Baseball in the Bronx, Before the Yankees

Decades before the Yankees arrived in the Bronx, baseball had already developed into the national pastime. It was no longer a boy’s game, but a competitive amateur sport played by local residents made up of young men from all walks of life out for a day’s exercise. By the 1850s baseball had become a genuine enterprise, governed by constitutions, by-laws and officers appointed by each competing fraternity of clubs. The Bronx, in those early years, was part of Westchester County with many separate villages and towns. Morrisania was one such village founded in 1855. In that very same year, a baseball team was formed. They called themselves the Union of Morrisania. Their story is part of this narrative, and how they, along with other teams in the Bronx, played a major role in the development and spread of the game. How they helped the sport gain respectability and prominence. And through their struggles laid the successful foundation for clubs that followed, clubs like the Yankees.