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Historian Tom Melville
Tom Melville, an historian of American cricket from Milwaukee, has been
conducting recreatons
of early American cricket games at many living history events for over ten years.
$10.00
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"Brief History of Cricket in the Civil War"
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| Story by Tom Melville |
In the life of the average Civil War soldier the
terror of war, as scholars say, was only matched by the tedium of camp life. And, like soldiers of all wars, the men
in blue and gray initiated various games, sports, and amusements to endure the long down time between battles. Some
of these activies would be very familiar to 21st century Americans. Some would not.
Nine-man baseball, a new fangled invention from New York, was catching
on. But soldiers on both sides also played another bat and ball sport, the venerable old English game of cricket. Civil
War regiments had entire cricket teams while others even organized inter-regimental matches, like the one played between the
32nd New York and 95th Pennsylvania at White Oak Church, Virginia, in 1863. Even the Confederate POWs at Johnson's Island,
Ohio, humanized their prison time with some cricket games.
The Civil War forever changed just about every aspect of American
society, including its sporting future. With the cessation of hostilities the new nine-man baseball nurtured within
the military ranks soon spread to civilian life, a trend that, within a few decades, had consigned cricket to the margins
of America's sporting landscape. It was a process typified by the career of Nick Young, an Amsterdam, New York, resident,
who came to Washington to work for the government during the Civil War. It was here, among the camplife of the capital, that
this enthusiastic cricketer first played nine-man baseball, a game that was soon diverting more and more of his interest from
cricket. The rest, as the saying goes, is history. Twenty five years later he was president of the National Baseball
League.
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