Gunsmoke | Ep382 | "Ball Nine, Take Your Base"

[@stingray4920]

😂😂 Great episode as usual. Thank you for sharing. 😎👍

[@KororaPenguin]

It's clearly set in 1879, as it was after that season that the number of balls in a walk was reduced to eight.

[@KororaPenguin]

And the worry about betting on games was well founded. After the 1877 season, it came to light that the reason the Boston Red Caps (now the Atlanta Braves) had won the 1877 was because four players for the Louisville Grays had been bribed by gamblers to throw games. And since people hadn't yet learned how to reliably keep teams afloat even in bad times, the Grays folded. So did the St. Louis Brown Stockings I, who had picked up two of the guilty players in a trade before the truth was learned. Basically, this was to analog sports what the Optic India scandal was to e-sports. One of the Counter Strike: Global Offensive players for Optic India was found to be using wallhacks during a major tournament, and in the fallout the whole team wound up disbanding. Well, there is one substantial difference: The Louisville Grays scandal didn't kill the baseball scene in Louisville or St. Louis; in fact, the St. Louis Brown Stockings II (now the Cardinals) arose from the ashes of the original Brown Stockings.

[@KororaPenguin]

That bit about the batters being able to fight: With those bats, each of those eighteen ballplayers could Who-Are-You-Calling-Small the felons if they had to. (Points for anyone who gets the reference)

[@vincentsartain3061]

A little "primitive baseball" history in this episode! But Major League Baseball was first organized right around the same time as the time period setting of Gunsmoke. But before the Major Leagues, baseball was an increasingly popular sport from the 1840s and up. Most of the official rules of the game in baseball as we know the sport today were firmly in place by the 1880s.

[@44032]

Henry Chadwick was the leading sportswriter of the day. he created the box score and most of the same's traditional statistics and helped codify the rules. The writer of this episode did some excellent research into early baseball. HGWT also has a baseball episode with Paladin as n umpire no one will want to argue with.

[@joedodd5694]

I know the world series wasn't till years later but some world series was best of 9 games the winner

[@KororaPenguin]

​@@joedodd5694 The first World Series was in 1884, when the National League champion Providence Grays swept the the American Association champion New York Mets* three games to zilch. And the Dodgers-Giants rivalry actually began with the 1889 World Series, when the NL champion New York Giants beat the AA champion Brooklyn Bridegrooms six games to three--and then the Bridegrooms, along with the Cincinnati Red Stockings III, jumped to the National League. Oh, and the Mutual Base Ball Club of New York mentioned in the episode was one of the eight charter members of the NL. Of those eight ballclubs, only two survived past 1879: The Chicago White Stockings I (now the Cubs) and the Boston Red Caps (now the Atlanta Braves). * Not the same Mets as today. These Mets folded after the 1887 season.

[@KororaPenguin]

At the time this episode is set, the National League consisted of the Boston Red Caps (now the Atlanta Braves), the Providence Grays, the Troy Trojans, the Syracuse Stars I, the Buffalo Bisons II (now the minor league Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders), the Cleveland Blues I, the Cincinnati Red Stockings II, and the Chicago White Stockings I (now the Cubs).