biography
| name: |
Cartwright, Alexander (Joy), Jr
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1820–92)
|
| biography:
| Baseball pioneer, born in New York City, New York, USA. He held various jobs including bank clerk, bookshop-stationery owner, and volunteer fireman, and in the early 1840s joined other young men in New York City in playing an early form of baseball. In the 20th-c, he would be credited with ‘inventing’ baseball, including such regulations as nine players to a team and bases 90 feet apart. In September 1845, his Knickerbocker Base Ball Club drew up the first rules for what would eventually evolve into the modern game of baseball. In 1849, at the news of the gold finds in California, he travelled overland to San Francisco, but then sailed to Hawaii where he spent the rest of his life, prospering as a businessman and introducing baseball to the inhabitants. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938. |
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