1852-1866 (15 seasons)
New York Gotham Team History
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New York Gotham
Franchise Overview 1852-1866 (15 seasons)
Recap
Perhaps the most convoluted of all tales surrounding the beginning of organized baseball may best be exemplified by the Gotham Club of New York, whose own genesis can be linked directly to William Rufus Wheaton. In an 1887 interview, Wheaton told an interviewer that he wrote down the rules for play for the club in 1837. According to John Thorn, "At some point in the early 1840s the Gotham club was renamed the New York Ball Club, retaining most if not all of its Gotham members. The New Yorks then spun off the Knickerbockers, as Wheaton relates in the 1887 interview. The Gotham, meanwhile, continued to play ball among themselves from 1845 to 1849, just as the Knickerbocker and Eagle clubs appear to have done. In 1850 those Gotham and New York members who had not attached to the Knickerbockers in Hoboken reconstituted themselves as, yet again, the Washingtons, playing at the Red House Grounds (“a most comfortable ‘asylum for distressed husbands,’” offered Spirit of the Times) at Second Avenue and 105th Street in New York.
In 1851 this Washington Base Ball Club challenged the Knickerbockers to match games that have been preserved in the historical record. In 1852 the club reverted to its old name of Gothams, 'consolidating with' the Washingtons."
This club is the same as the one that played against the Knickerbockers on June 19, 1846, although at the time they were going by the name New York Club.
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