Learn About Early Days of Baseball

Come out and learn about the world of major league baseball in the early days today at 7 pm in the .

Ed Achorn, baseball lover and Providence Journal deputy editorial page editor, presents: “Rough Diamonds: The Providence Grays and the Brutal World of Early Major League Baseball.”

The presentation is part of the Fenway Park Turns 100 series in April at the library.

In the 19th century, Rhode Island was booming. Its factories turned out some of the most highly advanced products in the world, while America's wealthiest families were turning Newport into their personal playground, complete with fabulous mansions they called cottages.

And Providence was home to one of America's best baseball teams in the National League: the Providence Grays, winners of baseball's first World Series.

This presentation takes us into the fascinating and brutal world of Gilded Age major-league baseball, when men played bare-handed, cheated all they could when the umpire's head was turned, faced horrible injuries, drank heavily, and flirted with gambling corruption.

Learn about such future Hall of Famers as the legendary Wright Brothers (George and Harry), "Old Hoss" Radbourn (who won 60 games in a single season), Jim O'Rourke, Johnny Ward, and a host of remarkable characters who shared the Darwinian ethic of their time -when winning was everything.

This presentation is sponsored by the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and the Friends of the Barrington Public Library.