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Dorothea Graham Jensen
a book bubble about
A Buss from Lafayette
Teens
Author Insight
Baseball in 1825?? YUP!!
When I asked friends to read early versions of A BUSS FROM LAFAYETTE, one of them questioned this reference to baseball. This was probably due to the myth that Abner Doubleday invented the game in 1839. I felt jusitified in keeping baseball in my story, however, because I remembered reading that American soldiers played it at Valley Forge during the spring of 1777-8. Moreover, I recently read in a New England HIstorical Society article that a baseball historian named Larry McCray "noted at least 199 other references to ballplaying from 1770 to 1830. Soldiers played it during the American Revolution, and people played it on holidays. And the holiday most strongly associated with ballplaying, he wrote,was Fast Day ." (This was an annual New England holiday in April which didn't end until 1991, the year we moved here). This seasonal date is not that different from the current opening of the baseball season, but I suspect it was originally due to baseball playing fields drying up enough for playing the game at the end of our New England "Mud Season."(II also found references to early baseball being called "The Boston Game.")
Book Excerpt
A Buss from Lafayette
“But you do not act like any other girl I know. Remember, I have seen you dive into the pond and ride Feather bareback and play baseball. You have a wicked arm with the bat, and your pitching is excellent, too!”
“Well, I fear you will not be seeing me do any of those things from now on. My father is selling Feather, and my stepmother says I am not to swim in the pond, or ride any horse but with a sidesaddle. She will probably add playing baseball to the list of things I must not do. Says I must learn to be a lady,” I said with a grimace.
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