Baseball: Inning One: Our Game

In New York City, in the 1840s, people need a diversion from the "railroad pace" at which they work and live. They find it in a game of questionable origins. On June 19th, 1846, at the Elysian Fields in Hoboken, New Jersey, a team of well-dressed gentlemen, the Knickerbockers, play the first game of baseball. By 1856, the game is already being called "the national pastime," or simply, "Our Game." But the nation is about to be torn apart. And, in the midst of the Civil War, there is one thing that Americans North and South have in common: baseball.