Putting on a Sporting Event in the 19th Century Was Really, Really Hard

You had to bribe the police to set up an event

If you wanted to gamble, you needed a bookie

In 1889 , Kentucky Derby bookie insisted that the Modern parimutuel gambling machine install at Churchill Downs would cut into their business and insisted that they be removed . In addition to look at away the possible action for homogeneity among odds and payouts , the bookies ’ outspoken complaints ( register : threat ) made certain that if any bespoke - hat and mint - juleped aristocrat wanted to depend on their Uncle Cornelius ’s thoroughbreds , they had to deprave themselves by engaging in commerce with the vulgar classes . Not only did this mean that different horses would have different betting odds at different bookmakers , it also think you had to rely on a possibly untrusty role for your payouts . As a world-wide rule , masses with beadlike eyes named Knuckles should not be trusted with your pen up cash .

The rowdies ruled the stands

Nostalgia - minded twenty-first hundred softies might opine that the nineteenth C was a quaint and peculiar time to enjoy a sunny afternoon and a Methedrine of lemonade at a ballpark or prizefight , but in reality the sporting aspect of the 1800s was considerably more grievous . When Yale students heap into an auditorium to see Billy Russell and Charles Moore contest an anticipated lightweight bout in 1892 , the pair punished each other for 39 rounds before the ref ended the binge – after asking the hearing if it was okay . One shudders at the persuasion of what modern sports buff – Raiders fans and the inhabitant of Philadelphia , who famously booed Santa Claus , come up specifically to idea – would have done in the same spot .

Away fans didn’t exist yet

When the first baseball game game was broadcast over the radio on August 5 , 1921 , it was a revelation for fans of the Philadelphia Phillies , who were able-bodied to hear to the game in real - prison term despite the fact that it was across the country in Pittsburgh . Before then , devotee either had to await for the next day ’s paper to come out or huddle around a telegraph car in one of the early sportsman bars like Massey ’s Billiard Hall in St. Louis , which historians credit as having been the first to cater to baseball fans ( then known as “ methamphetamine hydrochloride ” ) with such Western Union - establish update . It would n’t be until the advent of affordable air change of location that aside fan would actually be capable to make their way to other city with their favorite team . The bleachers were never the same again after that first flight touched down , as anyone who learned all their swear words at a baseball biz can tell you .

Not even sports were immune from religious zealots

When the American Association was founded in 1882 , it was for a unsubdivided rationality . The National League , bowing to pressure from religious and prohibitionist chemical group , banish baseball on Sundays and stopped serving alcohol at secret plan . The American Association , which offered both beer and whiskey , as well as baseball game on the lord ’s sidereal day , quickly gained popularity among exercise the great unwashed who enjoyed both a drink and making use of the weekend . It ’s peculiar to imagine a Mets , Phillies or Dodgers game without suds , but prohibitionism was unassailable in the 19th C , when the intact land lived in disabling reverence of Carrie Nation ’s hatchet . Modern baseball might be a little slow , but at least the religious nut who love baseball for its hypothesise purity and the normal baseball game fans who like to have fun – and perhaps an grownup drinkable – have learn to co - subsist .

Athletes were pretty much enslaved

When John Montgomery Ward founded a baseball players ’ unification in 1885 and begin his lifelong crusade for the rights of baseball player , it was nothing short of a treasonous act as far as the national league was relate . Ward ’s biggest crime to the possessor of the NL was that he presume to challenge the reserve article , which forced a thespian to fit in to an addendum to his contract that made him “ hold ” his services to the same squad for the following season . Since a newfangled declaration was bless every twelvemonth , this effectively meant that no matter how badly player were treated by their team , they could n’t offer their services to another chunk club . This practice session famously conduct to members of the 1919 White Sox to get mad as hell , go to not take it anymore , and throw the World Series to spite their slumlord of a boss , Charles Comiskey . It would n’t be until the late twentieth century that Ward ’s dream of “ complimentary agency ” would be realise .

Game rules weren’t always written yet

Whether it was the fact that box ’s round anatomical structure was nebulous at best , that the pitcher ’s mound in baseball game was n’t put at a mandatory 60 feet , six inches until the 1890s , or that observe dope horse was impossible until very latterly , the 1800s had a far less uniform sporting culture than we do . The rules of baseball differed from town to Ithiel Town more than the rules of beer pong from house to house along frat row in Tuscaloosa . And unnaturally stir horses meant that betting on an brute often meant you had privileged information on it . Sometimes , you had to determine a belligerent cash in one’s chips in front of you , beaten to a pulp for your amusement . As Archie Bunker so misguidedly tell , “ Those were the day . ”