Grand Baseball Match
Concord Base Ball Club.
Concord, Massachusetts
4th of July 1879! Grand Base Ball Match!
Concord: 1879
Broadside
Rare Book & Special Collections
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Despite the establishment of the National League as the first major
professional baseball league in 1876, most of the public's exposure
to the game was still based on informally arranged matches played
between the smaller amateur and semi-professional clubs that had
proliferated throughout America in the years following the Civil
War. Civic pride for the "local nine" played no small part in attracting
spectators. Walt Whitman stated that baseball "has the snap, go,
fling of the American atmosphere-belongs as much to our institutions,
fits into them as significantly, as our constitutions, laws: is
just as important in the sum total of our historic life."
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