baseball cursing, 1898

[George Thompson]

It's easy to imagine, for example, that it could have been produced in 1927, with "See how bad things were 30 years
> ago?" being part of the joke.

The people who are selling this document have examined it, and whoever buys it will have been satisfied as to the date.  Still it will be difficult to date from the paper & type, since it will be a question of only a few decades.  I assume that the ink isn't going to be analyzed for its chemistry, so if there is nothing about the fabric of the paper or its watermark that says "not after 1900" or "not before 1915", then the apparent fact that the bosses of baseball in the late 1890s were concerned that violence and vulgarity was limiting the audience of the sport would suggest that the date is correct.

I will be following whatever further discussions come from the 19C baseball group.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Baker, John" <JMB at STRADLEY.COM>
Date: Tuesday, December 4, 2007 7:53 pm
Subject: Re: baseball cursing, 1898
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU


>         Of course, a joke or hoax from the period is just as useful, for
> present purposes, as an authentic document.  How certain is the dating?
> The document itself does not seem to include a date, though it refers
> to
> a November 1897 meeting.  It's easy to imagine, for example, that it
> could have been produced in 1927, with "See how bad things were 30 years
> ago?" being part of the joke.
>
>
> John Baker
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: American Dialect Society [mailto:ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf
> Of Jonathan Lighter
> Sent: Tuesday, December 04, 2007 7:43 PM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
> Subject: Re: baseball cursing, 1898
>
> The language is almost certainly authentic for the period, but I
> strongly suspect that the document itself was intended as a joke (rather
> than a "hoax"). No names of "committee members" are given and the
> document may well be a sub rosa publication.
>
>   The unexpected (and for most people unprecedented) appearance of such
> lurid insults in cold print would, I feel sure, have been regarded as
> uproariously funny by many young men of the era - ballplayers included.
>
>   JL
>
>   George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU> wrote:
>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: George Thompson
> Subject: Re: baseball cursing, 1898
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
>
> This document has been posted to the 19th Century Baseball listserv, run
> by SABR (Society for American Baseball Research). The debate is on-going
> as to whether it is an authentic production of the men who ran Organized
> Baseball then, or a hoax. In general, there seems to be agreement that
> baseball of that era was unusually violent and rowdy, and it is not
> unlikely that such language would be used on the field.
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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