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02. 1880s

“Baseball is the very symbol, the outward and visible expression of the drive and push and rush and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming nineteenth century.” —Mark Twain

“To an Athlete Dying Young”

The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honors out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup,

And round that early-laureled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.

—A. E. Housman

Hitting a ball with a bat, the essence of baseball, is an ancient pastime. It became our national pastime after the Civil War. In 1867 a U.Va. student publication referred to the baseball club and commented about “the enthusiasm which this game inspires in many of its followers. Indeed there seems to be some who have in the shortest time, come to regard proficiency in the game as the very ultimatum [sic] of all their hopes and dreams.”

Baseball “Nines” from the residential areas of the Lawn, Ranges, Carr’s Hill and Dawson’s Row competed against each other.

In 1872 the “Monticello Base-ball Club” took train and stagecoach to compete against Washington and Lee. When W&L returned the visit, games were probably played on a field near the cemetery just west of Dawson’s Row and within sight of the Montebello estate.

In May 1878 the University students gasped when W&L’s pitcher threw balls that went crooked. Stunned by the curve ball, student interest in baseball declined until 1882 when a re-established University team defeated a town nine 13-7. Nineteen-year-old Charley Ferguson (pictured below) pitched for Charlottesville.

As the University student population approached 400, energetic students in 1888 formed the General Athletic Association. The baseball team management expanded the schedule, fenced in the field in order to charge admission, and challenged a “picked nine” from the town to a season-opening game. J. Lipop pitched for Charlottesville, while former Mayor and UVa alumnus, Samuel Woods, played in right field. U.Va. won this and all seven of the other games on its schedule.