By Nicholas Acocella Part 2 - Alexander Cartwright and the Knickerbocker Club Born in 1820, Alexander Cartwright had been playing a different version, the New York Game, recreationally since 1842, first at Madison Square, then at 34th Street and Fourth (Madison) Avenue. A clerk at the Union Bank and a volunteer fireman, the young Cartwright helped form the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York. Organized on September 23, 1845, this social and athletic club resembled a college fraternity or a county club more than a modern sports franchise. Its members were middle-class young men, whose circumstances allowed them to get away at 3:00 for regular Monday and Thursday games, and provided them with sufficient income to pay an initiation fee of $2 and annual dues of $5. They were lawyers, doctors, merchants, brokers, bank and insurance clerks -- in effect, the yuppies of the day. The newly-organized Knickerbockers rented -- for $75 for the year -- a playing field and dressing rooms at Elysian Fields in Hoboken. Their Manhattan field was getting too congested for team sports, and Hoboken, only a short ride away on the Stevens-Barclay Street Ferry, and already a playground for New Yorkers, was a natural choice for the fledgling group. The fare was just 13 cents, round-trip. Elysian Fields, conveniently located on Hoboken's northern riverfront and a popular spot for trysting and other recreational pursuits, had often been used for pre-Cartwright versions of Base Ball. It didn't hurt either that the field was within walking distance of established eateries, such as McCarty's Hotel and, later, the Odd Fellows Hall, where the players repaired for postgame banquets that were at least as important to the participants as the ball games themselves. Soon after the formation of the Knickerbockers, Cartwright set down the first baseball rule book. The Knickerbockers used most of the 20 new regulations in four intramural games. The first took place on October 6, 1845, and 11-8 game with seven men on a side. (An earlier game had gone unrecorded.) The next season, on June 19, 1846, the Knickerbockers were the hosts in what just about everyone recognizes as the first organized baseball game. In that contest, the New York Base Ball Club defeated the Knickerbockers 23-1, in four innings. A nice footnote is that Cartwright, who served as umpire, fined James Whyte Davis of the New York Club six cents for swearing during the game. The New York Club, however loosely organized, had existed as early as 1843. On October 21, 1845, its team, playing a form of Base Ball, defeated by a score of 24-4, a Brooklyn squad that included a number of prominent cricket players. Played at Elysian Fields, this contest included three players (including the profane Davis) who would appear again on Elysian Fields eight months later to best the Knickerbockers. The results of the 1845 game were reported in the New York Morning News the following day and included a box score, similar to a cricket tally -- the first for a Base Ball game score to appear in a newspaper. Three days later, the New York Club won a return match, played in Brooklyn, by a 37-19 score. From this distance, it is impossible to discern the difference between the 1845 games and the one played in 1846. (Even the box score was indistinguishable from the one kept for the 1846 game.) 
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