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even outs on the base path but served more as a mediator for group decisions involving players and even fans.
    Perhaps the first big recorded game in American history took place on June 19, 1846, when the Knickerbockers took a ferry across the Hudson River to a grassy picnic grove appropriately named the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, where they lost to the New York Club, 23–1, with Cartwright serving as umpire.
    After one game in 1858, the Knickerbockers posed for a rudimentary photograph, staring poker-faced at the newfangled camera, their bushy beards and muttonchop sideburns making them spiritual ancestors of the fightin' Oakland A's of the mid-1970s, with their retro facial hair.
    Hoboken, the birthplace of another American institution, Francis Albert Sinatra, has lobbied to be considered the home place of baseball, but its urban grit and anonymous proximity to New York City make it a poor competitor with upstate Cooperstown for thehonor. In the minds of the American builders of baseball, the game needed the appeal of the woods and pastures, with the players retaining the posture of farmers and outdoorsmen. This image was more myth than reality; baseball was a city game.
    Within a few miles and short ferry rides, the Knickerbockers could challenge teams like the Empires, Atlantics, Eagles, Putnams, Washingtons, Gothams, Eckfords, and Phantoms in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and New Jersey, whose rosters included men from the shops, factories, offices, and civil service of the metropolis. Some clubs were organized along ethnic lines, like soccer teams of future generations, but others represented trades or companies or neighborhoods.
    Cartwright did not stick around to see how it turned out. In 1849, he heard of the Gold Rush in California and headed west, with bat and ball at reach. Cartwright is often called the Johnny Appleseed of baseball for the way he carried the sport on his westward peregrination. Cartwright deserves a great deal of credit, but he was not the only pioneer.
    In 1857, Doc Adams, as the head of the Knickerbockers, may have invented a defensive position known to this day as shortstop, roaming into the open space beyond second and third bases to handle relays because the ball was too light to be thrown long distances. The winner was the team that was ahead after nine innings, rather than the first team to score twenty-one runs.
    Perhaps the most brilliant rule was setting the bases ninety feet apart, most notably from home to first. How did the pioneers determine that ninety feet was exactly the proper test of a pitcher, batter, infielder, and first baseman? Could they foresee generations of what are called bang-bang plays at first base, with an umpire watching the runner's foot and listening to the smack of the ball in the glove at the same time? That perfect distance has survived from rudimentary shortstops like Doc Adams of the 1850s to disparate shortstops like squat Honus Wagner early in the next century to spindly Marty (Slats) Marion of the 1940s to acrobatic Ozzie Smith of the 1980s to solid Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez at the turn of another century. The fielders became bigger and faster with betterequipment; so did the batters racing down to first base. Unlike basketball, in which players seem to have outgrown the dimensions of the court and the basket, baseball players still succeed or fail by the same slender margins. In this way, the game remains unchanged.
    Other aspects of 1850s baseball were bound to change. For a time, players were expected to remain amateur. In 1858, while Adams was active with the Knickerbockers, the players formed the National Association of Base Ball Players. They thought it was their game, although they would soon learn differently.
    In that same year, an admission fee was charged for a baseball game for the first time, for an all-star game between players in New York and Brooklyn, then a separate city. Over 10,000 fans crowded into the Fashion Race Course in