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The Life of DANIEL L. ADAMS

Daniel Lucius Adams was born in Mont Vernon, New Hampshire on 1 November 1814. He graduated from Yale in 1835 and received a medical degree from Harvard in 1838. He moved to New York City where he was actively involved in the treatment of the poor at New York dispensaries. Hence the name "Doc" when he began to play baseball in 1839 with a group of other young men of medicine for the exercise. Some of the young members of the New York Base Ball Club got together to form the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club on 23 September 1845. About a month later a group of the medical men including Doc Adams joined them. Adams played in one of the sports first documented games against the New York Nine at Elysian Field in Hoboken, NJ. They lost that game 23-1, but Adams went on to become known as a father of baseball. In 1846 Walt Whitman wrote, "I see great things in baseball. It's our game - the American game. It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us." Adams, as Knickerbocker president, in 1848 headed up a committee to revise the Constitution and By-Laws and refine the rules of the game and in 1849 or 1850, Adams created the shortstop position, not to bolster the infield but to assist in relays from outfield. In 1856 there were twelve baseball clubs that decided to hold a convention of delegates to establish a permanent code of rules. It was signed by the officers of the Knickerbocker Club as the senior organization. Adams married Cornelia A. Cook on 7 May 1861 and resigned from the Knicker- bocker Base Ball Club less than a year later. He resigned from his medical practice in New York in 1865 and moved to Ridgefield Connecticut. He served in the State House of Representatives for the legislative session of 1870 and was elected as the first president of the Ridgefield Savings Bank. In 1888 he moved his family to New Haven. On 3 January 1899 Adams died in his home at 146 Edwards St. Doc Adams is resting at Evergreen Cemetery.

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2018.07.22
Daniel 'Doc' Adams, Baseball Pioneer

Posted by Stanley W on 07/22/2018