Read from the Introduction of Alexander Cartwright: The Life behind the Baseball Legend by Monica Nucciarone:

"Alexander Joy Cartwright Jr. was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1938 in Cooperstown, New York. In Honolulu, Hawaii, a street as well as a park are named for him, and each year his gravesite is visited by hundreds of baseball fans, both locals and tourists. They leave baseball mementos and notes thanking him for the sport. Since at least the 1930s, his reputation as the primary founder of modern baseball has seemed solid and accepted, and his accomplishments are of mythic proportions.

As the Hall of Fame and history books tell it, the legend goes like this: Cartwright drafted modern baseball’s first rules in 1845; he designed the baseball diamond, set the distance between the bases, and established the nine-inning, nine-player game, among other things. Also in 1845, he organized the first baseball club, the Knickerbocker Base Ball Club of New York, who played the first match game. When Cartwright joined the California Gold Rush in 1849, he became the “Johnny Appleseed” of baseball, teaching and playing the game at every stop along the way, thus spreading it across the continent and creating a truly national sport. Lastly, after Cartwright settled in Hawaii, he introduced and instituted baseball throughout the Hawaiian Islands.

That’s what we have been told. As for Alexander Cartwright’s later life in Hawaii, not much has been revealed. Baseball, clearly, was the main focus of his life, and his baseball accomplishments alone are enough legacy for any person. The one published booklength biography of Cartwright—The Man Who Invented Baseball, by Harold Peterson (1973)—provided a broad description of early baseball and an overview of Cartwright’s life from New York to Hawaii, but Peterson did not elaborate on Cartwright’s life in Hawaii. Still, Peterson’s work immediately became the primary reference about Cartwright for most baseball historians, researchers, presenters, and writers.

Initially, my goal was simply to write the first full biography of Alexander Cartwright, which had never been done before. It would include both his early baseball accomplishments and his later time in Hawaii, which in fact constituted the bulk of his life. I felt that a fuller account of Cartwright and of the times in which he lived, especially in Hawaii, would provide a better understanding of the man, of baseball, and of America during the nineteenth century."

Monica Nucciarone is a full-time faculty counselor advisor at Pierce College Fort Steilacoom in Washington and teaches part-time in the field of social sciences and career development.

To read a longer excerpt or to purchase Alexander Cartwright, visit http://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/product/Alexander-Cartwright,674068.aspx.