Walt Whitman's baseball quote (surely not 1846!)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

CRACKERS--This was intended for ASmith--, not ADS--. You type the "A"and AOL automatically continues the address. I've been going through Early Encounters in North America, a database not at NYPL or NYU.

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WHITMAN

Maybe I'll just ask the Walt Whitman list? No need to go crazy; I mean, Fred Shapiro doesn't pay me enough for this stuff.


BASEBALL: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY
nqarrative by Geoffrey C. Ward
based on a documentary filmscript by Geoffrey C. Ward and Ken Burns
New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994

Pg. xvii:
Well, it's our game; that the chief fact in connection with it; America's game; it has the snap, go, fling of the American atmosphere; it belongs as much to our institutions, fits into them as significantly as our Constitution's laws; is just as important in the sum total of our historic life.
--Walt Whitman
(No date or source--ed.)

Pg. 3:
I see great things in baseball. It's our game--the American game.  It will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.
--Walt Whitman, 1846
(No source--ed.)


BASE BALL:
AN INFORMAL HISTORY
by Douglass Wallop
New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.
1969

Pg. 119:  And in his frontal attack, in which he called baseball "somewhat less exciting than a spelling bee," Louis Graves struck a mighty blow for those who hoped, even at such a late date, that baseball might somehow be headed off.
(...)
He was competing against the greater voice of Walt Whitman, who said: "I see great things in baseball. It's our game--the American game.  It will take our people out-of-doors, fill (Pg. 120--ed.) them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relive us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair our losses, and be a blessing to us."