Other firsts in baseball/Event 2
From SABR Encyclopedia
| Spread project: Home -> Other firsts -> Other firsts in baseball/Event 2 |
| Year | 1880 |
|---|---|
| City | Nantasket |
| State | MA |
| Country | US |
| Description | First Night Game Played Under the Lights |
"[O]n Thursday, September 2, 1880, teams representing two of Boston's prominent department stores, Jordan Marsh and Company and R. H. White and Company, played a game of baseball at Nantasket Bay on the oceanside of Hull, Massachusetts.
This game would have held no historic value and would long since have been forgotten had it not been for one unique feature. It was the first baseball game ever played at night "under the lights."
The debut of night baseball a century ago was an ambiguous one in the sense that the game itself was not the main attraction. Rather the primary event was an elaborate lighting display staged by the Northern Electric Light Company of Boston to demonstrate the feasibility of illuminating large areas including cities. Thomas Edison had invented the incandescent lamp the previous year, so this baseball game under the lights was a means of proving a point.
The contest was played on the lawn in the rear of Nantasket's Sea Foam House. Three wooden towers were erected some 100 feet apart at the summits of which were placed 12 electric lamps having a combined strength of 30,000 candle power. In a small shed had been placed two engines with three electric generators, one for each tower.
The Boston Post of September 3, 1880, reported that "when the lamps were lighted after dark the effect was fine. A clear, pure, bright light was produced, very strong and yet very pleasant to the sight.”
Although the Post stated that this first nocturnal baseball game was played "with scarcely the precision as by daylight," Jordan Marsh and Company and R. H. White and Company did play nine innings to a 16-16 tie when the game was called to allow the two teams to take the last boat back to Boston. Some 300 spectators attended the historic encounter.
It would make a good story to be able to state that night baseball became an instant success following the debut at Nantasket Bay and that the professional leagues began to consider its possibilities with interest and enthusiasm. Such of course was not the case. Actually, another 50 years passed before the moguls of Organized Baseball finally decided to give the arc lights a serious try.
The next night game of record was played June 2, 1883, at Fort Wayne, Indiana, between Quincy, Illinois, and a team called the M. E. Church Nine. Quincy won, 19-11, in a seven-inning game played before some 2,000 fans.
Sources
- http://www.co.franklin.pa.us/Pages/http://research.sabr.org/journals/under-the-lights, retrieved on 2010-03-08.
