Title
The Spirit of the Times; A Chronicle of the Turf, Agriculture, Field Sports, Literature, and the Stage
Coverage
New York
Publisher
William T. Porter
Date
May 1855
Subject
Volume 25, number 13
Description
Spirit of the Times began in 1831 as a weekly devoted to horse literature and southwestern wit, published by an icon of early sports journalism, William Trotter Porter. Reports of a new game called baseball, first played by teams in and around New York City in the mid-1840s, began creeping into its pages in the mid-1850s. This issue contains an unrecorded detailed description of the rules, the first ever in a magazine.