Thorn: Forgotten boxes, family, and remembering Henry Chadwick

From SABR member John Thorn at Our Game on July 10, 2013:

This is a guest column, penned by my longtime friend Fran Henry, whose trove of Henry Chadwick materials I examined with her kind permission more than two decades ago. How did she come by such wonderful stuff? She is a direct descendant of  the man who long before his death in 1908 was called The Father of Baseball.

This was not because anyone believed that he invented it — he always credited baseball’s parentage to rounders — but for his hugely successful labors, over half a century, to make baseball America’s national game. In the coming weeks and months Fran will create a special section of MLB’s Memory Lab project. It will create, through first-hand documents and artifacts, a highly personal portrait of a man most of us today know principally by his plaque in Cooperstown, awarded in the year before that institution opened its doors.

Let Fran Henry tell of her most recent attic find.

Read the full article here: http://ourgame.mlblogs.com/2013/07/10/forgotten-boxes-family-and-a-legacy-recalling-henry-chadwick/



Originally published: July 10, 2013. Last Updated: July 10, 2013.