Grant & Baseball
The Original Polo Grounds

The grandstand at the original Polo Grounds in 1888, five seasons after Grant’s opening day visit.

The stadium was the first of four in the city to be called the Polo Grounds, and was the only one where polo was actually played. When the city of New York evicted the team from the site in 1889 to construct a traffic circle, the franchise moved uptown to the storied site below Coogan’s Bluff, where three baseball stadiums would be built in sequence. Baseball would be played at Coogan’s Bluff until 1964, when the last, best known stadium was demolished to make way for a complex of mammoth public housing high-rises.

The game in 1883 was different than today’s version, including a flat pitcher’s square instead of a mound; underhand pitching (it switched officially to overhand in 1889) a shorter distance to the plate; batters requesting a high or low strike zone; and just one umpire on the field, standing about 15 feet behind and to the right of the batter’s box.

But other aspects remain recognizable. Today’s National League was already seven years old and in full swing. On that day, Cy Young, who still is major league baseball’s winningest pitcher with the insurmountable total of 511 lifetime victories, was a 16-year-old nicknamed Dent, and could very well have been with his local town baseball club in Tuscarawas County, Ohio.

In addition, the game between the Gothams and the Beaneaters reflected a New York-Boston rivalry quite recognizable to today’s baseball followers.

Twenty-first century baseball fans would have easily recognized the proceedings at the Polo Grounds, just as Grant and other baseball fans of the 19th century would be able to make out the game today. An 1886 photo of the stadium underscores the point.

A game in 1886 at the original Polo Grounds in New York City, just three seasons after Grant’s visit there. The typical baseball setting and much of the action would be familiar to a present-day fan.

Players have caps and long stockings that pretty much look like today’s versions, a right-handed pitcher throws to a right-handed batter, and the catcher seems to have the ball in hand as he eyes an aggressive base runner leading off first. Billboards on the outfield wall tout products including the still existing brand A.G. Spalding & Brothers Sporting Goods. Albert Goodwill Spalding, one of the best pitchers of the 1870s, was like Grant, a world traveler: In 1888, Spalding would publicize baseball -- and his products -- in a highly publicized global tour. Grant spent 1877 to 1879 traveling the world. Incidentally, Spalding and Grant both knew Clemens.