Summer 25 OP Newsletter

Each newsletter, we will delve into a different piece of Orland’s past. This season we will be exploring the history of baseball in Orland Park in honor of our upcoming fourth annual Vintage Base Ball Game on July 26 at Stellwagen Farm. BASEBALL IN ORLAND PARK’S HISTORY With the rise of industrialization in the nineteenth century, people enjoyed an unprecedented amount of leisure time. As a result, sports gained popularity throughout the country. This was especially true amongst people living in the northeastern United States. Since Orland was settled primarily by people from England and the American Northeast, it stands to reason that they brought their love of sports with them – particularly, the new game known as baseball. Although the exact origin of modern baseball is unknown, some historians believe it to have originated from two English games: cricket and rounders. Both games involved a stick that was used to strike a ball. Baseball also shares similarities with la soule, which emerged from Normandy and Picardy in the medieval period. On June 4, 1838, the first baseball game with a documented scorecard in North American history took place – not in the United States but in Beachville, Ontario, Canada!

Pinpointing one figure as the founder of baseball is difficult, as there is much controversy over the origins of the sport. Historians have debunked the theory that U.S. Army officer Abner Doubleday invented baseball in 1839 – a claim that he never made himself during his lifetime. This story instead came from the Mills Commission in 1907, a group appointed to determine the sport’s historic origin. Most historians tend to believe that Alexander Cartwright can be called “the father of modern baseball,” though he by no means invented the game. In 1845, he established a formal, consistent set of rules that all baseball teams could play by, some of which are still in place today (known as the Knickerbocker Rules). The first recorded American baseball game took place in Hoboken, New Jersey on June 19, 1846, and used these guidelines. By 1856, this relatively new sport had already received the moniker of “America’s Pastime!”

Alexander Cartright, Jr. (1820-1892) Photograph Source: Hawai’i State Archives

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