry to the fact that Cartwright, Adams, and their Knickerbocker cronies often played in the open area around Madison Avenue and East 27th Street, the future location of the first Madison Square Garden.
Looking for more space and less congestion, the gang began to take the ferry to the Elysian Fields, an expansive park on the other side of the Hudson River. It was there, on June 19, 1846, that the Knickerbockers played the New York Base Ball Club in what could be considered the first formal game played under modern rules.6 The Knickerbockers lost 23–1.7
This modest chunk of soil comes from that field; some of the original Knickerbockers might have slid on these exact ounces of dirt.8 In 1853 on a visit to the area, a young man named James Orr attended a ball game there. Orr was so taken with the new sport—he would call watching this game one of the most sublime moments of his life9—that he dug up a piece of the field to remember the occasion. He put the soil in a box with a note explaining where it was from and why it was important to him. The family kept it for generations.
Three years after Orr’s sublime experience, an English-born sportswriter named Henry Chadwick—confusingly, he is also often referred to as the “father of baseball”—visited the Elysian Fields and had a reaction not unlike Orr’s. This, he said, was “just the game for a national sport for Americans.” Chadwick became a tireless publicist for baseball. He also invented the box score,10 reason enough for his inclusion in the Hall of Fame.
Modern scholarship has cast some doubt on whether Cartwright was quite as important as he has been made out to be; indeed, his Hall of Fame plaque is riddled with errors (he didn’t set the bases 90 feet apart, for example). Unlike the silly myth of Abner Doubleday inventing the game on a rainy day in Cooperstown, however, there is a solid basis of fact related to Cartwright. He was an early player, in every sense of the word, on the Elysian fields of baseball.
1860
ABRAHAM LINCOLN’S HANDBALL
I
n his early days in New Salem, Indiana, Abraham Lincoln made his name among the tough Clary Grove gang by wrestling their leader, Jack Armstrong, to a draw.1 That was the first of many matches; Lincoln lost only once in 12 years, as far as the US Wrestling Hall of Fame can determine. Indeed, young Lincoln was known for two things: his character and his strength.
Like many an accomplished sportsman, Lincoln had attitude. After winning one wrestling match with indifferent ease, he is said to have shouted to the crowd, “Any of you want to try it, come on and whet your horns!”2 Lincoln was also an excellent runner and jumper, the latter no doubt helped by his unusual height.3 His friends were awed by his strength; one contemporary described him as “a Hercules.”
As a grown man in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln’s favorite athletic activity was a handball game known as “fives,” played against a brick wall in an alley near his law office. One of his opponents described the scene: “Here is where ‘Old Abe’ was always champion, for his long arms and long legs served a good purpose in reaching and returning the ball from any angle his adversary could send it to the wall.”4 Another observer was less complimentary, saying that Lincoln’s “suppleness, leaps, and strides to strike the ball were comical in the extreme.”5
Lincoln was not out for style points, however. He liked the competition, and a rousing game of fives was also a good way to relieve the stress of life with his wife, Mary Todd; the law; and politics. So it is not altogether surprising that in May 1860, with the presidential nominating convention going on in Chicago, he went down to the alley for a game. On the first ballot, William Seward of New York took the most votes, with Lincoln second. On the second ballot, Lincoln narrowed the gap. The suspense must have been excruciating.
When the messenger came with the results of the third ballot, Lincoln opened the telegram, read the news, and didn’t finish the game. Instead, he headed home, saying, “There is a little woman down on Eighth Street who will be glad to hear this news.”6
The ball in this picture may not be the exact one Lincoln played with as he waited for word from Chicago, but it certainly could be. It was found in a dresser in his home, and when Lincoln left Springfield after the election, he never returned alive.
1870
SPORTSMAN’S HALL
A
nimal sports such as bearbaiting and cockfighting were popular in the nineteenth century. Dogfighting, in which specially trained canines fought to the death, was a more specialized taste. The same was true for dog versus rat fights, in which a squirming bag of rodents was dumped in the pit and officials timed how long it took the dogs to kill them. There are also records of man versus rat fights, but not many: even nineteenth-century New York had its limits.1 This was all legal; there were no animal cruelty laws until 1868, and even then prosecution was uncertain. One judge threw out a case on the grounds that there was nothing wrong with “the fine sport of dog-fighting.”2
Owned by Kit Burns, a former notable in the notorious Irish American Dead Rabbits gang, the 25-squarefoot basement hall in the building on lower Manhattan’s eastern waterfront known as Sportsman’s Hall was the city’s most popular venue for such contests. “Nowhere,” wrote one disapproving observer, “could the moolahs and thugs find such delectable divertissement as Burns’ pits.”3
Public attitudes began to change, though, and in late 1870 the police waded into the middle of a heated bout between two dogs, Slasher and Old Rocks, and arrested 34 spectators. The cops also took away a cage of 150 rats meant for entertainment later in the evening, dumping them in the East River. Burns died before the trial, but his successors agreed not to hold any more dogfights; they told the New York Times that from then on, they’d stick to selling “rum and rats.” And by the way, Burns’s widow argued, she wanted compensation for those 150 rats.4
Built in the 1770s, this is one of the oldest buildings in New York City. It started as a home for a sea captain and has also served as a residence for fallen women, an apothecary, and a shoe store. In the late 1990s it was in such terrible condition that the city government gave it to a developer, on condition that the exterior be preserved. It now houses luxury apartments. Kit Burns would be appalled.
1889
JOHN L. SULLIVAN’S DUMBBELL
J
ohn L. Sullivan, America’s first sports superstar, was also the first athlete to earn $1 million. He pioneered other types of action, too. He dabbled in show biz and willing women. He drank too much. He had a posse of hangers-on. And he died destitute.
Remarkably, he managed all this even though at the height of his fame, his sport was illegal in every state.1 Today, boxing and prizefighting are synonymous. In the nineteenth century, however, they were distinct. Boxing, which gentlemen like Theodore Roosevelt did as a hobby at Harvard, was socially acceptable; prizefighting, which tough guys did for money, was not. Even so, prizefights took place all over the country, supported by a public that loved the action and a gambling culture that provided an economic base.
John L. was the best fighter in the land and had been regarded as such since at least 1882, when he pummeled Paddy Ryan to the canvas in 11 minutes. He hadn’t lost since, dispatching his challengers with contemptuous ease.
Jake Kilrain, who had made his name fighting around Boston, was good enough that Richard Fox, owner of the National Police Gazette, which covered the sport thoroughly, had proclaimed him champion. No one beyond Kilrain’s friends really believed this assertion (if they did). But if Kilrain could beat John L., he could turn that claim into reality, as well as pick up the $20,000 stake, the biggest purse ever.2
Sullivan’s people were sure that at his best, he could lick Kilrain with the proverbial one hand tied behind his back. The problem was that when they made the deal for a title match against Kilrain in early 1889, their man was suffering from the aftereffects of a particularly prolonged period of debauchery that had him seeing phantom rats.3 But the fight was set for July 8, 1889, six months away, more than enough time to dry him out. With two months left before the big fight, though, Sullivan’s backers were desperate; he was still a sodden mess. So they made a bet with Billy Muldoon, a famous trainer and reigning Greco-Roman wrestling champion.4 They would pay him $10,000 to get Sullivan in shape—to be paid only if he won.
Sullivan was shipped to Muldoon’s farm in an isolated part of upstate New York. Muldoon was ready for him. He told the only two bars in town not to serve Sullivan and banned the champ’s friends.
Sullivan hated it. He loathed Muldoon. And he wanted a drink. Despite Muldoon’s warning, a local bartender gave him one, or maybe three or four. Who was going to say no to the heavyweight champ? Muldoon hauled Sullivan out and wrestled him to the ground. With that, Sullivan got serious. Over the next seven weeks, he did whatever Muldoon asked, including milking cows, and was in bed by 9:00, with Muldoon asleep in the same room. He even bathed in brine to toughen his skin. After a few weeks, Sullivan was doing eight to ten miles of roadwork in the morning; in the afternoon, he worked out in a barn Muldoon had converted into a gym. Pictured here is one of the weights he used.5
Sullivan and Kilrain would fight under London Prize Ring rules. There were no gloves, and a round lasted as long as one man was on his feet; wrestling and grabbing were legal. The fight would end when one man could not go on. On a blistering hot day, a series of trains took spectators from New Orleans to a farm in Richburg, Mississippi, where a 20-foot-ring had been built. A little after 10:00 in the morning, the two stepped into the ring. Kilrain wore black knee breeches; Sullivan his famous green ones. Both were around 5 foot 10. Kilrain, 29, weighed in at 195 pounds. Sullivan, 30, was 207 pounds of superbly conditioned muscle.
One glance at Sullivan’s trim figure told Kilrain he couldn’t outslug the Boston Strong Boy; his strategy was to tire him out. But Sullivan was well able to chase Kilrain, even if he didn’t much like it. In the fourth round, which lasted 15 minutes, Sullivan became exasperated: “Why don’t you stand and fight like a man, you sonofabitch?”6 When there was an actual exchange of blows, he got the better of the action. As the fight wore on, Kilrain tired, not Sullivan, and he began to land thudding blows at will. In the seventy-sixth round, Kilrain’s seconds wouldn’t let him come out. Sullivan had won. Kilrain was devastated but philosophical; his telegram to his wife read: “Nature gave out. Not hurt, though licked. Your husband.”7 Various authorities came after the two for fighting illegally, and it took a lot of time and money to settle the charges.
The battle at Richburg was the last bare-knuckle heavyweight championship prizefight. Sullivan himself always preferred fighting with gloves and began to insist on it.8 With his stock as high as it would ever be, his opinion carried weight. In 1892, in the first title defense to be contested with gloves, Sullivan lost to 26-year-old Jim Corbett, crushed by a left to the jaw in the twenty-first round. It was the only loss of his career. Corbett’s deft use of feints and jabs and movement was altogether more sophisticated than the pounding rushes characteristic of Sullivan and his peers. Corbett is sometimes called the “father of modern boxing.”
This was also the first legal title fight; Louisiana had decriminalized the sport in 1890.9 For that, Sullivan must get a large share of the credit. While he was at times a rake and a drunk, he was also hugely popular. He lifted the sport from being a spectacle for lowlifes to one that also attracted the middle and upper classes. It was their support that successfully got the sport legalized in state after state.10 The first and last great champion of bare-knuckle boxing, Sullivan embodied one era and helped usher in a new one.
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