Fred Burwell

I have a chapter entitled, “Olympians of Beloit College,” in Base Ball Pioneers 1850-1870, a lovely oversized paperback recently published by McFarland Books. While the history of baseball after 1870 has proven fertile ground for exhaustive scholarship, we know much less about its earliest period, as teams sprang up and popularized the sport across the nation. Founder of the “Pioneer Project,” Peter Morris, asked me to write about the Olympian Base Ball Club of Beloit College, a highly successful but short-lived congregation of battle-toughened Civil War veterans and fresh-faced youngsters. I delved deep into the Beloit College Archives, uncovered vivid accounts in diaries, letters and newspapers, and pieced together the story of a dynamic club from a tiny Wisconsin school on a bluff above the Rock River. The scholars of Greek and Latin somehow lived up to their Olympian name by becoming the champion base ball team of Wisconsin in 1867 before fading away. Along with coverage of their activities on the diamond, I included biographies of each player. It was a time when baseball had not only become a national pastime, but a national passion, as one Beloit College student noted in the college newspaper: “The Base Ball mania has prevailed quite extensively during the year, but has proved fatal to none except visitors. The Olympians have met all of the principal clubs in the State the past year, and not suffered a single defeat. This would not seem to indicate that the students of Beloit are a puny race. No, we develop muscle as well as brains.”

For those interested in baseball’s pioneering days, I highly recommend dipping into Base Ball Pioneers, which features detailed and colorful accounts about teams from all over the country. The book is available at bookstores and online. Here is a link to the McFarland Press page for the book:
Base Ball Pioneers 1850-1870