Doc Adams helped shape baseball’s earliest days

In the mid-19th century, Doc Adams was first introduced to “base ball,” a sporting activity with rules and regulations that varied from team to team. A few decades later, this figure from the game’s nascent years would be called by many the “Father of Baseball” due to his important contributions in turning the sport into the National Pastime.

Adams, a talented ballplayer who became a pioneering force on a multitude of fronts in baseball’s early years, is one of 10 finalists on this year’s Pre-Integration Committee ballot at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum. The Pre-Integration Committee will vote on Dec. 7 at baseball’s Winter Meetings in Nashville, Tenn..

The 10 candidates on the Pre-Integration Committee ballot are: Sam Breadon, Bill Dahlen, Wes Ferrell, August (Garry) Herrmann, Marty Marion, Frank McCormick, Harry Stovey, Chris von der Ahe, Bucky Walters and Adams. Any candidate who receives at least 75 percent of all ballots cast will be enshrined in the Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2016.

Born Nov. 1, 1814, in Mont Vernon, N.H., Adams graduated from Yale College in 1835, then attended Harvard Medical School, from where he acquired a degree in 1838. By the next year he was in New York City establishing his own general practice. But it wasn’t long before Adams, some two decades before the start of the Civil War, was among the young professionals giving “base ball” a chance in this urban setting.

Adams, who joined the New York Base Ball Club in 1840, became a member of the famed Knickerbocker Base Ball Club in 1845, a few weeks after the club was formed. He would eventually play all positions, except pitcher, during his years with the club. Adams was elected president of the club in 1846, a position he held for the next three years and again from 1856 to 1858.

“I was the chairman of the Committee on Rules and Regulations from the start and so long as I retained membership. I presented the first draft of rules, prepared after much careful study of the matter, and it was in the main adopted. The distance between bases I fixed at 30 yards,” Adams said. “In every meeting of the National Association while a member I advocated the ‘fly-game’ – that is, not to allow first-bound catches – but I was always defeated on the vote. The change was made, however, soon after I left, as I predicted in my last speech on the subject before the convention.
“The distance from home to pitcher’s base I made 45 feet,” he added. “I resigned in 1862, but not before thousands were present to witness matches, and any number of outside players standing ready to take a hand on regular playing days. But we pioneers never expected the game to be universal as it had now become.”
When Adams resigned from the Knickerbockers in 1862, he was awarded honorary membership and presented him with a scroll that proclaimed him “Nestor of Ball Players.” After leaving his medical practice, Adams relocated to Ridgefield, Conn., where he was the first president of the local bank and served in the state’s House of Representatives.
After Adams passed away at the age of 84 on Jan. 3, 1899, in New Haven, Conn., the New York Tribune’s obituary read, in part, “took the keenest pleasure in athletic sports, and soon after coming to New York became one of the earliest members of the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, the first organization of its kind in existence. He became president of the club, and took the most active interest in its welfare and in the development of the game, even giving his personal attention to making bats and balls, articles then unknown to manufacturers, and retaining his position as an authority on all matters pertaining to the sport until he left New York.”

Bill Francis is a Library Associate at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum