Baseball's Johnny Appleseed

In 1938 Honolulu changed the name of Makiki Park to Cartwright Park and celebrated Cartwright Day. Babe Ruth paid a visit to Nuuanu Cemetery to lay flower leis on Cartwright's grave. In 1939 a plaque was dedicated at City Hall, a street was renamed and a Cartwright Series was inaugurated by the Hawaii Baseball League.

To this day Hawaii, where baseball began before its introduction in some parts of the mainland, claims to have more players per capita than any other state. The Hawaii Islanders, though usually low in the Pacific Coast League standings, are always high among the minor league attendance leaders. And nowhere in the world can one find more colorful and racially heterogeneous baseball than in the state where vendors hawk sashimi, saimin, crackseed, laulau and poi along with their peanuts, popcorn and Crackerjack.

Forgotten though he may have been on the mainland, Cartwright was scarcely underestimated in the Islands, as may be judged from this Honolulu newspaper clipping, brittle with age: "His name should be revered by posterity for all time," the unsigned writer said, "and be emblazoned on the tablets of fame somewhere near that of George Washington, the Father of his Country. Mr. Cartwright was the Father of the National Pastime.... Oldtimers here say that when the feebleness of age prevented him from participating actively, he occupied the seat of honor at all the matches and was always an enthusiastic rooter."

After mentioning that the original ball was still in existence, the paper continued with what it claimed were old residents' recollections of things Cartwright had told them but what in fact were pirated portions of a series of articles by Will Irwin on the origins of baseball that had appeared in Collier's Weekly magazine.

"It dawned upon the pitchers after a while that they could deceive the batters by certain twirls of the ball.... In 1848 they changed the method of putting a man out on bases to the present rule—'Catch him out at first, touch him out at second, third and home.' At this juncture the runners took to sliding bases to avoid being touched out. The batters learned that better results could be obtained by making frequent short hits than constantly slugging for a home run [a short-lived lesson]."

The 1850s ball, the paper (and Collier's) reported, was so lively that one dropped from a housetop would rebound to the roof. "The first baseball manufacturers were shoemakers. They sewed on the covers in quarter sections shaped like the petals of a tulip. The seams were always splitting and bunching. The size and weight of the ball together with its rough and uneven surface, caught without gloves, battered the players' hands all out of shape, and the game was denounced by the New York Herald as...barbarous.

"As soon as the war was over Mr. Salzman, who took the game from New York to Boston, went to Charleston, South Carolina, and the game took a firm rooting there. Savannah then 'caught' onto it, and in 1867 sent a team up to Charleston, accompanied by a bunch of rooters and a band of music, to play for the baseball championship of the South. The blacks, reveling in their release from bondage, swarmed about the sidelines and hurled epithets at the white men on the diamond. The players charged the Negroes with their bats and a regiment of soldiers had to be called out to quell the riot."

Cartwright occasionally wrote to the old Knickerbockers. In one letter, dated April 21, 1858, he asked, "What are my old friends doing, Alick Drummond, Bill Tellman, Duncan Curry, Charlie Birney, Charlie De Bost, June Stagg and all the rest.... How flourish the Knickerbockers?" The Knickerbockers did not flourish for long—1858 was the year the first national association of baseball clubs was organized, and the Knicks were defeated in their attempt to gain control of it.

Another letter that survives is one written by Cartwright in 1865 to De Bost, who had captained the Knickerbockers: "What pleasant memories arise, as I read your dear, good letter.... Dear old Knickerbockers, I hope the Club is still kept up, and that I shall someday meet again with them on the pleasant fields of Hoboken. Charlie, I have in my possession the original ball with which we used to play on Murray Hill. Many is the pleasant chase I have had after it on Mountain and Prairie, and many an equally pleasant one on the sunny plains of ' Hawaii nei....' Sometimes I have thought of sending it home to be played for by the Clubs, but I cannot bear to part with it, it is so linked in with cherished home memories....

"Once on a time I heard that a lithograph of the old members of the 'Knickerbockers' was to be published. Was it ever done, or if not is it not possible still to have it done? It would be interesting as a memorial of the first Base Ball club of N.Y., truly the first, for the old New York Club never had a regular organization. I will give $100—or $200 toward its publication....