Thomas S Tassie (1835-1906), Builder
Eligible : 1885
Contributions : Founder and longtime administrator of the successful Atlantic Club in Brooklyn. Regular delegate to and eventual president of the National Association of Base Ball Players. Key witness that misremembered the organization of early baseball and corroborated the untrue story that Abner Doubleday invented baseball.
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| Thomas Tassie |
Today, we understand that it has most likely evolved from the English schoolyard game of rounders (which also evolved into the sister game of cricket), but in 1905 there was a fierce debate, and for many Americans, it was important that baseball be deemed 'American made.' Since the report only really consulted, or at least published, those who would support the narrative championed by Al Spalding and his supporters, Tassie's testimony was recorded : "Baseball is purely an American game." He claimed never to have heard of rounders, and his testimony was used in part to ensure that the Doubleday myth made its way into the history books. Thanks in no small part to Thomas Tassie, baseball's creation myth was fabricated.
Tassie's testimony, however, contains several issues : not only was he 70 years old and almost 60 years removed from the events he recounted, but he was in the same area as Doubleday (New York) for a period of less than four years, beginning in 1845 when the Knicks were formed, and when Tassie was ten years old. Before Tassie's 14th birthday, Doubleday had left for California as a miner '49er. Tassie wouldn't become involved in baseball for several years following Doubleday's departure for California. Moreover, Tassie was born and raised in Brooklyn, and likely, as baseball historian John Thorn writes, never laid eyes on Doubleday, who lived in Manhattan and played baseball in Hoboken. Tassie's testimony, that Doubleday had presented the Knicks with the first field layout, was impossible to corroborate and virtually impossible to believe.
Further, Thorn asserts that baseball writer William Rankin, working on behalf of Mills and the commission, "bullied" the geriatric Tassie into affirming the Doubleday myth when he conducted their interview in 1905. What's more, Thorn notes that Rankin convinced Tassie that a claim he had made in an 1877 discussion with Rankin, that a gentleman named 'Wadsworth' (already inducted in this hall) had presented the first diagram of a baseball field, was misremembered; that he had meant the man was named 'Doubleday.' The fix was in.
Tassie was born in Forres, Scotland, in 1835. He immigrated with his family as a child, growing up in Brooklyn and serving on the local fire company. Like many of baseball's pioneers, he got into baseball through his work association - many joined baseball as a member of their law firm, government office, firehouse, or workshop. Tassie was no different, and in the early 1850s he helped found the Atlantic Club, serving first on their practice squad, but settled into a role as it's chief administrator, serving as its president in 1857 and most seasons after.
In January of 1857 the Knickerbockers expanded their rules committee to include delegations from each of New York's major clubs, including the Atlantic. The rules committee had been influential in the baseball world since the end of the '40s, but it had always regulated only the Knicks' gameplay. Other clubs like the Eagles or the Gotham clubs would typically emulate the the Knicks' play, but the Knicks only set the rules for themselves. The 1857 committee meeting would change everything.
That 1857 meeting marked the birth of the National Association of Base Ball Clubs, and Tassie would regularly represent the Atlantic at their conventions, serving as eventual president of the Association itself in 1869. In 1860, now a respected middle infielder for the Atlantic, Tassie married the sister of Bob Ferguson, one of the top players in the city. In 1866 Ferguson would abandon his team (the Enterprise) for his brother-in-law's club.
This is essentially what we know of Tassie's active involvement in baseball. He was a mediocre player in the 1850s, and a renowned administrator in the 1860s as baseball expanded throughout the country and ultimately became professionalised. His involvement in baseball's early years is certainly enough to warrant consideration as a notable baseball person, but it wasn't his great contribution to the sport.
Tassie would move on from baseball in the 1870s, becoming a teacher, butter salesman, milliner, and Republican party apparatchik. He allegedly went broke in 1881 and was reported missing for a brief time. He was presumed to have killed himself, but does show up back in the historical record, both as a contact of Rankin and Mills, and then deceased in 1906, shortly after his infamous second interview with Rankin.
While Tassie's words were employed in the ultimate obfuscation of baseball's creation myth, he also had an important contribution to the truth of baseball's creation : he was one of the few men who were able to identify Louis F Wadsworth, who we've covered here, as a foundational figure in baseball history, and perhaps one of the original designers of the baseball diamond, something that we hold as, if not true, at least likely today.
When I started putting this project together, I had to decide how to gauge people who impacted baseball negatively -- Judge Landis delayed the farm system and helped maintain the colour barrier; AG Mills immiserated a generation of baseball stars with the reserve clause -- and I ultimately decided that people would be included for the magnitude of their impact on the sport - not necessarily how good they were or that impact was. Ignoring his high-profile role in baseball's early years in New York, Tassie's testimony in 1905 aided the cause of men who set back our understanding of baseball's origins by the better part of a century, and while it's hard to say that was a good event, it was certainly an important one.
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