No one invited the first American sports fans. They just showed up at baseball games in Brooklyn in the late 1850s. The unexpected appearance of large numbers of strangers alarmed both players and journalists, who were initially at a loss to understand why anyone other than a bettor would care who won a game they were not playing in.

The explanation for the crowds lay outside sports, in the economic and cultural rivalry between New York City and the then-independent city of Brooklyn. The inter-city rivalry sparked an outbreak of baseball mania among the citizens of Brooklyn. New Yorkers had been playing baseball for decades, but the Knickerbockers, Gothams, Eagles and other New York clubs played mostly intramurally. Once in a while they played a so-called “match” against another club. But their games generated little media coverage; and it was news if more than a few dozen people came to watch. Typically, the small crowds they did attract were made up largely of gamblers and bookmakers, sometimes referred to in the press as “outside friends.” They were outside because they were not baseball “insiders,” i.e., they were not players (or friends and family members of players). There was no third category.

Amateur Era sportswriters’ euphemisms for gamblers included “outside friends,” the “sporting fraternity” and “the fancy.”

In 1854 Brooklynites decided to try to beat the New Yorkers at their own game; they formed the Excelsiors, soon followed by the Atlantics, Eckfords and Putnams. It took less than four years for these clubs to reach competitive parity with New York’s big four—the Knickerbockers, Gothams, Eagles, and Empires. Spectator interest picked up, particularly in Brooklyn and particularly when a Brooklyn club faced a New York club.

We see the first significant crowds when the Brooklyn clubs began to play more games against New York City clubs and each other. Inter-club and inter-city rivalry fanned public interest, which led to more inter-club games, which intensified rivalries. Which came first, increased fan interest or more inter-club games, is a chicken and egg question, but the connection between the two is clear. In September 1857 the Clipper warned that the big Atlantics—Gothams game would cause traffic problems. A month later newspapers reported that 3,000 people came to Carroll Park to watch Brooklyn’s Excelsiors defeat New York’s Knickerbockers, 31–13. The crowd was so big that it got in the way of the fielders. “The announcement of a passage at arms between two clubs such as these,” the Brooklyn Daily Eagle wrote, “is always a rallying cry to hundreds and thousands of the citizens of New York and Brooklyn.” In 1858 the Brooklyn Common Council challenged its New York counterpart to a best-two-of-three all-star series, called the Fashion Course series after the racing track in Queens where the games were played. Game one of the series was the first baseball game that anyone paid to see. Despite the admission charge, all three games drew never-before-seen crowds in the high four figures.

These new baseball crowds were different in size, but they were also different in character. In midsummer 1860 the baseball world was abuzz with anticipation for the championship-deciding three-game series between the two best clubs in America, the Excelsiors and the Atlantics. Both were Brooklyn clubs. But baseball insiders underestimated how much the series had captured the imagination of the general public. If you look at the background of the famous New York Illustrated News picture showing the Excelsiors playing game one of their series against the Atlantics in Red Hook on July 19, 1860, you will see groups of people standing in foul territory and others standing on the roofs of the Brooklyn Yacht Club and Excelsior clubhouse buildings across the street; newspapers also reported that spectators were perched in the rigging of nearby ships. An estimated 12,000 fans turned out—at the time, the largest baseball crowd ever. With Excelsiors pitcher James Creighton in top form, the game was never close. The Atlantics were crushed, 23–4. Game accounts from 1860 were often critical of boisterous spectators and blamed gambling, but this crowd behaved. Still, The New York Times could not help itself, crediting both clubs with having “checked the loud expressions of feeling from outsiders who were financially interested in the result.”

Game 1 of the 1860 championship series between the Excelsiors and Atlantics, played on the Excelsiors’ home field in Red Hook, Brooklyn. There is a public baseball diamond on this spot today. The buildings at center belong to the Excelsiors and the … — Game 1 of the 1860 championship series between the Excelsiors and Atlantics, played on the Excelsiors’ home field in Red Hook, Brooklyn. There is a public baseball diamond on this spot today. The buildings at center belong to the Excelsiors and the Brooklyn Yacht Club; the surrounding ships are docked along the Gowanus.

15,000 spectators came to the Atlantics’ home grounds in the village of Bedford (now the neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant) for Game 2 on August 9. The score would have been nearly identical to that of the first game, if not for a seventh-inning, nine-run outburst by the Atlantics that knocked Creighton out of the box, the first and only time this happened in Creighton’s brief career. Even the Atlantics were surprised; the rally went down in club lore as the “lucky seventh.” The Atlantics held off a 9th-inning rally by the Excelsiors to win, 15–14. On August 23 a third straight record crowd — estimated at 20,000 — came to see the rubber game of the series at the Putnams’ grounds, which were on Broadway between Greene and Lafayette Avenues in Brooklyn. Most of them were Atlantics fans. They expected to see the championship of 1860 settled, but the baseball gods had other plans.

In the early innings both clubs showed signs of feeling the pressure of playing such an important game in front of so many people. Fearful of making an out and — under the rules as they were then applied — not compelled by the umpire to swing at strikes, batters tired out the pitchers by letting dozens of good pitches go by. The Excelsiors’ Creighton threw 72 pitches in the first inning, 96 in the second, and 80 in the third, absolutely insane totals by today’s standards. With their club down 8–6 in the fifth inning, Atlantics supporters protested the umpire’s call on a close play. When the Atlantics made two errors in the top of the sixth, the crowd’s mood turned ugly. “Expressions of dissent,” wrote Chadwick in the Daily Eagle, “became so decided, and symptoms of bad feeling began to manifest itself to such a degree, that the Captain of the Excelsior nine, Mr. Leggett, than whom a fairer, more manly, or more gentlemanly player does not exist [an exquisitely Chadwickian phrase], ordered his men to pick up their bats and retire from the field.” Chadwick’s take was echoed by the rest of the press, which was uniformly sympathetic to the Excelsiors. The New York Times wrote:

The rowdy element which had been excited by a fancied injustice to [the Atlantics’] McMahon in the preceding innings, now became almost insupportable in its violence, and shouts from all parts of the field arose for a new Umpire; the hootings [sic] against the Excelsior Club were perfectly disgraceful. Mr. Leggett was supported by the Atlantic nine in his endeavors to secure order, and by their united exertions a temporary lull was secured, but, although Mr. Leggett distinctly stated that the Excelsiors would withdraw if the tumult was renewed, the hooting was again started with increased vigor, and the Excelsiors immediately left the field, followed by a crowd of roughs, alternately groaning the Excelsiors and cheering the Atlantics.

The umpire forfeited the game to the Atlantics. The Excelsiors were angry that the Atlantics would accept a championship that the Excelsiors viewed as tainted. A purported game ball was sent anonymously to Atlantics secretary Frederick K. Boughton as an insult. The Atlantics, wrote the Daily Eagle, “have chosen to recognize the ball as the one played with, and have placed it among their other trophies…the affair has created some feeling among baseball players.” History has echoed and embellished the narrative that rowdy and violent Atlantics fans, angry that they might lose their bets, were so out of control that the Excelsiors had no choice but to leave the field, and that it was unsportsmanlike of the Atlantics to accept the victory.

Amateur Era baseball players and the journalists who covered them were frightened and confused by the large crowds of fans that appeared at baseball games in Brooklyn in the late 1850s.

This version of events is heavily colored by the views of Henry Chadwick, the most influential sportswriter of the day. Chadwick had long fought for the total elimination of gambling in baseball, a campaign that struck many contemporaries as extreme and even obsessive. Could it be that what Chadwick painted as rowdy behavior by disappointed gamblers was nothing more than the enthusiasm of excited fans? None of the contemporary accounts of the disputed game alleges a single violent act by a spectator. The New York Times used adjectives like “rowdy” and “shameful,” but the only specific acts mentioned were “groaning,” “shouts,” and “hooting.” In the Clipper’s version, “the crowd began to get uproarious in the extreme, and so insulting were the epithets bestowed on the Excelsiors that Leggett decided to withdraw his forces from the field.” From a modern point of view this sounds silly. The Excelsiors walked away from a championship game because the opposing team’s fans used rough language and booed the umpire?

In the week after the disputed game, the Atlantics read one newspaper story after another that blamed their fans for the debacle. On September 1 they responded with a press statement asking, “Can we restrain a burst of applause or indignation emanating from an assemblage of more than 15,000 excited spectators, whose feelings are enlisted as the game proceeds?…if the nine is to be called off the ground on all occasions where the pressure is rather high, we think that ball playing will soon lose its most essential features…[and] terminate in the ruin of the game as a national pastime….” The Atlantics’ point of view can be summed up as: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

The truth is that the biggest baseball game of 1860 was cut short because Captain Joe Leggett and his Excelsiors lost their nerve under the psychological pressure of playing in front of the largest crowd they had ever seen. What Boughton and the Atlantics understood, and what the Excelsiors and their allies in the press did not, is that the events of August 23 reflected a new reality. In 1862 a non-baseball man, William Cammeyer, opened the Union Grounds in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The first ballpark, it sold tickets and provided fans with seats, shelter, food and drink. Baseball spectators had become baseball fans and fans were now a permanent part of the game. Booing and heckling are the flip side of cheering and applause. As any professional athlete of today can tell you, both come with the territory.