Edward G. Saltzman, Baseball Pioneer

Edward Saltzman was one of those rare individuals in early baseball history that was a part of the genesis of the game in multiple areas of the country – three states in fact: New York; Massachusetts; Georgia. In the mid 1850s, he played second base for one of the first baseball teams, the Gothams of New York City, several years before the formation of the National Association of Base Ball Players.

He then moved to Boston in 1857 and brought the New York style of play with him and formed the first club in the state to abide by the rules, the Tri-Mountains. Eventually the entrenched Massachusetts Game was usurped and the New York Game took hold as it did throughout the nation. Saltzman proved to be the pioneer of the New York method in Massachusetts.

Before the end of the 1860s, Saltzman branched out to form one of the first clubs in Georgia to heed the New York rules, the Pioneers of Savannah. As an aside, one of Saltzman’s men on the Tri-Mountains headed west and helped form the first baseball club in California, the Eagles of San Francisco.

Picture of Saltzman

NEW YORK

Edward G. Saltzman was born in New York between 1830 and 1835. (The 1860 U.S. Census suggests the earlier date, the 1880 Census the later. The fact that he was playing on a top New York baseball team in 1853 suggests that the 1830 date is more likely, placing him at age 23 instead of 18.) He was employed as a watchcase maker at Saltzman and Company, “importers and wholesale dealers in [Swiss] Quartier watches,” at 10 Maiden Lane in New York City.

Saltzman played second base for the Gotham club of New York from 1853-1856 and briefly in 1858. The Gothams were one of the first baseball teams – an offshoot of the Washington club or perhaps just a reorganization of such. According to the 19^th century’s premier scribe Henry Chadwick, “[the] Knickerbocker club, organized in 1845, was the pioneer organization, and for several years the only one in the field. Its first competitor was the Washington Club [in 1850], which, however, only existed for a short period, many of its members taking part in the formation of the Gotham Club in 1852…” The Knickerbockers and Washingtons/Gothams played each other eight times before the Eagle and Empire clubs joined the fray in 1854.

Saltzman’s time with the Gothams predates the formation of the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP), the first formal baseball organization.

In June 1855, a fireworks company located in the same building as Saltzman and Company caught fire. One Saltzman and Company employee died and over $50,000 in watches and jewelry were destroyed. According to the Consumer Price Index, $50,000 in 1855 is roughly equivalent to $1.3 million in 2010. The company was only insured for a 1/5 of the financial losses.

This event may have led Saltzman to seek his fortune elsewhere; he relocated to Boston in late 1856 or early 1857. (He played with the Gothams as late as September 1856.) Saltzman must have maintained his membership in the club because historian Marshall D. Wright lists him as playing three games with the Gothams at second and third base in 1858.

BOSTON

Massachusetts had its own version of baseball, known appropriately as the Massachusetts Game. The rules were strikingly different than the New York version that we recognize today. First, teams consisted of between 10 and 14 players on the field. Second, the bases were closer together. Third, soaking (throwing the ball at a runner) was allowed. Also, the MA game had a “thrower” rather than a “pitcher” with correspondingly different goals. Instead of nine innings of play, the winner was the first club to score 100 times.

Saltzman settled in Boston in early 1857 and immediately began talking up the New York Game. According to James D’Wolf Lovett, an early Boston sportsman:

In 1857…the New York game got the thin edge of its wedge into New England. Mr. E. G. Saltzman, a member of the Gotham Club of New York, for which he played second base, came to Boston in this year, and feeling the lack of his favorite pastime, set to work to form a club and teach the members the mysteries of this latest form of the game. It was uphill work, however, as the Massachusetts game was in full blast, and new-fangled ideas were looked upon with that coy conservatism which came over from England and landed upon a Rock down Plymouth way some years previously.

By June, Saltzman had converted – or at least interested – enough men in the New York Game to form a club, the Tri-Mountains of Boston. The name stems from the earliest European settlers who called the area Trimountaine after the three hills – Fort Hill, Copps Hill and Trimont – that defined the area. (The three hills were dug up and used to fill in the areas of water around Back Bay and the mouth of the Charles River to increase and redefine the city’s land mass.) It was only later that the name Boston was adopted.

No other clubs were willing to play by New York rules in 1857, so the Tri-Mountains practiced and played among themselves. The club’s treasurer Benjamin Franklin Guild, a newspaper editor and columnist, went to New York to practice and learn the game from the Gotham club.

New York Clipper 6/15/1857

New York Clipper 6/20/1857

The Tri-Mountains played their first game on June 17, an intrasquad match. Rather than not competing locally at all, the Tri-Mountains participated in Massachusetts-rule games during the season. They played seven contests – against local clubs such as the Olympics, Winthrops and Wassapoags – and were declared the winners of the MA championship. Guild finished second in the circuit with 52 runs scored, Saltzman fifth with 47.

Meanwhile, baseball in New York City was becoming formalized. In January 1857, fifteen area clubs met at the behest of the Knickerbockers to standardize the rules of the game. In May virtually all the Knickerbocker rules were formally adopted accept the one declaring a winner after 21 runs. The new rule declared the leader after nine innings of play as the victor. The first formal meeting of the NABBP took place in March 1858 with 22 clubs represented.

Massachusetts took heed. On May 13 and 14, 1858, ten clubs met in Dedham, MA, formed the Massachusetts Association of Base Ball Players and standardized their rules. By this time, Guild had assumed the presidency of the Tri-Mountains. At the convention he pushed for the adoption of the New York rules but it was a losing cause. Rebuffed, the Tri-Mountains elected not to join.

New York Clipper 5/29/1858

The committee on rules and regulations reported…a warm discussion of about two hours followed the report some parts of which not being to conformity with the views entertained by different delegates. Mr. B.F. Guild, president of the Tri-Mountain club of Boston, addressed the association with an appropriate speech stating that the delegate from their club would be obliged to withdraw from the association, as the rules and regulations…could not be accepted by their club, as they prefer to play the New York Game.

On September 9, 1858, the Tri-Mountains played their first formal contest under NABBP rules. That day, they faced a nine from Portland, Maine at the Boston Commons. This would be the first non-intrasquad contest played under New York rules in Massachusetts. The Tri-Mountains won a close contest, 47-42. Saltzman did not appear in the lineup.

Why a Portland, Maine club? The team included Sidney Crowell, a 230-pound steamship captain whose route ran along the coast between Portland and New York City. The teams met in a rematch on June 28, 1859 in Portland. That match ended with the Tri-Mountains victorious 21-14.

Boston Daily Advertiser 6/30/1859

Eventually other MA clubs adopted the New York rules; among the first were the Atwaters of Westfield and the Bowdoin club of Boston. During Tri-Mountain’s early years, Saltzman did a good bit of the pitching. For example:

Boston Daily Advertiser 9/24/1860

The conversion to the New York Game was a slow but steady endeavor. By the end of 1860, about a dozen or so area clubs were playing by NABBP rules. Several out-of-state clubs traveled to Boston, showcasing the NY version. Of particular note was a trip by the Excelsiors of Brooklyn with their stud pitcher James Creighton in mid July 1862. They soundly defeated the Bowdoin squad and a nine assembled from the Lowells and Tri-Mountains. These barnstorming trips did a lot to pave the way for the adoption of the NABBP rules. By the end of the Civil War, most of the country had converted to the New York style of play. Massachusetts was the lone holdout of significance but that would soon change as well.

The first two Massachusetts clubs joined the NABBP in 1866, the Lowells and the Harvard club of Cambridge. The Tri-Mountains enlisted the following year when membership in the organization exploded. Saltzman doesn’t seem to have played in any league contests (outside those three games with the Gothams in 1858). He played with the Tri-Mountains and was involved in club management at least until 1868. In 1870, the club turned professional and played out the season. The NABBP collapsed at the end of the season and the Tri-Mountains seem to as well.

SAVANNAH

In early 1867 (or perhaps late 1866), Saltzman formed the Pioneer club of Savannah, Georgia under NABBP rules. They played their first game on January 15. Game accounts for the Pioneers can also be found in 1868 newspapers.

Savannah Daily News and Herald 1/16/1867

Savannah Daily News and Herald 2/14/1867

Boston Daily Advertiser 2/25/1867

Saltzman’s stay in Savannah was short and perhaps scheduled to be temporary. He was back in Boston by the end of the decade at the latest and played with the Tri-Mountains in both 1867 and 1868. In Boston, he was involved in Republican politics and was a member of the Knights of Honor. In 1873 he applied for a patent for a “children’s carriage.” He was unmarried as late as 1880.

SAN FRANCISCO

Tri-Mountain club member Martin F. Cosgriff moved to San Francisco in 1858 or ’59. Along with some cricket players, he helped organize the west coasts’ first baseball team in November 1859. They were initially called the San Franciscos, but soon changed it to the Eagles. Their first game took place on February 22 – with a “ball made of woolen yard from a sock and rubber from a pair of overshoes” – against a hastily assembled nine.

Cosgriff, fresh from New York, supplied the bats and balls for the new club. According to San Franciscan Seymour R. Church’s The History of Baseball published in 1902 (as mentioned in the Sporting Life), he provided the first regulation baseball on the west coast.

SOURCE LIST

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