Files
Download Full Text (383 KB)
Date
2025
Abstract
The inaugural year for baseball played among formally organized base ball clubs (BBC) in Kansas and in Kansas City, Missouri was 1866. Little has been written about the events of that year other than retellings and embellishments of a myth created in 1927 about James Butler “Wild Bill” Hickok umpiring a game between the Kansas City Antelopes and Atchison Pomeroys to prevent violence during the contest. In truth, the first club organized in the area by local business owners and other professionals was the Frontier BBC of Leavenworth in November 1865. The first club organized in Kansas City, Missouri was the Antelope BBC in July 1866. Members of these clubs initially participated in intramural games, but challenges were soon issued and accepted through newspaper announcements. The first intercity matches were arranged in October and November 1866. The top two teams that year were the Frontiers and Antelopes, who played a home and home series of one game in each city. Each of the games was followed by a sumptuous dinner and other entertainment hosted by the home club. The era of gentlemen’s base ball clubs in Kansas lasted only a few years before town teams composed of the best local players and possibly a few hired ringers became widespread. This monograph describes the inaugural season of intercity baseball in Kansas and adjacent Kansas City, Missouri. This essay was originally published in 2018 and has undergone revisions and corrections for its release in 2025 as part of the five-volume anthology Peeking through the Knothole. The open-access, digital version of this essay is available through the “Download” button on this webpage. The print-on-demand version is available through the “Buy this Book” button for volume one of the anthology (Essays on Baseball Origins in the West, 1858–1883).
Keywords
baseball, Frontier Base Ball Club, Antelope Base Ball Club, Wyandott Base Ball Club, Hope Base Ball Club, Leavenworth, Kansas City, Wild Bill Hickok.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Rights
© The Author (s)
Recommended Citation
Eberle, Mark E., "Inaugural Season of Intercity Base Ball in Leavenworth and Kansas City, 1866: Frontiers and Antelopes, Revised" (2025). Monographs. 3.
DOI: 10.58809/NRKF9680
Available at:
https://scholars.fhsu.edu/all_monographs/3
Comments
For questions contact ScholarsRepository@fhsu.edu
Originally Published 2019
Revised Edition 2025