Historian Michael Aubrecht believes Abner Doubleday may have organized baseball games prior to the Battle of Chancellorsville. mwm Visit the Photo Place

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DAMN Yankees

Ball games helped Civil War soldiers forget their worries before the Battle of Chancellorsville

By MICHAEL ZITZ
The Free Lance-Star

Date published: 5/3/2005

By MICHAEL ZITZ The Free Lance-Star

During the Civil War, the Yankees wore blue, not pinstripes, and they were far less cocky.

After all, there was no Derek Jeter then, no Alex Rodriguez, and no George Steinbrenner using his deep pockets to hire a free-agent field general every time the Union made a tactical blunder.

But an even bigger baseball name was on the losing Yankees' side at the Battle of Chancellorsville during the spring of 1863.

Abner Doubleday may have organized baseball games to calm the nerves of Union soldiers awaiting the start of the Chancellorsville campaign, says Michael Aubrecht, a baseball essayist and Civil War historian.

Aubrecht, who lives in Massaponax, is a contributing writer for Baseball-Almanac.com and the author of the Civil War book, "Onward Christian Soldier: The Spiritual Journey of Stonewall."

Union Gen. Doubleday, who was for years falsely credited with inventing baseball, is believed to have set up games between Yankee divisions during the war, he said.

"It's very possible that Doubleday may have organized a game or two leading up to the Battle of Chancellorsville," Aubrecht said.

At the time of the engagement in early May some 142 years ago, Doubleday was in command of the 3rd Division, 1st Corps.

Doubleday was in the Fredericksburg area from the summer of 1862 through the Battle of Fredericksburg that December; and the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, said John Hennessy, chief historian at Fredericksburg & Spotsylvania National Military Park. Baseball was played "extensively" by Union soldiers in Stafford County during that time, he said, but he's seen no record of Doubleday's hand in games hereabouts.

The Civil War helped fuel a boom in the popularity of baseball evidenced by the fact that a ball club called the Washington Nationals was born in 1860--145 years before a Major League Baseball team was given the same name in D.C. this season.

Box scores from games played by New York soldiers were published in newspapers in places like Rochester.

They didn't look much like baseball box scores today. One game was 49-31.

The games were quite rough, Hennessy said. "It was a little bit of a different game than we know today," he said.

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Date published: 5/3/2005