Alerts, July 16th, 1866, in
Philadelphia.

These were, as a matter of course, exceptional performances, and ones
that would be impossible in these days of great speed and curve
pitching, but serve to show that there were ball players, and good ones,
even in those days when the National Game was as yet, comparatively
speaking, in its infancy, and the National League, of the formation and
progress of which I will speak later on as yet unheard of.

It must be remembered that, the greater number of these old-time games
were not played upon enclosed grounds and that the batter in many cases
had no fences to prevent him from lining them out, while the pitcher was
so hampered by rules and regulations as to give the batsman every
advantage, while now it is the pitcher that enjoys a wide latitude and
the batsman who is hampered.

It was a much easier matter to hit the old underhand delivery, with its
straight ball, and to send the pigskin screaming through the air and
over a low picket fence, than to hit the swift curved ball of to-day and
lift it over the high board fences that surround the professional
grounds, as any old-time player can testify.

CHAPTER V. THE GAME AT MARSHALLTOWN.

If my memory serves me rightly it was some time in the year 1866 that
the Marshalltown Base-Ball Club, of which my father was a prominent
member, sprung into existence, and among the men who made up the team at
that time were many who have since become prominent in the history not
only of Marshalltown but of Marshall County as well, among them being
Captain Shaw, Emmett Green, A. B. Cooper, S. R. Anson and the old
gentleman himself, it being owing to my father's exertions that
Marshalltown acquired the county seat, and he has since served the town
as both Mayor and Councilman and seen it grow from a single log cabin to
a prosperous city.

Prior to the organization of this team base-ball had been played there
in a desultory fashion for some time, but with its formation the fever
broke out in its most virulent form, and it was not many weeks before
the entire town had gone base-ball crazy, the fever seemingly attacking
everybody in the place save the baby in arms, which doubtless escaped
merely because of its extreme youth and lack of understanding.

In the absence of any records relating to those early days it is
impossible for me to say just who, the Marshalltown team beat and who it
did not, but I do know that long before I became a