Baseball On The Fourth of July

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Baseball On The Fourth of July

I’ve got a confession to make.

It’s been 4 years since I last watched a baseball game in person.

It was on July 4, 2019, and I splurged on tickets for my family of 5 to see the Washington Nationals in person.

I can’t say it was a great experience. We were out of the sun, thankfully, but the humidity and slow pace of play really caused problems. My children weren’t interested in the game at all. Everybody started clamoring to go home sometime around the top of the 6th inning.

Of course, as you might already know, the Nationals won their 4th in a row that day, catapulting themselves into second place and setting things up for their eventual World Series triumph.

But, yeah, we haven’t been back since. Sadly, the sport at the highest level just isn’t the same family adventure that it once was.

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Washington Nationals 4th of July History

That got me curious. What were things like around these parts in the old days?

I’m not talking about the 60s, or even the 30s or 20s. I’m talking about the real old days, the 19th century.

Well, the answer, as it turns out, is kind of complicated. I’m only paying attention to the post-1876 leagues — and even then I’ve got some issues with what historians officially call a “major league.”

It took a little while to find, but I discovered that the 1884 Washington Nationals of the old Union Association played a double header at home on the 4th of July.

You’ll notice here, of course, that they played the games against two separate opponents.

There are a lot of reasons to not consider the Union Association a true “major” league. However, the American Association Washington Nationals from the same year played on the road on July 4th, as did almost every other iteration of the team throughout the 19th century, regardless of the league. So we’ll go with this one.

Now, the old Evening Star back in 1884 looks almost like a paper full of advertising to modern eyes. I mean, just look at the front page:

From The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), July 3, 1884, page 1

I don’t know about you, but I can certainly see why the innovations of the likes of Pulitzer a few years later really took off. That old column-heavy format simply isn’t eye catching at all.

Anyway, here’s a little bit about the 4th of July festivities that year:

From The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), July 3, 1884, page 4

You’ll notice, of course, that this was a double entry doubleheader, with distinct morning and afternoon games.

And here’s the coverage of both games:

From The Evening Star (Washington, D.C.), July 5, 1884, page 2

It took me a little while to find, but I was eventually able to locate the starting times of both games:

From The National Republican (Washington, D.C.), July 4, 1884, page 1

That’s right: Washington played against St. Louis at 10 AM, a starting time unheard of these days, and didn’t start its second game against Cincinnati until 4 PM.

Sadly, that’s as far as my research got me. There aren’t quite enough 1884 newspapers at my disposal to learn more — not right now, anyway.

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Expanded Paying Subscriber Benefits

I’ve got more to say than just that, of course.

I’m expanding the rewards that paying subscribers receive. I’ve started up a new Member’s Area.

From the beginning of this blog, I wanted to make sure that all posts were entirely free. They’re going to stay free as well. I don’t enjoy paywalls, and would really feel strange about sticking posts about my baseball projects behind a paywall.

Anyway, this member’s area is pretty simple. I’m going to use this to upload files that might be of interest to some of you — files that I’ve created to help me with writing this blog.

Coming up first is a spreadsheet I’ve created that contains Domination Index ratings for a large number of teams, including:

• All National League teams, 1893-2022

• All American League teams, 1900-2022

• Both Federal League years (1914 and 1915)

• All Nippon Pro Baseball teams, 1950-2022

It’s the closest I can get to giving you a preview of the sort of articles that are to come. It’s also a spreadsheet you can play around with and use for your own purposes.

More tools like this will come in the future.

I’ve also uploaded my personal collection of MP3 files of old baseball broadcasts, which exceeds 2,000 individual games.

Thank you to all who subscribe — whether free or paying! I’ll do my best to create more rewards and interesting items for you in the future.