Page:America's National Game (1911).djvu/78

 of securing an organization of Base Ball players. It is of record that in the spring of 1845 Mr. Cartwright, being present and participating in a practice game of ball, proposed to others the formal association of themselves together as a Base Ball club. His suggestion met approval, and a self-constituted committee, consisting of Alexander J. Cartwright, D. F. Curry, E. R. Dupignac, Jr., W. H. Tucker and W. R. Wheaton, at once set about securing signatures of those who were desirous of belonging to such an organization. The result of the efforts of this committee was the gaining of a nucleus for what soon became the famous Knickerbocker Base Ball Club, of New York, the first recorded association of Base Ball players in the world. The organization was perfected September 23, 1845.

Alexander J. Cartwright, whose portrait is presented in connection with this chapter, was born in New York City in the first decade of the Nineteenth Century. He left his native city in 1849 and crossed the plains to California, attracted by the gold craze of that sensational era. He remained in the Golden State for only one year, sailing for the Hawaiian (then Sandwich) Islands, in 1850. There he spent the remainder of his active life, dying at Honolulu in 1892.

From early boyhood, Mr. Cartwright was an enthusiastic devotee of Base Ball. Beginning as the originator of the first Base Ball association in the world, and continuing his connection with that club as player and office-bearer until the time of his departure in 1849, to seek his fortunes in the Far West, he never lost interest in the